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You will find extensive information on the occurrence and distribution of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), as well as personal rules of conduct on how to deal with the virus on the information page on COVID-19, set up by the Robert Koch Institute. This site is being updated regularly. Please refer to this website on a regular basis to keep yourself informed.
Based on these guidelines and the current regulations of the State of Brandenburg, please take not of the following information for employees, which will be updated as required:
Employees that are affected by the virus are generally considered as unfit for work/duty. In this regard and especially regarding salaries or remunerations, the coronavirus will not be handled differently from any other illness.
Please make sure to call your doctor’s office first if you suspect an infection with the coronavirus so that you do not come into contact with other sick people when you visit.
If you are verifiably infected with the coronavirus, please also report this to the university using the e-mail address corona-beschaeftigteuni-potsdamde.
Should the department send staff members home (leave of absence) as a precaution for protection in suspected cases, they will retain their salary or remuneration entitlement.
Employees who (regardless of travel) have had personal contact with a person who has been tested positive by a laboratory for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, please report immediately and regardless of symptoms to the health authority responsible for you. You can find your local health authority here.
In addition, immediately call a doctor's office or the medical on-call service at 116 117.
Please also be sure to inform your supervisor, who will immediately forward your information to the Human Resources and Legal Affairs Division.
Affected employees are currently being treated as unfit for work or duty and should not come back to work until the presence of a coronavirus infection has been clarified. Please also discuss the possibilities of working from home/telework/workplace flexibilization with your supervisor. The supervisors are authorized to make appropriate arrangements with you.
If you are not allowed to work at the University of Potsdam due to an official order by the health authorities or your department, this does not affect your continued payment of remuneration/salary.
Please inform your supervisor by telephone about the situation. Depending on the individual case, it will then be decided whether home office/workplace flexibilization is to be implemented. You can find further information at: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Kontaktperson/Management.html#doc13516162bodyText5
On the basis of the general decree of the Brandenburg Ministry of Health, travel returnees (regardless of whether they are returning from a business or private trip) from international risk areas and particularly affected areas in Germany are no longer allowed to enter universities with immediate effect.
In these cases, your department will order you to work from home/workplace flexibilization for a duration of 14 days after your return from the risk area. If, in individual cases, it is not possible to work from home, you will be released from your work or will be granted a leave of absence. The salary or remuneration will continue to be paid.
The Robert Koch Institute recommends that affected persons avoid unnecessary contact and stay at home if possible. If you develop a fever, cough or shortness of breath, you should also observe the coughing and sneezing etiquette as well as guidelines for good hand hygiene and call a doctor's office or the medical on-call service at 116 117.
Employees who have stayed in areas where COVID-19 cases occur, but which are not designated risk areas, and who do not show symptoms, will resume their duties normally upon return.
If you develop a fever, cough or shortness of breath within 14 days of your return home, inform your department and stay at home if possible. In addition, immediately call a doctor's office or the medical on-call service at 116 117 and tell them about your recent trip. Avoid unnecessary contacts and observe the coughing and sneezing etiquette as well as guidelines for good hand hygiene.
As a precautionary measure, in your own and in your colleagues' interest, please inform your supervisor of your trip immediately after your return to work to determine the appropriate procedure in your case. Your supervisor will inform the Human Resources and Legal Affairs Division.
If you or relatives living with you have been put in quarantine by order of the health authorities in accordance with § 30 of the Infection Protection Act, please contact your supervisor immediately by telephone to determine the appropriate procedure in your case. Your supervisor will inform the Human Resources and Legal Affairs Division.
Your department will order you to work from home/workplace flexibilization or will grant you a leave of absence.
The same applies if you have no opportunity to travel home due to a safety authority order issued abroad.
Employees are generally obliged to organize childcare in such a way that contractual obligations can be fulfilled or to reduce overtime and compensation days in accordance with the internal agreement on flexitime and to take advantage of flexitime to be released from work duties.
However, the UP would like to support its employees who have to care for children. As far as possible, the supervisors should order them to work from home. If there are no appropriate childcare options, no possibility of working from home and no compensation days or flexitime credits available, it is now possible from 20 April 2020 up to and including 31 December 2020 to take 20 working days off work with continued payment of remuneration and a further 10 working days without continued payment of remuneration. It is also possible to take half days off. This provision replaces a claim for loss of earnings under the German Protection against Infection Act (6 weeks with 67% of net salary).
The previously applicable regulation on granting 10 working days for childcare will therefore expire at the end of April 19, 2020. Days of leave not taken from this time frame cannot be taken at a later date. The amount of leave days already granted will not be reduced by the amount of any existing leave entitlement under the previous regulation.
The decision on the leave of absence is taken by the Division of Human Resources and Legal Affairs after the respective supervisors have submitted their statements. This is subject to the condition that there are no job-related reasons to the contrary and that there are no other care options available, nor possibilities for working from home/work time compensation.
