This Workload Equity Toolkit page features a suite of customizable templates for departmental policies and procedures to promote equity in faculty workloads.
The Faculty Success Toolkit contains similar resources for several areas of the faculty experience. View the Toolkit.
This toolkit is designed to support both department leaders and faculty members through simple, adaptable tools to advance equity in faculty workloads. Tools are organized by type of faculty work, with a full list of tools at the bottom of the page.
Chairs/heads and faculty members can use this toolkit to inform departmental codes and policies related to workload distribution, evaluation, promotion/tenure, etc.
Disclaimer: The tools provided in this workload equity toolkit are not intended as “one-size-fits-all” solutions. Departments should thoughtfully adapt these tools through shared governance processes to ensure alignment with their unique teaching, research, and service contexts.
Workload Equity is an intentional approach to cultivating fair divisions of labor within and across units by emphasizing clarity, transparency, and accountability in how workload is assigned, valued, and evaluated; that makes visible and rewards the diverse contributions of faculty; and that is intended to promote faculty productivity, satisfaction, and retention.
The American Council on Education’s (ACE) 2022 report Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads: What We Can and Should Do Now notes that faculty workloads have undergone some dramatic changes since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: “Reductions in faculty capacity mean that many faculty members are being asked to ‘pick up’ additional work (e.g., teaching extra classes, serving on return to work committees, establishing laboratory staffing plans)” (p. 3). This extra work often goes unrecognized and comes without additional resources or compensation to complete the work. As a result, inequities that were already present in the academy before the pandemic have become starker and more extreme in the past few years. This inequitable distribution disproportionately affects faculty with minoritized identities, including women and faculty members of color, and is tied to faculty burnout, dissatisfaction, and disengagement.
Data on CSU faculty hiring, promotion, and retention demonstrate clear inequities across the categories of race and gender, with faculty women of color experiencing the greatest impacts.
The following values were identified in the ACE report on Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads as key principles that promote equity and should inform any efforts to create a more equitable workplace:
Units have widely visible information about faculty work activities available for department members to see.
Units have a commitment to ensuring faculty workload is fair and have put systems in place that reinforce these norms.
Units have clearly identified and well-understood benchmarks for faculty work activities.
Units acknowledge that different faculty members have different strengths, interests, and demands that shape their workloads and offer workload flexibility to recognize this context.
Units recognize and reward faculty members who are expending more effort in certain areas.
Units have mechanisms in place to ensure that faculty members fulfill their work obligations and receive credit for their labor.
Note: This is considered service for annual review and tenure/promotion, according to the Faculty Manual.
The Workload Equity Task Force formed in Spring 2022 and represents a collaboration between Faculty Success and the Provost & Executive Vice President’s Office, the Council for Gender Equity on the Faculty (CoGen), and the Committee on Non-Tenure Track Faculty (CoNTTF) to support workload equity at CSU. The task force has outlined the following objectives:
ACENet Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads:
