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Post by Admin on Dec 9, 2016 9:50:58 GMT
The staff survey has shown that 50% of you feel stressed at work and 74% of the stress is due to work demands, i.e. workload. As the survey did not allow us to put qualitative comments, we would like to know your concerns about workload. For example, do you feel that material preparations are not adequately covered by the workload tariffs? Or do you feel that electronic marking is making your real workload much higher than what is reflected in your workload document? Whatever it is we want to hear it! Please be considerate and polite in your contributions. This thread is moderated and any offensive posts will be removed.
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Post by Anonymous on Dec 9, 2016 14:02:30 GMT
A general comment is that, in the past, the work load model aimed to have a maximum of 1200-1300 total hours which gave some ‘slack’ so that tasks which were not taken into account in the model were able to be carried out.
With the current practice of targeting maximum annual hours of 1584 this does not allow ‘slack’ for additional tasks and the management of these to be carried out. Therefore, because of this, all tasks (especially ones identified in the agreed university Academic Work Load Planning Scheme APWS) should be taken into account in the work load model.
The tasks identified in the agreed university Academic Work Load Planning Scheme APWS which are not currently allocated in our subject staff work load model are,
Moderation (I’ve spent a days on this during the past academic year)
Peer Support/Assessment
Second Marking
Non Scheduled Guidance Tutoring
There doesn’t seem to be an allowance to take into account the new University policy related to Personal Tutoring
There is also no preparation time given to dissertation or project tutoring in our work load model
This has been raised on numerous occasions with management but they still continue to not recognise the agreed work load planning scheme
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Post by Anonymous on Dec 9, 2016 14:33:51 GMT
The workload is out of date and designed in times where digital support was less important. It does not take account of post-lecture follow up and this is now required but not accounted for in workload.
1. adding post-lecture material and follow up material on blackboard
2.using panopto and editing it for students; using other support like blogs to generate debate
No time is allocated for things like peer-reviewing (AHRC or book/article) - these are wanted by the insitution but not recognized - all done in staff's own time
This year no allocation was made for preparing new lecture material and should have been.
No time is allocated for being a midpoint or PhD Viva panel member as internal examiner and should be.
Also in 2016 many people had to run old modules and new together requiring 2 blackboard sites and double module reviews etc. This had only one allocation in the workload which shows a misunderstanding of the amount of work required.
The cut in dissertation supervision which previously had TDRA allocated to it has been deterimental to student experience and put significant pressure on staff to offer tutorials without proper time to prepare for them.
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Post by Downtrodden on Dec 9, 2016 15:57:24 GMT
The workload planning system does not allow nearly enough time for proper preparation of teaching and assessment. Preparing teaching material and assessments and marking always take me many times the allocated hours. Add to this all the extra admin stuff we have to do as a result of successive admin restructures. The next one also promises to add to the workload as students no longer have an admin person to talk to about their circumstances, so they will inevitably turn to their friendly local tutor. I now spend a very significant proportion of my time filling in forms and submitting forms for no apparent gain. The simple act of ordering printed handouts for my students on the new Xerox system that does not include any way of indicating when the work is required by and now has to be authorised by some hapless individual in the department management. Our own reprographics department NEVER let me down over many, many years, but I have yet to successfully order printing without some form of problem and have it arrive in time for the activity it is intended for. The main area of job satisfaction for me is teaching students and watching them learn and develop. This is now being seriously eroded by the fact that I am unable to do the job to the best of my ability - this is because the University, which claims to value the "student experience" keeps throwing barriers into my path. I have worked here for nearly 20 years and I have never been so miserable in my life!  |
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Post by anonymous on Dec 9, 2016 16:39:00 GMT
There seems to be inadequate mechanisms to challenge or change excessive workloads. I signed off a workload with over 900 hours allocated... which sounds great until you realise that this is as a 0.5 member of staff. I raised it with my line managers, but no action was taken.
I was regularly advised to take TOIL for extra hours worked , however I was owed so much TOIL by the end of the year, I couldn't take all other leave. In addition, as a 0.5 member of staff I work elsewhere and I found the presumption that I could do extra work when required , taking me over my contacted hours in any given week, stressful and unreasonable.
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Post by Anon on Dec 9, 2016 16:59:26 GMT
The workload does not allow time for staff to prepare new material, especially new staff, or to carry out suitable risk assessments on practice-based projects, or run student groups, or placements, or provide adequate formative feedback. Teaching is one area of the workload that quickly busts its allocations and makes life very hard. Managing a proper eLP site takes time, as does Panopto lecture capture and uploading, and this is not reflected in workloads. In addition there is no specific allocation for line management duties, only a reduced allocation for new dept management portfolios which makes it challenging to be a supportive line manager without compromising your other duties. Please do turn your attention to the workload because it is the single key factor that would reduce stress and make life more realistic across the board. We are all told we cannot have any VL support unless everyone is loaded up to the workload maximum and that is not a tenable position. Also, TDRA has been quietly removed from some tutorial type teaching activities and it is unacceptable to assume that this kind of teaching requires no preparation or follow up. In our subject area we have several staff loaded well ABOVE the workload maximum and this is also unacceptable.