A further change is the extension of the possibilities of leave of absence in the context of providing the required care for relatives in need of care. In this case it is also possible to take 20 working days off from work under a non-tariff agreement, with continued payment of remuneration. In addition to the above-mentioned prerequisites, the relative in need of care must live permanently or due to the closure of the care facility in the household of the employee providing care.
For civil servants, the above applies to the same extent. In case care needs to be provided for children or relatives in need of care due to the closure of the respective facility, a leave of absence from work of up to 20 working days with continued pay can be granted.
You can find the respective request forms on the University of Potsdam’s Intranet pages or in these PDF files (Request for leave of absence to care for children and Request for leave of absence to care for relatives in need of care).
Until further notice, a written confirmation (including by e-mail) from your supervisor will be sufficient to approve a home office request form. Supervisors must take into account that the ability to work in the respective area has to be maintained, including any necessary arrangements for substitution in case of sick leave. If work is being carried out from home, this is to take place within the usual working hours. For employees in the home office, the regular daily working hours will generally be considered as fulfilled until further notice. For employees who have to fill out a time sheet: If you are able to fulfill your regular daily working hours while working from home, it is sufficient, for the time being, to enter “home office” in the remarks column and leave the exact times blank (for employees in externally funded projects, regulations may differ depending on the respective funding agreements). If you work excess hours from home, this needs to be justified and agreed on in advance with your supervisor on a case by case basis. Division 3 is available to answer any further questions.
Business trips within Germany or abroad can be approved if necessary for urgent business matters and if the current travel warnings, hygiene regulations and entry requirements of the respective countries or areas are observed.
Alternative means of communication, such as video and telephone conferences, must continue to be given priority.
If it is unavoidably necessary to go on a business trip, the business trip should be carried out in an official vehicle without additional passengers or in a private car, i.e. all official hygiene instructions must be observed within the scope of reasonable safety measures. Employees with symptoms are not obliged to go on a business trip, employees who belong to a risk group are only obliged to do so in the most exceptional cases. If symptoms of COVID-19 occur during a business trip, immediate quarantine and termination of the business trip is mandatory according to the RKI guidelines. The same applies if symptoms occur after a business trip or if contact to an infected patient has been confirmed.
For financial obligations that arise from bookings made on the basis of existing business trip authorizations, please use any available cancellation options; if this does not succeed, please settle them as you would business trips that took place.
In the event of a further spread of the coronavirus and as a precautionary measure, we are currently considering how, in the event of proven cases of infection, the operation of laboratories that require staff to be present can be maintained. For questions on this matter, please contact Ulf Lepszy at the Division for Construction, Occupational Safety and Organization (BSO) (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/verwaltung/bso).
The pandemic plan of the University of Potsdam can be found here as a PDF file.
TheGuidelines for on-site operations with stricter hygiene requirements can be found here
Payment deadlines must be observed in principle even in the current situation.
Copies of invoices as well as payment orders may be submitted to Division 4 after prior consultation, including a justification and reference to Covid-19, if it is not possible to submit original receipts without exceeding the payment deadline due to current home office arrangements. The original documents must be submitted to Division 4 in a timely manner. The original must clearly show that the payment has already been made.
Cash payments can be deposited for the University of Potsdam without an SAP receipt at the “Landeshauptkasse”. The original copy of the acknowledgement of receipt issued by the institution must be submitted to Division 4.
Outgoing cash payments should be requested as early as possible to ensure that they can be made available by Division 4 and the “Landeshauptkasse”.
Due to the reduced staffing situation, payments must be prioritized. In order to prevent damage to the State and to avoid aggravating the economic situation for the suppliers, but also for scholarship holders, the respective payments are processed with the highest priority.
Application advisory services and processing at D1 will take place by telephone and e-mail, preferably by appointment, presumably until April 19, 2020. Please be aware that due to a very high number of applications, longer processing times may be necessary. As usual, you can find our contact details for all questions regarding research funding and your third-party funding applications here: https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/forschung/forschungsfoerderung/service-und-kontakt
Significant changes/delays and their financial impact on the projects must be reported to the provider of the external funds (obligation to notify).
Written correspondence with the funding provider, such as requests for funds and interim statements, should also be sent out a second time via e-mail by the respective department whenever possible. Due to the current emergency on-site operations, the D4 can only handle such matters in individual cases. Please make arrangements with the responsible staff member in the D4.
The providers of funds are currently still proceeding differently with regard to the handling of the Covid-19 consequences. This concerns, for example, the ability to deduct cancellation costs or the suspension or extension of deadlines, etc. Please review this for each individual case. Especially for projects that will end shortly, you may need to apply for an extension of the runtime (by e-mail and by regular mail) in time.
