ID197 Reconsidering academic contract types

The Idea

The university introduced a change to the traditional academic contract type around 2019 to ensure that colleagues who specialised in education and pedagogy were able to achieve full recognition and academic progression akin to those who demonstrated success through markers of research esteem. This move came from a well-intentioned position and led to the introduction of two main contract types - 'Education and Research (E/R)'and 'Education and Scholarship (E/S)' and all lecturer colleagues were employed on one of these contracts (including Teaching Fellows asked whether they would like to translate to E/S contracts). 

However, in practice in many Schools, there are few colleagues who neatly fit one or other of these contract types and the majority of colleagues are engaged in some levels of education, research and scholarship. There are also some differences in the ways in which scholarship definitions are operationalised across the institution, as well as varying workloads between faculties for scholarship research. We still see clear variances in colleagues' productivity whilst on the same contracts. In addition, the E/R and E/S split does not account for colleagues who are producing practice-based research (e.g. the HCPC practitioner psychologists, amongst others) that do not neatly fit into some UoA categories and thus are commonly put on E/S contracts whilst engaging in some research activity. Finally, all contracts have 'education' in the title, however the splitting into 'research' or 'scholarship', as well as via workload allocations, may be interpreted by some that education is not as clear a priority as it should be for someone holding the title of 'Lecturer'. 

One potential reason that the splitting of contract type was explained around REF Code of Practice and deciding who had significant responsibility for research. I would argue that this can be handled in alternative ways, for example, by staggering research allowance based on individual researcher's (or scholarship) productivity. Similar approaches are used elsewhere where workloads are operationalised based on productivity and outputs.  I appreciate that due to the upcoming REF, a change in contract type would not be an immediate action until out of this REF cycle. Such a scheme could take into account a colleague’s performance over a sustained period (e.g. in line with our 3-5 year research or scholarship plans) as well as account for colleagues whose primary work focus may change at different career points. 

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

Whilst based on good intentions, the change in contract type has not been altogether successful and would benefit from a reconsideration. Differences in productivity (whether in terms of research or scholarly outputs, teaching evaluations or impact of leadership/administration) across all contract types remain as well as different contract types leading to dissatisfaction in colleagues and tensions between the two job families in some places. In the spirit of us being "One University" with a shared collective goal, reconsidering contract types would be beneficial to the working culture and also work to increasing productivity across all aspects of the academic role where the expectation on all colleagues is excellence. 

How We Would Implement This Idea

My suggestion would be to reconsider academic contract types and ideally  move to a more generic academic contract (noting REF CoP point above) and practice 'strengths-based' workloads, i.e. those with strong outputs and esteem (whether 'research', 'practice' or 'scholarship') to be given additional time, or those with or those with proven leadership to be allocated leadership responsibilities, etc. By having a generic contract type, colleagues would be less likely to be ‘pigeonholed’ as they currently are into either research or scholarship, instead noting that the academic mission for all academic colleagues contains some element of research informed scholarship.  

If the move to generic contracts but with a clear strengths-based focus was not appropriate at the current time, and if workload models remain structured around different time allocations for scholarship and research, I would suggest the introduction of a temporary additional contract type/workload allocations to ensure that practice-based colleagues were included and rewarded for the impactful practice based work and outputs that they are undertaking/producing. Such a contract would be appropriate for a variety of schools including Psychology and many in Faculty of Medicine and Health, as well as potentially others. This would ensure that all of these colleagues felt supported and would recognise that our academic workforce does not split cleanly down the lines of 'scholarship' or 'research'. Indeed scholarship is arguably a part of all educational and research practice and is part of the fabric of an educational institution.   

Finally, we need to ensure that annual performance reviews and promotions take into consideration the full breadth of the academic role ensuring that colleagues are rewarded across all of their contributions including their collegiality and academic citizenship, demonstrable through their impacts on their School, Faculty and wider institutional levels. 

What Success Would Look Like

Colleagues contributing, taking ownership and accountability across all aspects of the academic role whilst working to their strengths. 

Improved culture and work satisfaction amongst colleagues, demonstrable through Pulse Surveys etc. with no one group of colleagues feeling either second class or superior to others. 

Improved performance across research and education, shown through markers such as REF, NSS, PTES, etc. as colleagues work to their relative strengths.