analysis of staff workload

1.4 Objectives

• To create a database of the known activities / model and analyse the loadings
• To enable the model to be defined and adjust to specific need  
• Renders draft output for the university Time Allocation System
• To provide reporting tools for team leaders/managers
• If appropriate, interface with university timetabling software to calculate specific inputs
• To permit distinct types of users / security  
• Allows team leader reporting / input
• Grants individual staff data entry  
• To investigate and evaluate existing approaches to workload management
• To design and develop a database of the workload tools to ensure equitable allocation of duties for individual members of staff
• To provide reporting tools to analyse the data
• To ensure the system is secure
• To evaluate the system for ease of use

1.5 Determining Workloads

The workloads are determined by the heads of department and they look after to establish a balanced role of activities that include research, scholarship and teaching for every faculty over the year (2)

At RGU some schools adopt an annual maximum of workload hours; approximately to 1500 hours per year while others adopt different from 1500 hours. This allocation varies for every school at the university

 

Some universities manage this by using a maximum number of class hours by any staff can teach in a year is 550. Teaching hours for the staff may vary according to their respective disciplines and traditions, sometimes the teaching hours may exceed 550 hours in a year but keeping them within the maximum limit is reasonable for the staff to take part in the further higher education (HE) activities

 

At Liverpool University the maximum class hours per week for any individual faculty is 18 (3).  A faculty teaching at this level and completing the works assigned in their specific area of expertise cannot be expected to undertake any more duties for a sustained period of time.

1.6 Principles

These principles are derived after the analysis on workload management from various universities across UK that includes the Robert Gordon University, University of Liverpool etc.

• All workload models should be transparent. However at times a staged approach to the transparency will be required as per the circumstances
• Workload planning must include all the academic staff including part-time and full-time teaching staffs
• HoS will use the weightings for each activity as guides to balance workloads across member of staff, ensuring a fair distribution of activity
• Workload models should have as a central aim the principle of equity between staff.  This principle of equity should include not only basic hours (or equivalent units) but should extend to types of work (e.g. to ensure that part-time staff develop suitable experience to build cases for promotion and progression)
• The objective of the faculty must be equitable so that the staffs are not treated with any bias
• Consider the complexity of work and the level of experience of the staff

1.7 Workload Plan

Figure 1: Schematic representation of a workload planning

Source:

The above given schematic representation illustrates the work flow of the system and the plan of workload at each and every step.

1.8 Advantages of Workload Management

There are numerous advantages while planning a workload model in systematic procedures. Some of these advantages are like.

• Saving the management time
• Equivalent workload distribution among the faculties
• Calculates annual total hours and makes them to be displayed in a customised view as per the requirements.
• A proper planning can also help in avoiding the excess workload pressure to any particular faculty so that they do not get stressed at the workplace.

1.9 Primary tasks to be performed

• The requirements analysis which includes the abstract of faculty management perception of academic workload
• Analysis of workload regulations and policies
• Assigning task to every individual faculty
• Compensate faculty for the workload
• Authenticated access to individual faculty

Chapter 2

2 Review and Evaluation of current approaches

The evaluations based on the workload management is derived from various universities across UK states that the higher education comprises mainly non-profit institutions financed through HEFCE-Higher education funding council for England. Universities are under pressure to establish business related atmosphere (1). Over the last decade the pressure in higher education has climbed up tremendously this reflects the growth in number of students, severe regulatory demands and explicit comptition (2).

Professor Peter Barrett of Salford University states that the survey carried in the UK union shows 69% of the staff found their work as a stressful while 42% taking their works in the evening and at weekends (4). This raises concerns about work-life balance

2.1 Academic decision support system

One such important part of the evaluation is the DSS; Decision support system. The DSS is a computer based methodology for supporting decision making (5). There are various DSS types, they are data-driven type, document based DSS, and spreadsheet based DSS etc. DSS includes knowledge based systems. A proper design of a DSS system is interactive software based system that is capable of helping the decision makers to execute required information from a cluster of raw data. This is quite helpful in problem solving and improved use of system with a proper interaction

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2.2 Academic Workload components

Source: http://inderscience.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?

