Recently, in my university they decided to ask professors to check in and out to measure how many ours they work, and prevent overworking. They said this is the law, and there’s nothing they can do to avoid it. I was wondering, in other universities, how do they measure working hours of faculty?
Thanks for your insights!
16 comments
I’m deemed to work 37.5 hrs a week, regardless of however long I actually work.
I think it’s fairly standard. Try not submitting anything. If they remind you, see what happens if you ignore the reminder. There is at least one university full of faculty who receive these emails and don’t reply.
No university that’s employed me has ever checked. I don’t think I could ever check myself, even, because it’s not clear even to myself if I’m working or not at many times. Even at the moment, I’m glancing over at Reddit here and checking some homework in fits on another screen. Am I working?
I worked at one place that required daily hanko stamps for working days. They never checked time though.
I have heard of places using time clocks. I never suspected it was to prevent overwork. I always assumed that it was to scare teachers to actually come in and work 40 hrs a week for that full time paycheck.
I’m required at my university. Everyone has a workload that exceeds what they are supposed to be working and we often have to work past regulation working time or on weekends so we just sign in and out of the system as if it weren’t a black kigyo. Problem solved.
Evidence of faculty/teachers being there sometimes has to be presented to the education ministry–it’s occasional but they do come round to check now and then. And this is connected to subsidies/money that a uni gets from said ministry (one component, at least–that teachers are there, and working). In the past that was taken care of by hanko-ing a book, and it was common for teachers to stamp the book once a month or so, even once a term, just filling it in for all the dates that they were there.
These days, there is a general push to prevent overwork (tho it’s uni staff/admin, and not teachers, who are the ones that are suffering). Cross that with a bit of technology, and you get a card system, where everyone can “swipe in” and out, which easily generates individual and overall reports. And of course since the essence of being a manager is seeing/watching people work, presence is nine-tenths of being a good worker, right…!?! (And if you have your swipe card/ID with you, some systems can track you within your workplace–tho uni likely never do this.)
One upside to work-to-rule where I worked is that work outside normal hours was considered extra, so weekend duty for exam proctoring or open campus was counted towards your work week, and we got daikyu/代休 for it that could be taken later.
I’ve heard that public schools can be more sensitive to people being at work when they should be. The rationale is that you’re being paid by taxpayers, and those taxpayers should not see you away from work during regular working hours. I don’t agree with that, but it is what it is.
Tenured associate prof here. I have to physically clock in at least 7 hours a day, 4 days a week. One day is a dedicated “research day” in which I don’t need to clock in, but I usually come in anyways because it’s easier to get work done in my office than at home.
In reality, I typically work 10-12 hour days during the semester and leave after only 7 or 8 hours during the breaks.
We use discretionary work (裁量労働), to count as a work day we have to work at least 1h per day and a fixed 15h of overtime is paid per month.
>They said this is the law
Smells like bullshit. I’m tenured at one uni and part time at the other, and they never require us to log hours. We only have to hanko a book (digital or literal) for transportation compensation.
I measure my hours worked in terms of hours of my life lost for the purpose of work. That includes commuting to/from the campus, time between classes, meetings, and of course classes themselves.
If you are salaried at a specific amount of hours, just leave when your day is over. Everywhere is different but unless they ask for you to report your hours, I just wouldn’t. Unless you are working overtime, in which case I would report just my overtime hours.
We’re required to clock in and out but admin doesn’t really care much about it.
We are required to clock-in and clock-out online (even if working from home). If the system detects overtime beyond the legal limits, we get a warning and an email from HR to work less. I heard the system cross-checks with the ID cards when those are used (not everyone uses and only a few doors requires it), but I’m not sure I believe that.
I think it’s great and it has some potential to reduce the ridiculous amount of overtime most academic staff do in Japan. At least it serves as proof of illegal overtime if you ever get in bad terms with your employee.
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Half of my universities clock in. The other half is honor system which is basically abused (teachers leaving class 40 minutes early) by some of the teachers. I don’t think anyone cares as long as there are no complaints.
We have to log-in on our work computer or via cell phone. It’s not a big deal. We are required to work X amount of hours/day which is over the actual amount most people work, but we have flex hours we can use rather than using paid vacation so it’s not an issue.
I’m a part time contracted lecturer, so I’m only assigned to work a certain number of hours. We used to just hanko the book in the office when we came in. But, I’m still teaching from home at the moment so I fill out 2 excel spreadsheets every month. One what I’m planning to do in my work time next month, and one of what I actually did in my work time the past month.