Job Demands, Resources, and Future Considerations: Academics' Experiences of Working From Home During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has severely affected workers, workplaces, and working practices. In the higher education setting, universities have shifted to distance learning, resulting in profound changes in academics' work. In this study, we aimed to describe academics' job demands and resources related to changes in working conditions during the pandemic, and to examine how these changes have affected the perceived occupational wellbeing of academics. Additionally, we aimed to investigate academics' expectations and concerns for future academic working practices following the pandemic. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 26 academics working at various universities in Sweden. A content analysis was used to identify the key themes from the transcribed interviews. The results indicated that academics experienced a lack of face-to-face communication, absence of an academic environment, work overload, and work-home interference as demanding during the pandemic. In relation to resources, online communication options, appropriate working conditions, organizational-social support, and individual factors were perceived as important. Most respondents perceived negative occupational wellbeing outcomes. However, academics who had the appropriate resources were less likely to be affected by job demands. Academics' expectations for future academic work included continuation of working online, flexibility in the choice of workspace, and strengthened digital capacity. Their concerns were related to a lack of face-to-face interaction, management actions and economic implications, and pure digital education. This paper contributes to the literature by illustrating the complexity and diversity of experiences and preferences among academics that are important for universities to consider when organizing and managing future academic work.

Working from Home, Telework, and Psychological Wellbeing? A Systematic Review

“…In onsite environments, there are consistent relationship development opportunities (e.g., adjacent offices, shared lunch areas), whereas telework environments require planning to establish contact. And quality communication opportunities were important [17][18]. Song and Gao [39] Heiden et al [40] Vander Elst et al [28] Wohrmann and Ebner [30] Wohrmann and Ebner [30] Erro-Garces et al [ In drawing on the proactive work design model, work design conditions were the most studied component regarding telework.…”

“…Song and Gao [39] Heiden et al [40] Vander Elst et al [28] Wohrmann and Ebner [30] Wohrmann and Ebner [30] Erro-Garces et al [ In drawing on the proactive work design model, work design conditions were the most studied component regarding telework. For example, working conditions [17], dedicated home office spaces [18,31], flexibility [31][32], and organizational support [17,34] were seen as important contributors to decent work for employees engaging in telework practices. This makes contextual sense given that many studies focused on understanding what drivers effected wellbeing in workplaces where telework was merely a reflection of the same work and work practices occurring offsite.…”

Fractured academic space: digital literacy and the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Research that specifically examines the impact of COVID-19 on higher education explores how workers have adjusted to the COVID-19 workplace, including professional services staff (e.g., Watermeyer et al, 2022), learning technologists (Watermeyer et al, 2021) and academics (Karatuna et al, 2022;Kennedy, Oliver & Littlejohn, 2022;McGaughey et al, 2021;Rode, Kennedy & Littlejohn, 2022;Stadtlander & Sickel, 2021). Almost universally noting increased workloads, these studies nonetheless tend to focus on cultural and organisational change rather than how information practices have adjusted through the shift to online and hybrid employment.…”

“…In contrast, difficulties resulting from a lack of communication were picked up in Karatuna et al (2022)'s study of academics, who noted that not being able to see a "glow" of interest in a colleague's eye proved to be one of the biggest barriers to remote working. Similar difficulties were noted by Kennedy et al, (2022) whose study of teaching staff highlighted the impossibility of keeping track of students' body language in an online setting.…”

“…The loss of serendipitous and informal information is intensified by the deliberateness of online interactions, which, unlike face-to-face interactions, typically require encounters to be set up in advance. Information-sharing is also forfeited through the decreased opportunities to build the trust that is needed for productive working relationships, including research collaborations, something that is also noted by Karatuna et al (2022):…”