This presentation starts from the recognition that at least some of academics’ time will be spent on mandatory activities that add no or little value to the academic project and that we will refer to as “time wasters”. Time wasters pose a challenge to workload allocation models since they are difficult to quantify with any degree of accuracy, but they have a very real impact on the available time and energy of academics. The problem with time wasters is that they are not aligned to anything of real exchange value, and they thus remain both unquantifiable and unverifiable. Unproductive, overly long meetings and related administrative tasks are common examples of activities that can be regarded as time wasters. Time wasters erode time and morale and, while line managers will not be able to identify and quantify them all, they do need to be recognised in workload allocation discussions. By creating space for academics to articulate the time wasters in their workloads, line managers will also have a useful diagnostic tool that can serve them as they work towards eliminating poor utilisation of resources. While it is not realistic to commit to cancelling every unproductive meeting, the fact that this expenditure of time is recognised and explicitly brought into the frame of workload discussion will be a significant move towards a more accurate understanding of the time any given academic will have available to be allocated to tasks. The presentation concludes with concrete suggestions for how line managers can attempt to control for time wasters by integrating them into productive key performance areas.

Author: Amile Mavundla

Published in: Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2024)

• Date of Conference: 2-4 April, 2024
• DOI: 10.20533/IICE.2024.0007
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-70-9
• Conference Location: Dún Laoghaire, Ireland