Units: the spreadsheet hour.#

The basic unit of the spreadsheet is the hour. However, rather than being in absolute, real hours this is a representative, nominal hour based on the median time that various Working Groups within the Physics Department have established in consultation with colleagues. Hence, the credit received for undertaking a tariffed activity (one which the university policy deems should be included in the workload model) is set according to a judgement of how long an activity should take, in real hours, for an average member of staff. ¹

The workload credit for a job should not be seen as a rigid constraint on how long an activity should take, but as a guideline for the total effort required on average (for many activities per contact session) over a long period, either the entire academic year or, for lecture courses, over several years. The notion that this is a guideline does, of course, include an implicit recognition that different members of staff will take differing amounts of time to do the same job.

Last updated 2026/03/29