AWM/AWF Developments

There’s a lot of work underway to facilitate greater alignment of our practices with the core principles and conventions of the Academic Workload Framework. I’ve spoken in the past about the importance of the core AWF principles of Fairness, Equity, Transparency and Accuracy, and I have been striving for some time to see those principles applied, not only across the individual schools and faculties, but for all staff across UNE. This particularly involves working with the DVC and the Executive Deans of the other faculties, and, via our Faculty Operations Manager, with the FOMs of those other faculties. Our next goal is to establish standard operating procedures that will set some clearer expectations and guide discussions around some of the less clear and less consistent aspects of the model and framework.

Connected with this, I recently communicated on our need to use the 2025 approved workload allocation data to inform our 2026 workload plans. I’ve also reported that we will likely have at least two new positions to establish in HASSE under the ‘decasualisation’ provisions of the EA. With that in mind, could I please use this opportunity to again encourage everyone to take steps to work towards making the adjustments needed to get to a point where they feel they can approve workload allocations. I again emphasise that your approval of a workload allocation does not lock you into that work, but recognises that you agree that the plan is satisfactory at that point in time, which, as established by the AWM, will be reviewed and adjusted in the near future.

Better, Faster, Strong

I’ve previously spoken about the Better, Faster, Stronger portal, which you can access (with a staff login) via this link. 

While I’ve encouraged staff to utilise the portal to pitch bold ideas for the near future, we’ve also been instructed to utilise the portal to capture ideas that have been, or are the process of being, implemented. The idea here is that we can use the activities logged to capture the broad range of achievements across the university, share those achievements, and enable/empower us to learn from those initiatives. I have put my hand up to serve as the ‘champion’ for the ‘better’ initiatives, and those of you who have logged initiatives with a ‘better’ advancement may have noticed the actions I’ve taken to connect you with stakeholders with a view to implementing or ‘completing’ the stated goal [or if you haven’t noticed, let me assure you work is happening behind the scenes]. With that in mind, may I please encourage you to shift your use of the portal to log the broad range of initiatives/activities/achievements in the recent past or present, that helps foster a ‘better, faster, stronger’ UNE. When allocating ‘points’ to your task, it may help to think of the three categories as:

Better: Ideas that help us be ‘better’, by introducing system, tasks, programs, events, activities that help us to do jobs, such as facilitating a process to engage with high school students at an earlier stage to build relationships [better work practices]

Faster: Ideas that help us be ‘faster’, by saving time in our processes, such as digitising forms to save on printing, signing, and processing time [hours saved]

Stronger: Ideas that help be ‘stronger’, by improving our physical and mental health and well-being, such as introducing a happy hour at the bistro to bring people together [stronger culture]

Don’t worry if there’s uncertainty about ‘where’ tasks sit, it’s common for the activities submitted to sit across two or even all three areas. That said, please jump on the portal, have a look at the ideas/activities submitted, engage with the discussions, vote on the activities you like, and consider submitting your own!