LtgOslo_WorkDuties

Background

Some PhD and post-doctoral fellowships at LTG include a certain proportion of 'obligatory work duties', i.e. the expectation for the fellow to contribute to tasks at the group or department that transcend the individual research project. The most common such tasks are related to teaching, but in principle any academic work that benefits the research group or department at large be considered work duties.

The standard duration for a PhD in Norway (at present) is considered three years. Many PhD fellows have an employment contract for four years, however, which means that their engagement includes 25 percent obligatory work duties. Seeing that a full working year is considered the equivalent of around 1700 hours, the department recommends that fellows with 25 percent work duties contibute, on average, around 410 hours per year. Where possible, it may be desirable to plan on a slightly higher obligatory work load in earlier years, so as to keep non-PhD work to a minimum towards the end of the fellowship.

The assignment of work duties, ideally, should be by mutual agreement, i.e. the research group and fellows should seek to align requirements, interests, and capabilities, in order to make the best possible use of resources. Unless otherwise agreed at the time of appointment, fellows have a 'right' to use a large part of their work duties on teaching, i.e. gaining experience in the design and implementation of university coursework is considered a valuable qualification. Each fellow is responsible for their own bookkeeping and reporting of hours (e.g. annually to the Faculty).

Guidelines for Hourly Accounting

Taking as our point of departure (a) a set of recommendations by the department (apparently dating back to around 1999) and (b) the terms of payment for student laboratory assistants, LTG permanent staff in early 2012 landed on the following guidelines for hourly accounting of work duties. These guidelines are intended to both avoid under-reporting and over-engagement, but may of course be subject to review invididual adjustments (in a dialogue with the group management).

Teaching a course is assumed to take up to six hours per lecture hour, e.g. for a class that has two lecture hours per