The purpose of this policy is to establish the requirements necessary to ensure that faculty align their annual workload agreement (FWLA) with the allocation of effort committed to sponsored programs. Actual effort is certified via semi-annual Effort Reports that are produced through the actual distribution of payroll.

The University of Louisville requires each faculty member to present an annual work plan that is endorsed by their department chair for approval by the dean. The approved FWLA identifies the allocation of each faculty member’s responsibilities (e.g., teaching, research, service, and other institutional obligations). The FWLA should identify and segregate any compensation and activities not included within the definition of Institutional Base Salary (IBS).

It is incumbent upon each faculty member not to commit effort to funded externally sponsored programs in excess of the allocations identified within the approved FWLA without obtaining prior approval to amend their work plan. This is intended to minimize the risk of committing effort in excess of the percentages of IBS allocated to teaching, research, service, and other activities per the FWLA.

Department chairs will ensure that each faculty member’s approved FWLA allocation of IBS to the categories of teaching, research, service, and other activities is adequately communicated and modified as necessary to align workload to committed effort. This would include notification to those individuals associated with the preparation of sponsored program proposal budgets and to those who establish the payroll distribution of committed effort to a related speedtype(s).

Faculty will compare their current FWLA allocations of IBS to the effort percentages resulting from the payroll distribution as presented on the University Effort Report. At minimum, this should occur semi-annually when required to certify effort.

The intended result is to ensure that the IBS distributed through payroll to sponsored programs reasonably reflects the effort expended on these projects and that the total allocation of effort on sponsored programs complies with the faculty member’s FWLA.

Guidelines for Comparing FWLA to Effort Commitments

Deans and Department Heads will ensure that FWLAs reflect an appropriate allocation of IBS to sponsored programs and other university responsibilities and provide the FWLA and IBS information to those who administer payroll, prepare proposal budgets and assist faculty with effort report certification. Tools such as spreadsheets or a similar mechanism created to track workload, committed effort and payroll distribution for faculty members over a period of time may assist in determining whether a change in the FWLA is required and guard against over committing effort when a sponsored program is awarded.

The OSPA Compliance Core will require semi-annual certified Effort Reports for University employees expending effort on a federally sponsored award during the reporting timeframe.