Help us with workload review feedback

As part of the agreement finalised in August 2020 there was a commitment to conduct a review of workloads, to be carried out jointly with representatives of the UCU and Staff Forum, with a view to establishing a common understanding of concerns and potential solutions.

For staff in Grade 6 and above, UCU will be seeking an agreement with University of Reading on high level principles for balanced workloads, which would include a new approach to workload management, which would be implemented through local action plans.

In order to conduct this review, a joint working group has been established and met for the first time recently. The minutes of that meeting can be viewed here.

We hope to establish a common understanding of concerns in respect of workloads across all staff groups, and through discussion and negotiation identify ways in which practice and policy might change to better ensure balanced workloads, with a particular emphasis on staff well-being.

UCU colleagues will be consulting their members to establish the priorities for the staff they represent at Grade 6 and above, while the Staff Forum have organised discussion sessions to take feedback from participating colleagues.

We want to ensure that our discussions are as well-informed as possible. With that in mind we would like to invite you to provide your thoughts and suggestions to the joint group. We are interested to hear your views, based either on your own experience or your observations of colleagues around you, on the particular drivers that potentially inhibit balanced workloads. You might want to highlight specific policy or practice that could be improved (or stopped altogether); on the other hand you might wish to draw attention to examples of good practice that could be usefully applied across the University. If you want to make suggestions for change it would be helpful if you focus on suggestions that in your view are practicable and affordable.

If you want to comment please use this online form; the opportunity to provide feedback to the joint group is open until 19 April 2021.

We are likely to arrange focus groups in due course to discuss themes and recommendations arising from the feedback received; more information on this will follow in due course.

Our intention is to submit recommendations to the University Executive Board by the end of this academic year, and we will provide further updates as our discussions continue.