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Post by nona on Dec 9, 2016 19:02:28 GMT
One of the problems with the workload is not only that it fails to fully account for the time that particular tasks take (ie marking) it does not take account of the manner in which academic staff are now doing ever more administrative work via our appallingly inefficient electronic systems. Apart from the imperative to move to electronic marking we now distribute information,monitor attendance,communicate with students and colleagues all via online systems,which we spend much time setting up,maintaining,checking and updating.ten or more years ago this was done by skilled administrative staff who have now been distilled, overstretched and made redundant in the name of corporate "efficiency". In real terms our workload has doubled in the absence of support staff who provided an effective and humane service for staff and students.
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Post by Thorbart on Dec 12, 2016 8:15:01 GMT
Duh. Where do I start. I have always had one of the highest workloads in the faculty (FADSS). Although the model itself was agreed between employer and UCU, I have always thought that what ends up on the spreadsheet bears no resemblance to reality. So, I chose to ignore it and carry on best I could. When I raised my high workload at appraisals, my line managers appeared to by sympathetic, and it all went on record, but nothing changed. More muddling through, for years. Then more change, more work, changing goalposts meant that all of a sudden I have even more work to do, and I had... drum roll... "HEADROOM" on my workload. I came close to getting off with stress. But it wasn't stress, it was too much work. The workload model is a cruel instrument for management. It is utterly delusional in its premise, it is completely incapable of reflecting what academics do, if they do their job well, and it cannot deal with any day-to-day change (i.e. students and their individual problems).
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Post by Gabriel on Dec 12, 2016 9:34:43 GMT
Workload tariffs are in my view a fiction, I don't work less than 12 hours a day, and at least six hours on Saturdays, on tasks connected with teaching, research and administration (including replying to emails and completing an ever growing amount of pointless templates). Why am I so work-obsessed? Because I'm a middle-aged man who's also an early-career researcher, which means I have to advance my research and publication record if I'm ever to make it past a uni ran by short-sighted bean counters
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Post by Anon_Academic on Dec 12, 2016 9:39:44 GMT
Preparing teaching materials is not sufficiently accounted for in the workload model, especially when teaching a particular module for the first time. Revising or constructing materials takes much longer than the allocated hours.
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Post by Anon on Dec 12, 2016 9:50:09 GMT
As it is nearing Christmas I'll make this the Twelve Issues with Workload!
1. Programme leader allocation is desirable. Hours allocated based on boundaries of 50 students; a PL with 201 students is allocated the same as one with 249; 200 hours (manager was unreasonable - "those are the hours...") It was fairer the old way when you were allocated a certain amount of time per student (similar for year tutor). Does not account for international partnerships, amount of PT students etc. Student support is going central - who will bear the brunt...PL's!
2. Does not nearly reflect the amount of time it takes to prepare suitable seminar / lecture material. Some subjects require constant updating, others less so.
3. Workload should clearly display the % contribution to UG/PG programmes. Staff with a 300hr research chunk look comparable to others but their contribution is actually less.
4. The workload does not reflect the amount of hours worked at particular times of the year. 80% of your workload in semester one is far from balanced.
5. Every manager appears to use a different spreadsheet to calculate it! (And it is usually wrong!)
6. Some managers appear to more sympathetic in the allocation of hours than others (open days, dissertation meetings etc.)
7. Can somebody please explain what is actually covered in the "administrative time"?
8. No time for second marking / moderation / standardisation (if it is done properly!)
9. How many staff fully understand the workload allocations? TDRA / FST... to new staff this is confusing, to existing staff it is confusing! How can we effectively challenge our hours if the basis on which they are calculated is not clear? (Probably why it has not been resolved by management). We could do with a lecture on how to understand it better and challenge our hours!
10. I have no opportunity to take the RSA time, it is used up with others duties.
11. PFNA: We were told that "we do not get hours for PFNA development", can somebody please explain to me where this time went? In addition, are staff allocated a suitable time to write these new modules?
12. The last point. I hear more often from colleagues that "if that is the time I am given then that is the time I will spend". Which provides an insight into how many of us feel presently about the job whilst admitting that we often take the time needed to do things correctly, even if it is not fully acknowledged. Ultimately, so the students do not suffer. The workload will never be perfect, can it at least be reasonable?
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Sorry,derisible not desirable!
