Work & Personal Management

Regardless of our position at the university, whether a lecturer, associate professor or even a full professor, we sometimes struggle to juggle and manage our academic responsibilities. Working as an academic requires one to manage and deliver on various responsibilities, which could include some of the following:

• Managing time and priorities effectively between your teaching, research, postgraduate supervision and community engagement responsibilities; sometimes, you may even have a leadership role/s and other committee roles to fulfil.
• Managing your relationships with your undergraduate and postgraduate students, your academic peers and colleagues, academic administrators, tutors, student assistants, post-doc fellow students
• Managing the research process of Honours, Masters and PhD students, which usually runs over a period varying between one year to four years
• Ensuring that you deliver on your prescribed research output per your job level which entails writing articles, conference papers, books, book reviews etc.
• Beginning or completing your PhD
• Meeting your Key Performance Areas Goals as per your performance contract every year
• Managing your development plan for promotion and career advancement
• Creating and managing your social media profile and information (Examples include: Google Scholar, LinkedIn, ResearchGate etc.)
• Arranging and managing huge research projects that often require obtaining funding and working in partnership with other academics both locally and globally

The scope and depth of an academic's work is extensive, requiring many skills, effective use of time, and priority management. We commit to fulfilling all the above responsibilities to meet UJ's 4 Key Performance Areas, measured yearly. These are:

• Teaching and Innovation;
• Research and Innovation;
• Leadership, university administration, enhancement of the discipline;
• Community and Industrial Involvement

This section and the resources listed will hopefully aid you in enhancing and improving your management and organisational skills to fulfil all your key roles in your department within the greater university and ultimately within the greater local and global academic community.

1. Know what is expected of you at your level and the level above you

Many academics are working towards creating a better work-life balance which requires careful consideration and examination of all that one does in one's work, and planning and structuring one's work tasks accordingly. Doing this is not easy, but needs to be done, so that one can take care of one's wellbeing and still work towards fulfilling one's career aspirations.

A good place to begin is to review what is expected of you at your respective academic job level. Here, you can go through theUJ Senate Approved Academic Workload model, which provides an academic workload framework with a set of principles and guidelines to inform the development of academic workload models in faculties and departments at UJ.

Use this workload model in discussion with your line manager in your respective department; you can plan and negotiate your teaching, research, postgraduate supervision and all other responsibilities with your manager and peers.

Reviewing what will be expected of you at the next level of your career is also essential as you plan and manage your work responsibilities. This provides a framework to manage and focus on key areas that will help you prepare for promotion.

1. Create a vision board with your career goals for the next 3 to 5 years and plan for each year

Once you know what you want to achieve in the next 3 to 5 years, and the job level which you want to occupy in the next 3 to 5 years, set up SMART objectives that you can aim to meet every year that brings you closer to living out your career vision and goal. Measure your performance outputs against your performance contract and vision board every year. As you plan for the following year, review your:

• Vision board here is a link that will help you get started on the vision board.
• Performance Contract, which can be accessed via this link
• Curriculum Vitae (CV), which you can update every quarter
• CBE Promotions Policy This is the 2019 Policy. Please ensure that you use the latest policy; you can enquire at the CBE's Executive Secretary's office
• UJ's Academic Calendar and your Department's Calendar for the following year (now plan all your lecturing, research, postgraduate supervision and other activities around these two calendars)
• Your personal life goals outside of work

Remember, if you work with your vision and goals in mind, how you work and what you choose to work on becomes more structured, clearer, focused and easier to manage.

1. Time & Priority Management for your Personal and Work Life

If you struggle to prioritise your time, energy and effort in your work and personal life (such as family time with your spouse and children, exercise, raising children, recreation, rest, etc ) achieving your goals becomes more difficult and it is more likely that you will experience stress and overall work and life dissatisfaction.

• What Priority Management Is and How to Use It
• Effective Prioritization and Time Management Strategies
• Time Management is Priority Management

• An academic career
• Strategies for understanding and navigating the “academic underlife”

McDonnell, J.J (2019). Navigating an Academic Career: A Brief Guide for PhD Students, Postdocs, and New Faculty, American Geophysical Union, ISBN: 978-1-119-64217-6

15 of the Best Time Management and Productivity Books of All Time

The Centre for Academic Staff Development (CASD) (you can access on the UJ Sharepoint under the Division of Excellence) at UJ plays an essential role in providing opportunities for staff (who are disciplinary experts) and tutors to develop their educational expertise in order to become better facilitators of learning. It does this by offering the following:

• Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education - a formal qualification for academics in the post- school environment
• Academic Preparation Programme - a semester-long programme for staff new to UJ
• Professional Development Workshops - provide opportunities for academics to develops in various areas of teaching and learning
• Tutor Development - a College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA) approved tutor training programme for tutors and senior tutors
• Teaching Portfolio Development - support for applicants seeking promotion and / or teaching awards
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) - support for the development of research in Teaching and Learning
• Teaching and Module Evaluations - administration of evaluations, and support for academic staff emerging from feedback obtained
• Peer evaluation - support for academic staff undertaking peer evaluations
• Development of Academic Heads of Department - workshops for newly appointed Heads of Department