See for example a recent letter from the German Research Foundation and the information from D1 on EU research funding including a link to the European Commission’s FAQs.
For travelling and events, it is advisable to check the booking conditions with regard to a possible cancellation and the associated cancellation costs and to arrange them as flexible as possible. This serves the cost-effective use of funds required of us by the funding provider. In addition, special provisions of the funding provider regarding the eligibility for funding or recognition of any cancellation costs must be observed.
Please note that there are currently delays in the processing of enquiries and procurement requests.
Contact with companies may also be delayed, as their capacities and availability may also be limited. Please submit particularly urgent procurements or procurements for the explicit purpose of offsetting the consequences of the coronavirus to Division 4 as soon as possible with a corresponding remark.
Due to limited production and transport capacities, longer delivery times and short-term changes in prices and availability may occur, even after the order has been placed. Please ensure that deliveries are accepted in your departments. An arrival notification for deliveries via telephone can be arranged. The failure to accept deliveries causes considerable difficulties for suppliers, as they have limited storage capacity.
At present, there may also be restrictions in the international movement of goods. Please make suppliers aware (e.g. for orders below 1,000 € net) of the situation here on site and ensure that the transport company is currently delivering to the university. If you want to send items yourself, please check if the selected parcel service delivers to the destination country/region and/or if there are any restrictions (e.g. weight, size).
If an event organized by the University of Potsdam has to be cancelled, Mr. Konow (richard.konowuni-potsdamde, extension: -113108) will assist you in processing the cancellation.
For the procurement of supplies and services that are absolutely necessary in the current corona situation to ensure the maintenance of healthcare and the ability to work, it is requested that this be clearly emphasized and briefly justified in the procurement application. In such cases, under the given circumstances, faster and more efficient ways of procuring the required items or services are possible.
Due to the current corona situation, events or business meetings have already been or will be cancelled. In this context we would like to point out that necessary additional costs and expenses for travel preparations can of course be reimbursed.
The basis for this is section 10 paragraph 2 BRKG (federal law on travel expenses): “If a business trip is canceled for a reason for which the employee is not responsible, expenses incurred by the preparation and to be covered under this law will be reimbursed.”
In all cases, however, the possibility of cancelation must first be reviewed. According to the relevant administrative regulations, business travellers must "do everything in their power to keep the costs incurred as low as possible immediately after becoming aware of the obstacles for the trip. Any obligations already made must be cancelled as far as possible". (No. 10.2.1 Bbg BRKGVwV)
For railway tickets, an additional goodwill regulation by Deutsche Bahn (https://www.bahn.com/en/view/home/help/corona.shtml?dbkanal_007=L14_S02_D002_KIN0063_INT-_CORONA-Teaser_LZ01) applies in addition to the known cancelation conditions. Before submitting a claim for the aforementioned expenses in the case of railway tickets, please check whether they can be fully or partially refunded in this way.
Please note: In cases where travel vouchers have been issued by Deutsche Bahn for cancelations, please note that the expenses made can be reimbursed in accordance with section 10 paragraph 2 BRKG, but the vouchers must be used for future business trips. Private use of these travel vouchers is not permitted. The conditions for redeeming Deutsche Bahn travel vouchers are available via the following link: https://www.bahn.de/en/view/booking-information/booking/redeeming-cancellation-vouchers.shtml.
Guidelines for travel expense reports
In travel expense reports, receipts that show the respective costs must be marked as expenses for travel preparations (“Auslagen für Reisevorbereitungen”). If necessary, the receipts must be accompanied by an explanation. Please always indicate whether you have reviewed the cancelation options. Once the travel expense report has been approved by the supervisor, the official necessity will be considered as given even for trips that were only being prepared. A separate form for travel expense reports has been created for trips that did not take place. It can be accessed via the following link in the Intranet:
https://www.intern.uni-potsdam.de/u/dezernat3/formulare/pdf/corona - stornierungen.pdf
The post offices located at Neues Palais, Golm and Griebnitzsee are open Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays). No delivery services are currently provided at these locations.
The exchange of letters between these locations and to the branches at
takes place daily, to the Wissenschaftsetage twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday), to the Theodor Fontane Archive, the Psychological-Psychotherapeutic Outpatient Clinic and the Moses Mendelsohn Center once a week (Wednesday).
Outgoing mail is sent daily or according to the above-mentioned schedule.
If you have any questions, please contact the head of the post offices, Dieter Pana (dieter.panauni-potsdamde; -4957).
Due to the current situation, the Division of Human Resources and Legal Affairs can only be reached by telephone (0331 977-1811), by e-mail (d3-sekuni-potsdamde) or in urgent cases by appointment until 19 April 2020.
University of Potsdam
Press and Public Relations Department
Am Neuen Palais 10
House 9
14469 Potsdam