Figure 2: Academic Workload Components

A sample workload component with a proper DSS; decision support system

2.3 Review of current approaches at Robert Gordon University

At Robert Gordon University different schools use the workload model as per their requirements. Across the university there is a huge variation in the nature, the measures and the way these modes are implemented

Strategic Planning Resource Group; SPARG agreed that the university should develop a consistent and robust workload allocation policy and model that should be output focussed model being the model of choice.

SPARG focuses

• To achieve what we need for the future – increased effectiveness, flexibility and achievement of goals
• To be easier, better and more meaningful than existing models
• To provide a fair system for allocating and balancing staff workloads
• Make an individual workloads transparent

2.4 Approaches at the School of Computing:

The school now operates a model that uses units based on a percentage model, i.e. a target of 100. Effectively converting the scheme by multiplying by 15 for a target of 1500 was a previous practice of school of computing.

The workload allocation model is categorized in to three different types; they are Research, commercialisation and scholarship

2.5 Tariffs

The workload system is based on the allocation of tariffs. The tariffs are expressed in hours for any roles and tasks. The reason for this is to standardise the time allotted to any specified staff, although any of the module co-ordinator may choose to devote more hours per week to the task than another in the same role, the tariff remains constant

At the school of computing a standard module has 40 students for 4 hours multiplied by 12 weeks, similarly an example for 50 students for 2.5 hours of contact time with an added 25 hours for module co-ordinator is calculated as 50 x 2.5 + 25=150 which is equivalent to 10% or 10 units that is multiplied by 15 to convert from units to hours  

Source: The Robert Gordon University

Table 1: Workload allocations (School of computing: RGU)

Similarly the school of pharmacy states the standard allocation of workload for all staffs for student interviews is 20 hours, 40 hours for meetings and 135 hours for personal scholar activity.

Chapter 3

3 The Proposed System

The proposed system at the Robert Gordon University will be output focussed model and it will provide all the essential options to be used while allocating the staff workload process. The proposed system is promised to render its fullest support towards academic workload allocation. This is a multi-user system managed by the administrator; the staffs of this system will have an authenticated login and they can view their fellow faculty’s situation.

• The system is a robust in assigning the workloads
• The proposed workload system is capable of measuring individual staff performance
• Balance workload effort for any member of faculty in each semester. This is done without any bias towards the faculty and the system must have complete knowledge about the faculty and their area of expertise prior to workload allocation
• Store and update information about modules for teaching
• The workload is assigned to the objectives agreed in the EPR (Employee Performance review)
• Will divide the workload evenly across faculty member
• Authenticated login for every individual staff member. No access to the unauthorized persons.
• The system should be able to find alternative to allocate the work in the absence of any other employee. This helps in finding any alternative manually
•  The system will be able to generate a unique password for the users if the user has forgotten his / her password
• Only administrator will be able to access or edit all the information in the system
• Since the administrator manages the entire system, editing or shuffling the data will be limited to rest of the faculty members
• General faculty members will be able to view their fellow faculty’s profile and workload allocations but certain limitation will be provided in viewing their leader or administrator’s data.
• Collection of additional information from the faculty members

3.1 Balancing Workloads

Balancing workload allocation in each semester is the vital concentration of area in the proposed architecture of the system. This specific task lacks accuracy in the existing system. The workload allocated in each semester for every faculty must be proportional in units or hours as per the requirements of the school. Each school has their own criteria’s and the workloads are manipulated according to the requirements.

A bar chart explains the balanced workload allocation in three semsters with four different staffs working on each semester. The total workload may vary comparitively at each semster but the work allocated for every staff is proportion to that paricular semester

Figure 3:  Workload Balance

The bar chart given above illustrates the workload allocation in three semesters and the work assigned to each of the four staffs. The chart depicts the workloads at each semester is distinct but the average workload at each semester is proportion to each and every staff.  The graph reads the amount of workload for every staff in every semester; the workloads are higher in the first and third semester while the second to be the lowest for every staff but the allocated workload for an individual faculty is in same proportion in each semester. The balancing workload is not about assigning the same amount of task in ever semester but it is all about the assigning the same amount of task for every individual staff in every individual semester.

3.2 Use case for the workload allocation

The use case diagrams illustrate the main functionality of the working system. The UML model of the use case diagram is chosen for this system. These diagrams are drawn with different relationships that suits the system to be enabled in a successful manner

Two use case diagrams are used here to clarify the functionality of the staff and the administrator. The role of each actor has distinct behaviour that is depicted individually to have a proper clarity over the working system of staff workload allocation.

