Academic leadership: Strategies for building effective teams of all staff

This chapter considers some tried and tested ways of integrating part-timers into a team. Some of these approaches can benefit all staff regardless of their fulltime/part-time status (for example, by encouraging flexible working across the team, by recognising the need to plan explicitly, and by encouraging regular, clear, effective and timely communication to all team members). Some processes need to be adapted specifically to ensure that part-timers feel that they are valued and integrated fully; for example, by allocating bursaries in a departmental/conference budget to support part-time staff who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend events and meetings, by explicitly encouraging part-time staff to apply for grants, awards and projects, by being prepared to organise partially at least around part-timers’ availability, or by holding special events which bring part-time staff together. Some of the suggestions here for building effective teams which include parttimers will also work for staff returning from an extended period of absence, for whatever reason (e.g. ill health, a secondment, or maternity leave). The chapter also recognises some of the management challenges to watch out for, and identifies how to mitigate or evade potential problems.