School of Health & Wellbeing

Thank you to academic staff who took the time to complete our recent workload survey.

Ninety staff responded (39% of those invited) and response rates were similar between male and female staff. The response rate was notably lower this year than last year (59%).

We looked at the average amount of time staff are spending on various work activities, split by gender and full-time/part-time status. Among full-time staff (73% of respondents), the data suggested that women and men are spending similar amounts of time on most activities including supervision, research/scholarship, clinical work, external/KE/PE work, Athena Swan and research theme activity. There were some indications that women are spending relatively less time on teaching and more time on management/administration, compared with men. Mentoring roles are being undertaken by 29% of women and 24% of men. The results were similar among part-time staff (27% of respondents), although here it appeared that women are spending less time than men on research/scholarship, and a lower proportion of women are mentors (9% of women and 25% of men).

It was concerning to see that among full-time staff, 84% of women and 80% of men reported that they often work more than their contracted hours, and this was also very common among part-time staff (57% of women and 75% of men). Of all staff who reported this, 77% of women and 70% of men agreed that they are bothered by this. Findings were similar for women last year, but this year the percentage of men who reported feeling bothered by over-working was notably higher (up from 42% last year).

Respondents provided detailed free-text comments about challenges and potential solutions for maintaining a manageable workload and work/life balance. Challenges included:

• working from home
• too many back-to-back meetings
• high student/staff ratio
• perceived pressure for ECRs to over-work in order to be kept on
• lack of protected time to write outputs and funding applications
• guilt that saying no might cause work to fall to other colleagues, and
• time spent on pastoral support for students and colleagues.

Suggested solutions included:

• hybrid working
• having a policy to limit number/length of meetings
• more staff to mirror the increase in student numbers
• better design of administrative systems
• greater ECR job security
• challenging the normalisation of over-working, and
• having clear guidance on how time should be divided across various work activities.

The operation of a formal workload model is not consistent across the university. The Athena Swan SAT and IHW management group have considered the potential benefits of adopting a formal model, and we are keen to hear the outcomes of current discussions at UofG senior management level about the feasibility of this.

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First published: 20 April 2022