3.2.1 Use Case of Staff

Figure 4: UML Use Case for Role of Staff

3.2.2 Use Case of Administrator

Figure 5: UML Use Case for Role of Administrator

Chapter 4

4 Tools and methods to be applied

There are various tools and methods to be applied in the project for the distinct use of the system and to make it robust in nature. The tools include

• Javascript
• PHP
• MySql

Encryption Tool

Since administrators and the other users required having an authenticated login a technology used to encrypt the system is implemented

Technology: Message Digest 5 algorithm (MD5)

4.1 Javascript:

Javascript is a scripting language used for the client-side programming; it is supported by almost all the browsers. Since javascript is embedded to the html pages no high level skills of coding is required. Javascript is a run time environment scripting language and it behaves interactive with the user environment. Coding in Javascript is simplified since the script is embedded in to HTML

Reasons for using Javascript

• Javascript is used at the client-side programming level
• Javascript is designed to add interactive to the web pages
• Javascript is typically based on the run time environment; this makes the language to be more flexible and easy to interact with the outside world
• Javascript is embedded directly in to HTML pages
• Prototypes are used in Java instead of classes for inheritance
• Javascript passes arguments for the function
• An uncertain number of parameters can be moved on to a function
• Javascript can add dynamic text into HTML pages
• It can provide a better security
• Cookies; Javascript can create cookies that is capable to store and retrieve information from the user’s computer
• It supports all the modern browsers

4.2 PHP:

PHP is a server side scripting language which basically works on servlet container. There are choices of servlet containers from Apache Tomcat to Microsoft’s WAMP. PHP can be run on any one of these servlet container

Reasons for using PHP

• PHP is an acronym of Hyper-text processor
• PHP is a server-side scripting language
• These scripts are executed on the server
• PHP is inserted directly into HTML. This makes the user to use the code in a simplified manner
• To interface with distinct libraries like encryption, XML, graphics; PHP uses a modular system
• PHP supports almost all the databases present till date (MySQL, MS SQL, Informix, Oracle and several more)
• It has a powerful output buffering this includes the output flow
• PHP is object-oriented

4.3 MySQL

MySQL is used as a back-end for the PHP. MySQL is a very common database and it can be very well interfaced with the PHP.

Reasons for using MySQL

• MySQL is a Relational Database Management System; RDBMS
• MySQL handles a large subset of the functionality of the most expensive and powerful database packages.
• MySQL is very friendly to PHP, the most appreciated language for the web development
• Since MySQL is customizable it is possible to modify the MySQL to fit the requirement of the user
• MySQL is irrelevant to any platform and it is called as platform independent
• The RDBMS to implement database with tables, columns and indexes
• MySQL is fast and suitable for very large datasets

4.4 MD5 (Message-Digest Algorithm 5)

Message-digest algorithm 5 is very widely used cryptographic hash function with a 128-bit hash value. This MD5 algorithm is used in the encryption while there is use of passwords. The MD5 algorithms are used in a digital signature where a large file must be compressed in a secure manner (6).

4.4.1 Syntax of MD5

Source: w3schools

Reasons for using MD5

• Message-digest algorithm 5 uses 128 bit hash key encryption
• MD5 is one way cryptographic algorithm. These cryptographic functions are hard and they are not easy to decrypt again
• MD5 hash is described in 32bit hexadecimal number

The five steps are performed to compute the message digest of the message9.

1. Append Padding Bits
2. Append Length
3. Initialize MD Buffer
4. Process Message in 16-Word Blocks
5. Output

Chapter 5

5 Conclusion

The analysis and investigations on the staff workload system has been determined in this report. The data collected from various sources will provide a better view of the project that can be implemented in a very successive and accurate way. The analysis includes all the necessary methods and tools to be implemented for the design of staff workload system. The

These investigations on the staff workload system must be able to build a robust system in assigning the tasks to the faculties. The use of this system is benefited by various members of the organization and reduces the time taken in assigning workload for any member of faculty in the organisation. The system is rich in accuracy and it balances the workload proportionally among every individual staff.  

        

Bibliography

List of Figures

Figure 1: Schematic representation of a workload planning

        

Figure 3: Workload Balance        

Figure 4: UML Use Case for Role of Staff        

Figure 5: UML Use Case for Role of Administrator

List of Tables