Workloads - Professional staff

There are two poles on the work spectrum for Professional Staff: Task-oriented work and reflective (knowledge) work. Most jobs have elements of both, but fall closer to one than the other. A predominantly task-oriented job might be driving a bus. A predominantly reflective job might be "marketing officer." You get the idea.

For task-oriented work a recurring difficulty is establishing the baseline from which to judge whether the expectations are realistic. Regular questions are about:

• Premises (e.g. Have the assumptions about how long things take, including preparation and finalisation been tested? Have the safety and ergonomic issues been appropriately considered?)
• All the aspects of the job (e.g. Are there regular disruptions?)
• Resources (are the tools sufficient, available and appropriate to the tasks?)
  

Because reflective work is usually difficult to quantify, it's similarly difficult to defend against unrealistic expectations. Potential disagreements include:

• The often elusive, common understandings of the work to be done.
• The use of gross and unhelpful measures: Pages/reports written, number of consultations, etc.
• The expected standard of the work.
  

These only scratch the surface. If your workload is out of kilter, you need assistance. Call the union.

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Workload formulae

There's no such thing as a comprehensive guide to academic workloads.

There are non-comprehensive guides. There are models. There are principles. But, here it is again, there is no such thing as a comprehensive guide.

So, if there isn't a crank to turn that will automatically deliver reasonable, and equitable workloads, what can you have? You should expect all of the following:

• Transparency — You can't make informed judgements about how workloads stack up unless you know what's happening to everybody.
• Equity — Equity is important, but only if it doesn't allow universal (albeit equitable) suffering.
• Enforceable maximums — Where these are meant to ensure against worst cases, they must not become de facto standards.
• Timeliness — If the process is left too late, the opportunities for changes slip away.

Most union agreements provide workload guidance and many have better provisions than just the principles above. You should know those provisions inside-out.

If you have special circumstances not anticipated or not appropriately addressed in your faculty's Utopian vision, then it's up to you to make those matters known early in the process, preferably in writing (email will do). It's much easier to raise such circumstances as issues before the fact, than as complaints after. (See my post about horse trading.)

And, please, spare a thought for the timetabler, it's the worst job around.

Then, if it's still not working contact your Union.

The educational policies of the last decade
have done for [Australian] universities
what Las Vegas did for weddings.
—Yllib Ybnad (b. 1948)