Working hours for teaching staff

Content on this page:

• Annual working hours
  • Attendance at the workplace
• Duties plan: Distribution of tasks
  • Professor, visiting professor and adjunct professor
  • Senior lecturer
  • Lecturer
  • Postdoctoral researcher and associate senior lecturer
• Evening and weekend teaching
• Work beyond the established duties plan 
  • Overtime and extra hours
  • Document and redistribute 
  • Follow up at the end of the year 
  • Decisions on additional time and overtime are made at the end of the year
  • Special provisions for additional hours and overtime for doctoral students, teaching assistants and clinical assistants and professors

Annual working hours

As a teacher, you have annual working hours, according to the Working Hours Agreement for Teachers.

Annual working hours mean that actual weekly working hours may vary over the year, although there is an endeavour to have as even a distribution as possible. There are no set hours that you have to work per day, per week or per month, nor any restrictions on when the work has to be done. This is different from the flexible working hours that non-university teachers normally work.

What is regulated is that working time is limited to a total number of working hours per calendar year and that tasks must be allocated and planned for the year or for a planning period of maximum 3 years.

The annual working time must be allocated each year to the main tasks that a teacher normally has, so that the teacher has a good workload and the organisation can meet the requirements of good research and education.

You are a teacher, according to Lund University's employment regulations, if you are employed as

• professor and visiting professor
• adjunct professor
• senior lecturer
• adjunct senior lecturer
• associate senior lecturer
• postdoctoral fellow
• lecturer
• adjunct lecturer

Amanuens (who teach), clinical assistants and doctoral students also have annual working hours.

Total annual working time

Your total annual working time as a teacher is, for full-time and full-year employment

• 1,756 hours for employees with 28 days' holiday (until the year you turn 29)
• 1,732 hours for workers with 31 days' holiday (from the year you turn 30)
• 1,700 hours for workers with 35 days' holiday (from the year you turn 40).

All the tasks a teacher may have should be included in the annual working time. If you are assigned other duties such as head of department, director of studies, etc. those working hours are regulated outside your time as a teacher. The assignment and its scope in time are regulated in a written agreement. This means that the remaining time must be planned for education, research/artistic development work, skills development and administration.

In the event of leave of absence, illness, unused holidays, etc. the total annual working time must be adjusted.

Example:

• If you have 1,700 hours of annual working time and you are sick for 5 days, 40 hours must be deducted from your annual working time in the current year (and your working time in that year will be 1,660 hours). If, on the other hand, you want to save 5 days of holiday for year 1 and use them in year 2, 40 hours will be added to year 1 and the 40 hours will be deducted from your annual working time when you take them in year 2.
• If you have 1,700 hours of annual working time and you are assigned to a job for 150 hours, your duties plan  should only cover 1,550 hours.

Attendance at the workplace

As a teacher, you must be present at the workplace to the extent required by your activities and duties. This may involve teaching, but also meetings with working groups, the department or similar.

When you are not at the workplace, you must be available at your home address. If you are elsewhere when you are working, you must notify your head of department. This is important both for unforeseen needs in the organisation and for insurance purposes in case something happens to you during working days.

Duties plan: Distribution of tasks

Your manager should work with you to plan the distribution of tasks and working hours for the coming calendar year. This planning must be set out in a duties plan . The duties plan  must cover at least one year, and may cover a planning period of 3 years.

The aim of the duties plan  is to ensure a balance between the various tasks normally carried out by a teacher and the distribution of annual working time over the calendar year. The distribution of your tasks and the amount of time you spend on them will vary depending, among other things, on the nature and complexity of the tasks. The amount of time allocated to the different teaching tasks may differ, and there are different procedures in the institutions for the time allocation normally given to different teaching tasks. Time allocation may vary for different courses, teaching tasks or teaching elements and be different for different teachers. 

Circumstances that may affect the assessment may be, for example, the number of times the course has been completed by you, the need for change and development of the course content, the need for learning time, etc.

The duties plan  for the next calendar year should be prepared well before the end of the year. This means that your duties plan  should be finalised by the beginning of December at the latest in order to be adopted before the end of the year. You should always have your own copy of your duties plan , either in digital or physical form. Employee organisations must be informed when all faculty duties plan s have been drawn up.

The duties plan  mainly consists of the elements that form the basis of the annual working time for teachers:

• teaching
• research/artistic development work
• skills development
• administration

The amount of time spent on each of these elements depends on your position, the faculty's and department's operational objectives, and your teaching and research assignments. Assignments such as director of studies or board member are not included in the time allocated in the duties plan.

