UCEA (Universities and Colleges Employers' Association): The employers' association for universities and Higher Education in the United Kingdom. UCEA provides a framework within which institutions can discuss and seek advice and guidance on salaries, conditions of service, employee relations and all matters connected with employment.

For more information, please, visit UCEA website

HEI: Higher Education Institutions

Role; Generic/Benchmark Role: For the purposes of this project, the word "job" is being used to describe the specific work requirements of an individual/s post, whilst role is being used in a more generic way. For example a number of people holding different jobs may hold the same role.

The following criteria will be used to assess whether two jobs are the same role or are different roles:

• Jobs that are entirely different in their 'nature', eg, technical compared with administrative.
• Jobs that are of an entirely different level of responsibility and demand.

If two jobs are of the same 'nature' and of a very similar level of demand and responsibility it is likely that they will be the same role even though the individual jobs may be different, eg, two managers working in entirely different areas of the university may have a different area of expertise and their jobs may not be interchangeable and would, therefore, be deemed to be different. They may, however, be required to make decisions, organise resources, manage colleagues in a very similar way and their jobs may well be the same role.

Role Holder: employee who holds the role

Role Analyst: member of the HERA team or trained TU representative, who analyses, grades and scores HERA Questionnaires completed by role holders.

Grading structure: a series of grades, each of which will span a number of incremental points.

Job evaluation: a systematic process for defining the relative worth or size of jobs within an organisation in order to establish internal relativities and provide the basis for designing an equitable pay and grading structure. HERA is an analytical job evaluation scheme that is used in Swansea University.