Thread by @kaytoremember, Before working in Higher Education I used to be in Resource and [...]

Before working in Higher Education I used to be in Resource and Planning for a large charity

Basically workload planning and modelling

So here is some basic information of things you should include in a workload model for it to work (1/?)
#UCUstrike #UCUstrikesback

1) First step how many hours are there that people are scheduled to work within the timeframe.

For annual this is simple, number of working days in a year x hours scheduled to work each day

Can get more complicated with flexible working but not that hard (2/?)

2) Factor in annual leave

If you have 250 working days in a year and 30 days holiday then 12% of time should be taken up as annual leave

Simple stuff, even University workload models factor this in
(3/?)

3) Factor in sickness

We live and work in the real world and people get sick (in fact over worked people get sick more often) you need to factor this into everyone’s workload because even if someone isn’t off sick that year they will need to cover for someone who is (4/?)

I don’t know what the sickness level is for universities but a reasonable guesstimate would be at least 6%

Factoring this into your model means when people get ill you have the leeway that other members of staff can pick up work.

Not factoring it in just hurts your staff (5/?)

Not factoring in sickness also means that people are overworked so are more likely to get ill.

Factoring in sickness will help bring down sickness rates

And this brings me onto my next point (6/?)

4) Other absences

What falls into other absences? Any other reason why people might be off work but you aren’t replacing them

Time off for dependents
Compassionate leave
Shared parental leave (don’t include if you’re getting external people in to cover them)
(7/?)

Jury duty
Time off to testify in court
Etc

All these things happen so they need to be factored into your planning even if it’s just a couple of percentage points

You can easily have 25% of workload for a department taken up with out of office nonproductive time (8/?)

5) Development/training time

How many hours of staff training and development are you factoring in? How many of these are compulsory training and how many are development?

Do you want your staff to learn about the newest e-learning options? Factor it into the model (9/?)

Do you need all of your staff to do their online health & safety and fire safety training? Factor it into the model

How many hours of staff development training do you want to give staff the options of? Factor it into the model

Offering mindfulness sessions? Model it! (10/?)

6) Actual workload

This shouldn’t be said but apparently it needs to. THE AMOUNT OF TIME IT TAKES TO DO A TASK SHOULD BE THE AMOUNT OF TIME IN THE WORKLOAD MODEL!

If you are feeding shit data into the model you will get shit results

(11/?)

It’s not hard to get that data, take marking for example

You get people to track how long it takes to mark using a simple form with a timer in it. Start timer when start marking a script, stop timer when you finish marking. Select the type of assessment and word limit - done

You then have a large data set, you take an average (whether you want to use a mean or median it’s up to you, prefer the mean personally as it factors in the extremes which actually happened)

Bang, add it to your workload model (13/?)

7) Never go over 100%

If someone’s workload is over 100% you are saying that the only way for them to do their job is to work more hours than they are contracted.

If someone chooses to do that, then that’s different, but if someone’s workload is >100% you are forcing them too

If the only way to do the job properly is by working above your contracted hours then that means your workplace hasn’t hired enough people to do the job

(15/?)

Also if everyone is at 100% you have no leeway.

2 people quit and you can’t immediately replace them, you push everyone over their limit.

If people are above 100% either they don’t do what’s in their workload to the best quality, things don’t get done or they have to work more

If they work more, they burn out quicker, which means sickness and turnover is higher, which means the University incurs more costs it could prevent

Proper workload planning saves money in the long term and improves student experience (17/?)

8) Finally make sure the process is transparent

Tell people how it works, what is factored in, what isn’t and why.

Continually update based on new data

Trust your staff (18/20)

Workloads are too high in Universities because the workload planning is wrong. Shit data goes in then shit results come out.

Please support @UCU staff on strike. If you’re not part of the union, join and join us on the picket line.

#UCUstrikesback #UCUstrike

I’ll be at University of Nottingham South Entrance most of this week with @UoNUCU if you want to join and talk workload

It can be better but Universities need to change, and accurate workload models will help everyone, staff, students and universities.

Since this is blowing up, just an additional point.

All of this is the bare basics, for workload modelling to be truly effective it needs to factor in so much more, but Universities are getting the basics so wrong I didn’t add those

Additional factors include:
when work comes in
staff turnover (new staff should not be assumed to work at the same speed as established staff)
breaks (7% personal time for making coffee and loo breaks, this is on top of the unpaid lunch break)
And many more

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