The following guidelines apply to the distribution of duties:

Professor, visiting professor and adjunct professor

As a professor, you normally devote the largest part of the annual working hours planned in the duties plan to research and to participating in the education and supervision of doctoral students. You should also be involved in teaching in undergraduate and graduate programmes.

Senior lecturer

As a senior lecturer, you normally devote yourself to both teaching and research. The part of your annual working time planned in the duties plan  and used for teaching should normally amount to an average of no more than 70 per cent for the planning period. You should also be given time for research and professional development

Lecturer

As a lecturer, you should normally devote the largest part of your annual working time planned in the duties plan  to training. The proportion of annual working time used for training should normally average no more than 80 per cent for the planning period. You should also be given time for professional development, which may include research training where relevant.

Postdoctoral researcher and associate senior lecturer

As a postdoctoral researcher or associate senior lecturer, you devote the largest part of your annual working time planned in the duties plan  to research.

You should normally be given the opportunity to undertake training in teaching and learning in higher education and to be active in education at first and second cycle level. 

This is to enable you to qualify for employment as a senior lecturer.

Evening and weekend teaching

Teachers, with the exception of professors, who have evening classes after 18.00 and classes on Saturdays and Sundays receive a salary supplement (also called inconvenience supplement). 

This is in accordance with the current local agreement on fees for hourly teaching and for evening and weekend teaching.

If this is relevant for you and your teaching, you apply for this in Primula in connection with the work performed.

According to Lund University's local professors' agreement, professors do not receive inconvenience allowance.

Work beyond the established duties plan 

Overtime and additional time

Additional time or overtime should not normally occur for teachers. 

To be eligible for overtime, your manager must have ordered the work in advance or authorised it afterwards. 

Always talk to your manager so that there are no misunderstandings about working hours.

Document and redistribute 

If you need to carry out tasks that were not planned in your duties plan and that do not fit into your annual working time, write down when you did the work and how long it took. 

In the first instance, you and your manager should try to redistribute the duties during the rest of the calendar year so that they fit within your annual working time. This may mean that previously planned tasks need to be cancelled or moved to another year. It may also mean that the level of ambition and time allocated to planned tasks needs to be adjusted.

If this is not possible, the situation will need to be dealt with by means of overtime or additional hours. You and your manager need to agree on how the hours are to be settled. This can be done by means of compensatory leave or payment of compensation for overtime or additional hours.

Follow up at the end of the year

It is important that you carry out the follow-up at the end of the calendar year in which you performed the unplanned duties, as it is only at the end of the year that you can see how the annual working time has been affected. 

Overtime and additional hours can only be paid if you have worked more than the total number of hours specified in your duties plan after any reallocation.

This means that you must have carried out all the tasks and worked all the allocated time planned for the calendar year and, in addition, have had additional teaching duty assigned to you that do not fit within your annual working time.

If there are tasks that have not been completed during the year due to, for example, additional teaching tasks, these tasks must be moved to the next duties plan or to the updated duties plan. 

If there are tasks that have not been completed during the year due to, for example, additional teaching tasks, these tasks should be moved to the next duties plan or to the updated duties plan. The released working time is part of the reallocation that should be done in the first place in order to avoid extra time and overtime.

It is therefore important that at the end of the calendar year, and when the next duties plan is drawn up, you and your manager follow up on the tasks that have not been completed and whether all the allocated time has been utilised in the way indicated in the duties plan .

Decisions on how to compensate additional time and overtime are made at the year-end

If, after reconciliation and redistribution, there is additional time or overtime, this must be settled in the end of the calendar year. If you need to take compensatory leave, the staffing plan for the next calendar year needs to take this into account and be adjusted.

If you and your manager agree that additional time or overtime should be paid, you must record the time in Primula in the same calendar year as the work was carried out. The recommendation is that the teacher and manager should agree on when in time the additional tasks actually resulted in additional time/overtime and that the teacher reports based on this documentation.

No additional time or overtime is paid for

• research,
• postgraduate studies,
• skills development and your own artistic development work that you as a teacher have at your disposal.

Special provisions for additional hours and overtime for doctoral students, teaching assistants and clinical assistants and professors

Doctoral students, lecturers and clinical assistants cannot be ordered to work overtime.

According to Lund University's local professors' agreement, professors do not receive additional hours or compensation for overtime work.