Minimum research allocation: what’s really happening?

When we won our new Enterprise Agreement in 2024, it came with a big step forward for education-focused staff: for the first time, a guaranteed minimum allocation of research (or academic currency/professional practice) in workloads.

• If you’re 0.8FTE or above, that means at least 20% of your workload.

• If you’re under 0.8FTE, that means at least 10%.

This wasn’t a gift from management – it was a win by staff to make sure our teaching-focused colleagues weren’t locked into 100% teaching forever.

But here’s the problem. Instead of treating the minimum as a genuine research allocation, we’ve seen the definition of “professional practice” sometimes stretched so far that it now includes things like committee work, admin, or service. In other words: anything that’s not teaching.

That was never the intent of the clause – in bargaining we explicitly knocked back attempts to let “leadership” and “service” eat up this minimum allocation.

This matters because research isn’t just about prestige or publications – it’s about keeping education-focused staff connected to their disciplines, their fields, and their students. Without it, workloads become unsustainable teaching factories, and whole careers could be stunted.

My bottom lines:

• The minimum is a floor, not a ceiling.

• It must be respected as research time where staff choose.

• Management should honour the Agreement they signed, not redefine it on the fly.