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Project guide for researchers: Working time allocation

The total working time system

The University of the Arts Helsinki academic and research staff work within the total working time system. The rest of the staff works within the regular working time system. Employees working at externally funded research projects are required to allocate their working hours to the project. The staff members who work within the total working time system are allocated an annual working time of 1612 hours. This includes all the duties of a teacher: course planning, tutoring, and guidance of the students' work and other duties pertaining to said guidance. Other duties are the duties concerning the department, academy or university administration, and the production of teaching material. It is also possible to include in an employee's total working time any artistic activity and/or research related to the employee's field and performed under the name of the employer.

Work plans which contain the planned use of working time per academic year are devised annually. The plans are made and reviewed together with the head of department, who also approves them. The plans may be reviewed during the academic year.

Working time allocation

Organisations that grant competitive research funding (incl. Academy of Finland, Tekes) require the reporting of costs in accordance with the full cost model. In the full cost model, all costs resulting from the project are allocated to the project, with all costs referring to the direct costs as well as the university’s calculated indirect employee costs and overheads (e.g. shared IT, library, financial and HR services, facilities and equipment).
 
Employees of all research projects must enter their working time in SoleTM system each month by the 1st working day of the month that follows.  The hours also have to be confirmed during that day. The hours should be entered as standard working hours 7.25 hours/day. In SoleTM system, working hours for the project, for the home unit and/or paid absences (such as annual holiday, sick leave, training or family leaves) must be entered on monthly-basis.
 

Only effective working hours are allocated to the project based on actual hours spent on the project. Sick leaves or other absences are not allocated to the project but to the researcher’s unit (academy or research centre). If the employee allocates only part of the total working time to an externally funded project/projects, the rest of the working time (not spent on the project) is allocated to the researcher’s home unit.

When an employee is traveling, the working time to be entered in the system is in SoleTM 7.25 hours, even if the time spent on traveling and the normal working time exceed this on the day of travel. The working time is entered primarily based on actual working hours during the days spent in the travel destination

Principal investigator`s responsibilities

Principal investigator is responsible for making sure that researchers enter their working time to the project as agreed and that the project has appointed a project coordinator and a finance coordinator, and confirms the working hours allocated to the project each month by the 3rd working day of the following month. The principal investigator is also in charge of approving the requests for payments that are sent to sponsors.

Take contact

Person-in-charge for the university-level SoleTM system
Miia Putkinen
Sanna Tossavainen