Dr. James Browne:

Granularity. The process requires us to assess an academic on his or her teaching, research and contribution. We took each of the three areas on the advice of external experts and defined what we meant by research excellence across a set of measures. For example, we might look at the number of PhDs supervised, the income generated, where appropriate, or papers published, books published, citations generated and a whole series of metrics. We then did the same with teaching and contribution. Such granularity forces people to provide evidence for their decisions.

The second big change was, for the first time in this country, a gender quota, which we introduced in 2013-14. We insisted that the outcome would be that at least 30% of colleagues being promoted were female. Some six months after the process was completed, the Equality Tribunal made a judgment about an application by an individual who had been assessed and failed in the 2008-09 round. The tribunal required us to promote the individual who brought that case