Career & Family

BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg endeavours to ensure that pregnancy, parenthood and caring for relatives do not have a negative impact on work and academic careers. We have many programmes available for staff and students with family responsibilities.

Flexible work organisation

The service agreements currently in force for non-academic/academic staff at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg offer extensive needs-based solutions and options for flexible working hours such as part-time work, flexitime and carry-over volumes for overtime etc. The guideline for the advancement of women supports holiday arrangements that take school holidays into account in order to allow employees with children of compulsory school age or with relatives in the school service to take family-friendly holidays. In addition, the service agreements on alternating teleworking and working from home serve to make working hours and work organisation more flexible in terms of space and time.

Family-conscious leave of absence

Upon request, a leave of absence or an arrangement of working hours that deviates from the standard working hours must be made possible due to raising children, caring for household members or further education and training, taking into account the interests of the service and the applicable working time regulations.

Academic Fixed-Term Contract Act

The Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (WissZeitVG) essentially regulates the fixed-term employment of academic and artistic staff at universities and non-university research institutions. The Act, which came into force on 18 April 2007, takes into account the high workload of junior academics with children: If they are caring for children, the permissible fixed-term period in the qualification phase is extended by two years per child.
In accordance with Section 2 (5) No. 3 of the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, teaching and research fellows are entitled to an extension of their employment contract by the periods
a) of the ban on employment under the Maternity Protection Act
and
b) of their parental leave
to the extent that employment has not taken place. The employment contract conditions remain unchanged during the contract extension. The prerequisite for this is that the employment contract during which the employment ban or parental leave falls was limited in time on the basis of Section 2 (1) of the Academic Fixed-Term Contracts Act. This information can be found in the employment contract. Both women and men, academic and artistic staff financed from budget funds and from third-party funds can claim the extension by law. Employees must explicitly request this contract extension together with the parental leave declaration.

Long-term account: paid leave of absence

The state of Brandenburg offers employees within the scope of validity of the TV-L and TVL-Forst

  • who are in a permanent employment relationship or
  • who are in a fixed-term employment relationship,

if the duration of the fixed-term contract is more than one year and it is established that the release is guaranteed, a continuous paid full or partial leave of absence of up to two years.
A long-term account managed by the Central Payroll Office of the State of Brandenburg in accordance with Section 116 SGB IV in conjunction with Section 10 (6) TV-L or Section 44 No. 2 TV-L is agreed for this purpose. The regulations do not apply to employment relationships pursuant to Section 40 TV-L that are not fully funded by the State of Brandenburg (third-party funding).

Health promotion programmes

Not only everyday working life, but also upcoming family responsibilities are characterised by high levels of stress, which can have a long-term negative impact on health. You can find the current health management programmes at BTU here.

Further training programmes

Continuing Education: The Centre for Continuing Education (ZWW) at BTU offers employees a diverse programme to expand their qualifications and skills. Participation in further training is of course also possible during parental leave.