What Counts as Working Hours?

Working in a government project, or any structured professional environment, introduces you to the discipline of writing hours and submitting timesheets. While the mechanics of entering hours are usually straightforward, questions often arise around what exactly should be written: how many hours per day, when your working day starts and ends, and how to handle situations like sick leave, holidays, or time off.

In a typical government project, a full-time contract is based on 36 hours per week. These hours are distributed across the working week. The standard pattern is four days of 8 hours and one day of 4 hours, resulting in a total of 36 hours. In most teams, this is organized as Monday through Thursday being full 8-hour days, and Friday being a shorter 4-hour day. This structure helps ensure maximum overlap between team members, which is essential for collaboration.

Some contracts allow alternative distributions, such as four days of 9 hours, but these are exceptions rather than the rule. Regardless of the distribution, timesheets are typically submitted at the end of the working week.

In practice, not every week follows the standard pattern. Situations may arise where completing 36 hours is not possible, for example:

• You are sick for more than half a day during the week

• You take more than half a day off

• There is a public or mandatory holiday

In these cases, your total written hours will be lower than 36.

However, there are also situations where you can adjust your schedule. If you are sick for part of a day or take a few hours off, you must compensate by working additional hours on Friday. A common example is extending Friday from a 4-hour day to an 8-hour day to make up missed time. In some cases, your employer may expect you to do so. Friday becomes flexible only when hours were missed earlier in the week.

This leads to an important consideration: writing hours is not just about reaching a number. It is about accurately reflecting the work you have performed within agreed working patterns and maintaining alignment with your team. Simply “filling up” a timesheet to reach 36 hours without having worked those hours is not acceptable.

Working at the office comes with a few additional expectations. On office days, team members are expected to work a full 8-hour day. This includes a mandatory 30-minute lunch break, which is not counted as working time. The office is accessible between 07:00 and 18:00, so your working hours must fit within this window. This means you need to plan your start time accordingly. For example, arriving at 10:00 makes it impossible to complete 8 working hours plus the required lunch break before closing time. In such cases, you will not reach 8 working hours for that day, and these hours cannot be compensated on other days in the same week. It is therefore your responsibility to ensure you start on time. Please also note that travel time to and from the office is not considered working time and should not be written as hours.

To help clarify these situations and ensure a shared understanding, the following quiz presents a number of realistic scenarios. For each situation, consider how many hours should be written and whether any adjustments are appropriate.