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Managing Academic Workloads: The connection with equality issues

Managing Academic Workloads: The connection with equality issues. Levi Pay Interim Policy Director, ECU. Structure. Some equality-related benefits associated with the management of academic workloads (MAW) Some equality-related risks

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Managing Academic Workloads: The connection with equality issues

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  1. Managing Academic Workloads: The connection with equality issues Levi Pay Interim Policy Director, ECU

  2. Structure • Some equality-related benefits associated with the management of academic workloads (MAW) • Some equality-related risks • The impact of MAW on student welfare / student diversity issues • Reflections on taking these issues forward within HEIs and the sector

  3. Equality-related benefits A transparent, effective and credible approach to MAW will often: • reduce the scope for workloads to be skewed by subjective judgments or prejudiced assumptions • enable schools/HEIs to unpick or question stereotyped assumptions (or, indeed, explain differential outcomes) • assist with planning – for example, for maternity leave cover, a disability-related reduction in hours, etc. • be very positive for part-time staff – helping to avoid a drift into “trying to squeeze a full-time job into part-time hours”

  4. Equality-related risks • We shouldn’t forget that not all work is easily pro-rata’d (e.g. course admin, team meetings, etc.), and that, therefore, the process of MAW for part-time staff must be realistic • Leaving research activity out of MAW may leave a ‘long hours culture’ untouched • An MAW initiative which does not have genuine ‘buy-in’ from staff, or is not underpinned by effective line-management, may actually exacerbate tensions or inequalities

  5. Equalities impact on student welfare • A picture that is emerging is that women in academic roles might be more likely to volunteer for, or be given, pastoral support roles (Barrett and Barrett, 2008) • Even with an equal take-up rate of such roles, women may be spending more time on pastoral support (Probert, 2005) • We often underestimate the resources needed for specific student support roles (e.g. disabled student support co-ordination). Effective MAW can help us to take the concept of “workload remission” seriously.

  6. Taking these issues forward Within HEIs: • consider involving your Equality & Diversity Team in any institution-wide MAW project • encourage schools to understand the composition of their workforce before implementing a new approach to MAW • open up staff discussions on MAW from specific equality perspectives (e.g. with part-time staff, early career researchers, staff with caring responsibilities, etc.)

  7. Taking these issues forward Within the sector, this report will help ECU to: • look out for cross-cutting issues that emerge in other areas (e.g. the RAE submission process, promotion procedures, workload issues caused by student requests for flexibility on grounds of religion or disability, etc.) • consider the scope for delivering or supporting further projects to look at the equality impact of different approaches to workload management

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