Take Action

Are you interested in taking action to make invisible labor visible? 

Here’s some ideas to take action. 

• Individual Time Tracking: Time track your effort using Toggl with the Invisible Labor Codes. Maintain documentation to create awareness of the fullness of your effort, and use it as part of annual faculty reporting. We recommend tracking time over at least a two-week time period.

• Cohort Time Tracking: A cohort of faculty, such as in a Department, could track following these codes and using Toggl (link to setting up as a group advice) and debrief trends and data points. We recommend tracking time over at least a two-week time period.

• Host a conversation. Host a conversation in your department or leadership group. Refer to the other readings (refer to Resources page) to offer some common understanding on the topic. Suggested conversation starters: 

  • What is the type of invisible labor faculty and staff provide to support their department/college/university?

    • What are means of recognition for this type of effort? 

    • What are affective, material, or structural supports for this type of effort? 

  • How does the tenure and promotion requirements acknowledge or ignore invisible labor as part of a faculty’s role? 

    • What are means of addressing this? 

• Redefine service:  Retention, promotion, and tenure standards are often designed to emphasize and account for visible service activities that faculty and instructors must fulfill. Yet, this study and others have documented the range of invisible service activities faculty and instructors provide in their role and responsibilities. Expanding service definitions used in RPT processes to account for invisible labor dimensions would provide a means for acknowledging the fullness of the efforts faculty members provide. Further given the disparities observed in broader studies of invisible labor about who is doing the service, this expansion of the service definition would position it to be more inclusive and equitable.