SAMpeople’s year in review 2024-25

Summer is here, and it’s nearly time to unwind in celebration of completing another successful academic year. As we prepare to wrap things up, it’s only natural that we take a moment to reflect on the past year.

We’ve introduced dozens of updates and features to make the SAMpeople suite even more intuitive for over 2,200 schools and trusts.

Let’s take a look at the incredible enhancements we’ve released, designed to help you connect your staff data and streamline your workflows, which make the SAMpeople suite even more powerful for you to use.

Autumn Term highlight

Start your week with a snapshot of key activities

Stay ahead of your to-do list with SAMpeople’s Weekly Digest Email, an automated email summary delivered every Monday morning. It’s filled with key people milestones, and events happening over the next two weeks, including:

• Upcoming start or leave dates
• Work anniversaries, birthdays, and length-of-service milestones
• Fixed-term contracts nearing their end
• Employees with no active contracts
• Probationary end dates

The Weekly Digest Email goes beyond notifications. It helps you prioritise your team’s key dates and milestones, making planning, acknowledging and supporting your team effortless.

Autumn Term roundup of the SAMpeople suite

1. Auto-Generate Payroll IDs: Automatically assigns the next available payroll number, eliminating formatting mistakes and giving you even more accuracy. Onboard new staff seamlessly and keep payroll running smoothly. Learn more here.
2. Address Look-up: This new feature makes sure that employee addresses are accurate from the start. Employees can update their own details, and you can easily confirm them in SAMpeople, maintaining your payroll’s data accuracy. Learn more here.
3. Self-Service bank detail updates in MySAM: Employees can update their bank information directly, with automatic notifications sent to you for confirmation, saving them and your self time, reducing the chances of errors, and keeping employee records up-to-date without any extra effort. Learn more here.
4. SAMpeople BI Connector: Use your favourite Business Intelligence tools, like Power BI or Tableau, to see and analyse key staff data, alongside MIS and national datasets. Get even more actionable insights to drive strategic HR planning, and easily share reports with your team, SLT, trustees, and governors. Learn more here.
5. MyPay Reports for additional hours, mileage, and expenses: Tracking additional hours, mileage, and expenses is much smoother with MyPay Reports. Easily track claims, spot trends, and resolve discrepancies quickly. Learn more here.

Spotlight on SAMpeople Recruit

Your hiring process and onboarding simplified

SAMpeople Recruit is designed by education HR specialists who understand the needs of safer recruitment within KCSIE regulations. These safer recruitment workflows are built into the system, giving you everything you need to attract, manage and onboard new staff with confidence and professionalism.

We added more functionality to make the hiring process smoother and more intuitive, helping you attract and secure the best talent faster and more efficiently. All while further reducing the time-consuming, complex, and admin-heavy recruitment needs.

1. We’ve made our Offer Pack area more intuitive to simplify how you monitor, communicate and move candidates through the evaluation and selection process, while maintaining compliance. From sending and requesting key documents from hired candidates to optimising application tracking, SAMpeople Recruit simplifies your workflows, so you can maintain compliance with safer recruitment and get the right candidates in faster.
2. You can now use customisable vacancy pages to tailor your job adverts, so you can showcase your school or trust’s unique identity. Show candidates your values, culture, and vision so they can get to know your trust’s culture. This both increases engagement and helps you hit the goal of being an employer of choice.
3. Stay connected, access contact details, view message history, and send messages to applicants without leaving the page using the Applicants’ contract information workflow.

Spring Term highlight

Make every pay run faster, more accurate, and error-free

Payroll Enhancements in SAMpeople give your team greater visibility, tighter controls, and cleaner exports. That way, you have total confidence in your payroll data every time.

Now you have:

• An enhanced Payroll Update Export
  More detailed, period-specific fields for you to track contract changes, absences, and adjustments with greater accuracy. That way, you don’t need to carry items forward or reconcile data manually. The enhanced Payroll Update Export gives you more visibility into managing contractual changes and absences. You can now track exactly what changed, when, and what the previous value was.
• Cleaner, more focused reports
  New logic will make sure only the relevant data is shown, making reports easier to read, audit-ready, and shareable across HR and finance.
• Advanced configuration options for payroll periods, cost codes, and nominals
  Customise payroll periods, cut-off dates, cost codes, and nominals to suit your trust’s needs, so you can improve your central team’s oversight and make reconciliation smoother.

Spring Term roundup of the SAMpeople suite

1. Shortlisting in SAMpeople Recruit. A new scoring and tracking feature that helps you review multiple job applications efficiently and fairly.

It comes with custom scoring criteria and a collaborative review process, so hiring teams can make structured decisions without inconsistent manual evaluations.

This means:

• Fairer hiring – Standardised scoring keeps the process bias-free
• Faster reviews – Multiple team members can assess applicants in real-time
• Better oversight – Anonymised applications keep hiring aligned with best practices
• Less admin – Automated scoring grids reduce manual tracking

No more sifting through scattered feedback. Make clear, structured hiring decisions in less time.

2. API Keys Integration via SAMpeople Recruit. For trusts looking to integrate recruitment data into their own platforms, we now support secure API access.

This means you can:

• Pull live vacancy data automatically into your website or reporting tools
• Maintain brand consistency by styling job listings to match your site
• Create a seamless candidate experience with real-time updates

This small but powerful update gives you greater flexibility and control over how and where you display vacancies.

• Collect baptism certificates, faith references, and other relevant documents
• Add custom guidance to reflect your school’s or trust’s recruitment process
• Invite candidates to share declarations of faith or provide a reference, where appropriate
• Recognise faith-based qualifications such as the Catholic Certificate in Religious Studies (CCRS)
• Include optional fields for candidates to indicate previous ordination, religious community involvement, or diocesan employment history

Summer Term highlight Easily manage staff movement across your trust

Multi-Establishment Employee makes it easier to manage employees from one single, shareable employee profile.

You can now:

• Transfer employees to new roles at different schools in your trust in a matter of clicks
• Identify and assign employees holding multiple contracts across different sites
• Track and manage staff on a single contract working across multiple schools

So you always have a complete view of employment history, no matter how many roles staff have held or establishments staff have worked across. You’ll have peace of mind that your Single Central Record (SCR) and School Workforce Census always reflect accurate, trust-wide information.

Some of what’s to come in the new school year

We’ve got some great updates landing this autumn across the SAMpeople suite — all designed to make it easier to connect your staff data, spot insights, and report with confidence.

Plus, SAMpeople Recruit is getting a brand new candidate section, making it easier to access a wider pool of high-quality applicants. All part of supporting you to attract, hire, and onboard the right people, faster.

Here’s to an exciting 2025-26 academic year together

These updates show our commitment to making sure you have the right tools and processes to manage and support your staff with clarity and confidence every day. We’re always improving and building.

To keep up-to-date with all our latest releases, visit the SAMpeople Hub.

Want to stay in the loop of all our new features and updates? Follow us on X and LinkedIn, where we post the link to our updates and releases.