Job policy upside down
At the Haarlem College, teachers have been sharing the non-teaching tasks among themselves since last academic year. It is not the hours that are paramount, but the burden or the pleasure that they experience themselves. A task policy without counting hours, does that work?
Picture: Fred van Diem
He was chattering with his ears, the brother-in-law of biology teacher Sandra Durlinger, when she told him what they had been doing at her pre-vocational secondary school for some time. 'A task policy without counting hours, how do you keep track of whether someone is not doing too little?' “He couldn't imagine it”, says Durlinger, former member of the participation council of the Haarlem College.
Everyone is familiar with the critical statements about, for example, a gym teacher who walks out of the building after his lessons, while his exact subject colleague is still busy. “We all count hours as if it qualifies the exact quantity of work,” says school director Marc Teulings. “While a task is experienced very differently by two people. One has many ideas, the other is hesitant. So a number means nothing.”
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Work pressure report
'A winner among the causes of work pressure', research agency TNO wrote in a 2015 report on non-teaching tasks. The researchers explicitly mentioned the fact that many schools translate tasks into clock hours, but that too little attention is paid to how difficult a task is. 'It leads to a fixation on calculations and to mistrust of each other', concluded a rector mentioned in the study. It should not only be about size, but also about the division of tasks, the task load and the capacity of teachers.
This is exactly what employees at Haarlem College thought. A working group with a cross section of teachers, members of the participation council and management started to think about the task policy from 2018. Team leader Karin Rook was there from the start: “The task policy and the standard year task were a paper tiger. It didn't live with teachers.”
The task policy and the standard year task were a paper tiger
Changing the task policy last year ensured that all tasks were inventoried for the first time. This made it clear what the popular tasks are and which tasks teachers experience as 'heavy'. In the implementation of the new policy, the school received help from labor market platform Voion, in which unions and employers are represented. At Haarlem College, they used the digital tool Balance in Educational Tasks, developed by TNO, as a tool. This tool helped to inventory all tasks and showed the preferences of teachers.
Rook: “We now know that break surveillance and the care of students outside of class are in the top ten lowest scoring tasks. It gives little energy. Mentorship scores high. When we talked about it, it turned out that it sometimes helps if teachers can choose the place where they invigorate.” Director Teulings adds: “The break surveillance also became less bad if no lesson was scheduled for you the following hour.” Now the school has a clear description for all tasks so that teachers know what it entails. In addition, activities have been reconsidered or abandoned. “It ensures that you know what is for sale,” says teacher Durlinger. “The participation council has voted in favor of this.”
The pause surveillance is listed with the lowest scoring tasks
Sign
The new approach means that all tasks that are not directly related to the lessons and pre- and post-work - mentoring, break surveillance, development of teaching materials, coordination of tests and other school-wide tasks - are shared among teachers. They choose what they want to do next school year and that ties in with what they enjoy or have ambition in. Rook: “Suddenly you find out that someone really wants to do something, while we didn't know that before. People are standing up. For example, a colleague who was chair of the department for a long time started doing something different and it turned out that he really liked it. Otherwise it might not have happened so quickly.”
The division of work is done digitally. Digital post-its contain all the tasks to be distributed within the school. They drag teachers to their personal 'plate'. Teacher Durlinger: “That sign is your personal situation: it states how many FTEs you work, how many lessons you teach and the number of hours of training as laid down in the collective labor agreement. It is a rough reflection of my average working week. The personal experience of work pressure determines how full someone fills their plate. I first choose the work that must be done within my department and coordinate it. Then there are school-wide tasks, for example the healthy school. I would like to do that again next year.”
Personal experience of work pressure determines how full someone makes their plate
Share talk
After the spring break, all teachers sat down again and the work for the coming school year was divided together. “That will be the second time that we have organized it this way,” says Rook. The tasks that require a specialism or a permanent face are not 'free' to choose every year. If there is too much interest in a task, then a split interview with the interested parties follows. “In that meeting, the colleagues decide together who will take it up,” says Rook. “The evaluation showed that they find this the most difficult.”
Doesn't the person who can talk best always get the job? “For this year, we adjusted the approach for a distribution interview. We manage the expectations of the participants better by being clear in advance about how the conversation will go. The required competencies are also given a more important role in the conversation. Then the group votes on who it should be. A vote for yourself is not allowed.”
Different atmosphere
“A really new culture has emerged,” says Teulings. “This conversion is all about trust. Don't think like many directors: 'they are trying to screw me over'. If you want to 'turn around' something so big, a different atmosphere is often needed at school and it is very important to include the participation council and the team. The participation council is often the last station. It is better to involve colleagues from day 1.” Team leader Rook likes the fact that she now has more conversations about ambitions and the question of whether training is necessary, than that you are filling up hours. “Sometimes colleagues are too enthusiastic about filling their plates and I ask if they should assign a task to a colleague.” If a teacher indicates that he or she will defect halfway through the year, the work will be redistributed. Interim evaluations help with this.
This conversion is all about trust
Whether this new way actually curbs the workload has not yet been investigated, partly due to the corona years. Teulings does think that he will see the change in the figures for absenteeism due to illness. The employee satisfaction reports were already positive. Last year an evaluation was held immediately after the distribution and employees were satisfied with the new approach.
Teulings: “You choose your own workload. This offers much more customization, because you can count hours at the bottom of the line, but what do you get in return? Maybe not every teacher does 'the same number of hours' now, but they do stand up because they do what they like.” Rook: “No, we don't want to go back to the old system anymore.”
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