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Post by Sorry,derisible not desirable! on Dec 12, 2016 9:54:18 GMT
As it is nearing Christmas I'll make this the Twelve Issues with Workload! 1. Programme leader allocation is desirable. Hours allocated based on boundaries of 50 students; a PL with 201 students is allocated the same as one with 249; 200 hours (manager was unreasonable - "those are the hours...") It was fairer the old way when you were allocated a certain amount of time per student (similar for year tutor). Does not account for international partnerships, amount of PT students etc. Student support is going central - who will bear the brunt...PL's! 2. Does not nearly reflect the amount of time it takes to prepare suitable seminar / lecture material. Some subjects require constant updating, others less so. 3. Workload should clearly display the % contribution to UG/PG programmes. Staff with a 300hr research chunk look comparable to others but their contribution is actually less. 4. The workload does not reflect the amount of hours worked at particular times of the year. 80% of your workload in semester one is far from balanced. 5. Every manager appears to use a different spreadsheet to calculate it! (And it is usually wrong!) 6. Some managers appear to more sympathetic in the allocation of hours than others (open days, dissertation meetings etc.) 7. Can somebody please explain what is actually covered in the "administrative time"? 8. No time for second marking / moderation / standardisation (if it is done properly!) 9. How many staff fully understand the workload allocations? TDRA / FST... to new staff this is confusing, to existing staff it is confusing! How can we effectively challenge our hours if the basis on which they are calculated is not clear? (Probably why it has not been resolved by management). We could do with a lecture on how to understand it better and challenge our hours! 10. I have no opportunity to take the RSA time, it is used up with others duties. 11. PFNA: We were told that "we do not get hours for PFNA development", can somebody please explain to me where this time went? In addition, are staff allocated a suitable time to write these new modules? 12. The last point. I hear more often from colleagues that "if that is the time I am given then that is the time I will spend". Which provides an insight into how many of us feel presently about the job whilst admitting that we often take the time needed to do things correctly, even if it is not fully acknowledged. Ultimately, so the students do not suffer. The workload will never be perfect, can it at least be reasonable? |
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Post by An academic on Dec 12, 2016 10:12:13 GMT
In brief, my feedback is that virtually none of the sections in the workload model accurately reflect the time taken up by particular tasks, and that too many time-consuming tasks are lumped together in general categories such as 'administrative time', especially given the stripping back of basic administrative support (room bookings, travel booking, collation of information on assessment and teaching, etc.) to the bare bones. The fact that everyone is given the same allowance for these general categories rewards those who do the minimum amount, and penalises those who are willing to volunteer for things that need to be done. The discrepancy between time allowed and time actually used is particularly acute for teaching tasks (where preparation is never factored in), personal guidance, and roles such as Programme Leadership. We live in a time where students' emotional and mental health needs are increasingly problematic, and a single student can easily take up the time allocated for all one's guidance students over a given semester, even where we do refer to student services asap (who currently have a six-week waiting period for 'non-urgent' cases). The hours allocated to PLs are often used up simply by attending required meetings and running induction week events. It's not acceptable that allocation deviates so far from reality, and this causes needless stress through overburdening academic staff in a systematic and entirely avoidable manner.
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Post by An academic on Dec 12, 2016 12:04:35 GMT
Workload is unreasonable given the poor wages. Timetables ignore the requirements we put on the module requirements form and our own personal preferences and regularly include 9am starts combined with 6pm finishes and sometimes all 9am starts. When I was a student (not here) lectures did not start till 9.30 am; that is how it should be given the travel chaos prior to 9am. Management are trying it on, basically. Extra teaching load, no say in when we teach, little choice of rooms or buildings, rubbish technology and on-line systems etc. My teaching load has always been one of the highest in FADSS and there is no easy, sensible way to compare across the university. This year it is higher than ever despite full research allowance. We are increasingly being told what we have to teach rather than us offering to teach things. I was never told about any of these changes and certainly not asked for my opinion. Is any of this done with UCU agreement? If it is done without any agreement then UCU need to do something about it. Maybe all academics should join UCU and see if it makes a difference in terms of confronting and overturning this oppressive management approach. If not, then we should all leave the UCU (and the university). What do they think the attraction is of working here now? There isn't any.
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Post by Academic on Dec 12, 2016 16:17:06 GMT
In our subject area, we have no idea of what our workload is, but we are still expected to sign off Xnumber of hours worked in the previous year. The only time we hear about our workloads is when there is plenty of the infamous "headroom" to be filled by whatever needs to be taught next semester. No wonder we are stressed out.
All I know is that I work in excess of 45 hours every week, spend long hours at the weekend or during RSE and AL on TDRA. 1 hour TDRA per contact hour? Farcical.
PFNA admin not workloaded? It means that in 2016 I worked 60 hours on PFNA for free.
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