Academic staff are working longer and harder every year, yet workloads keep growing without limit.
Effective hours-linked caps on academic workload
What we can win
An enforceable cap on academic workloads, with clearly defined hours allocations, so work can reasonably be completed within a maximum of 1,725 hours per year.
Why it is important
Academic staff are working longer and harder every year, yet workloads keep growing without limit. Surveys consistently show full-time academics averaging around 50 hours a week, and many work far more.
A workload “cap” only works if the time within it is realistically allocated. While overall caps are often adhered to, teaching loads can expand in ways that crowd out research and other duties, leaving staff to make up the difference in their own time.
This claim is about making workload limits real. If universities want high-quality teaching and research, they must ensure work can actually be done within reasonable hours. When we win enforceable workload limits, we don’t just protect ourselves, we protect our students and the future of public higher education.
We are not asking for less commitment, we are asking for fair, safe, and sustainable workloads
FAQs
Workloads are too complex to measure accurately.
Other universities already do this successfully. If workloads are too complex to estimate, they’re too complex to manage, and staff end up paying the price with their health.
Academic work isn’t a 9–5 job; flexibility is part of the role.
This claim doesn’t remove flexibility. It sets a reasonable upper limit so flexibility doesn’t become permanent overwork. Professional judgement still applies, but it must operate within safe, sustainable boundaries.
Protections against work intensification from organisational change
What we can win
Strong protections to ensure organisational change does not increase workloads, and that management clearly accounts for what happens to work when positions are changed or removed.
Why it is important
Every restructure promises efficiency, but staff know what usually happens next. Positions disappear, and the work doesn’t. It just lands on the desks of those left behind.
This claim is about fairness and transparency. If management wants to change structures, they must show what happens to the work and ensure it doesn’t increase workloads.
Real consultation means being honest about the impact on staff, not pushing change through and expecting people to cope.
Protecting workloads protects staff wellbeing and the quality of education students receive.
FAQs
Organisational change needs flexibility.
Flexibility should not come at the cost of staff health and safety. If management can’t explain where the work is going, that’s a problem.
It’s not possible to predict workloads accurately during organisational change.
If management can’t explain what happens to the work, then change isn’t properly planned. Transparency about workload impacts is a basic requirement of genuine consultation, not an optional extra.
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