The effectiveness of academic workload models in an institution: a staff perspective

The demands on academic staff are increasing to the point where effective mechanisms for the allocation of their work are now necessary. Despite the inherent difficulties of categorising academic work, nearly all enterprise agreements at Australian universities include a clause designed to avoid work overload. Through a questionnaire, the investigators sought feedback from academic staff about their perceptions of the operational effectiveness of the workload allocation models and their opinions concerning transparency, fairness and ability to regulate workloads. The conclusion reached is that an effective workload allocation process requires academic staff to be fully involved in its development and implementation to ensure its credibility and fairness. Effectiveness is increased with a standardised university-wide approach, applied transparently and incorporated into the budget and resource allocation processes of the university so that increasing pressure on academics to meet a range of performance expectations is linked directly to realistic workloads.