Exceptions from ordinary working hours regulations
As a main rule, employees in scientific positions are regarded as occupying “particularly independent posts”, cf. section 10-12, second paragraph of the Norwegian Working Environment Act and section 13 no. 4 of the Basic Collective Agreement. This applies to posts such as lecturer, associate professor, professor, researcher, post-doctoral research fellow, scholarship holder and specialist graduate. As an automatic consequence of the above, these employees will not be governed by normal working hours regulations. More detailed information is provided in the guidelines for Regulation of Working Hours for Employees in Scientific Posts at the University of Oslo.
Normal working hours
Academic employees have the same working hours all year, and the 30-minute lunch break is unpaid and comes in addition to the 37.5 hours a week.
Teaching
Teaching is to be carried out during the normal working hours unless the nature of the teaching requires that the teaching has to take place at other times. In such cases, the employer may order an individual employee to provide teaching, for example in the case of higher and further education whose target group is people who are working full-time. Other working-hour schemes may be agreed on within the frameworks of §7, no. 8 of the Basic Collective Agreement (lovdata.no (in Norwegian) and section 10-5 of the Working Environment Act (pdf) (arbeidstilsynet.no).
Presence at work
All employees of the University of Oslo are to be present in the workplace during working hours unless professional or other grounds mean that the work has to take place elsewhere. In such cases, this is to be pursuant to the consent of the unit’s management and in accordance with the prevailing rules governing absences.
Normal distribution of tasks for research and teaching personnel
It is assumed that the local employer will follow up the individual employee and that plans and documentation exist for both the unit’s and the individual’s activities.
Refer to Guidelines for the normal distribution of work obligations during working hours for combined research and teaching positions
According to the guidelines, the starting point is a normal 50/50 distribution between research and teaching over time within the frameworks applicable to the individual department, and as a rule the equivalent for the individual member of the research staff.
For a university lecturer with and without promotion to an associate professor, the working hours are normally to be distributed as follows:
- 75 per cent spent on teaching assignments
- 15 per cent spent on professional development work
- 10 per cent spent on administration
The distribution stated in the Regulations concerning terms and conditions of employment for the posts of post-doctoral research fellow, research fellow, research assistant and resident applies to recruitment and education jobs.
Work duty account
Different regulations pertain to the work duty account at the various faculties and departments, see overview.