The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Teleworking and Education in a Romanian Higher Education Institution: An Internal Stakeholders Perspective

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created the conditions for the expansion of teleworking (TW) in numerous sectors and organizations, and higher education institutions (HEIs) have had to adapt to this context. This paper aims to identify and analyze five factors (technology, individual involvement and skills, physical inactivity, psychological well-being, and household activities) that influence the effort and results in TW and education (E) HEIs from the perspective of their key internal stakeholders. The data were gathered by a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods, such as interviews and surveys. They were analyzed and interpreted through factorial analysis that uses the presentation of the main components as an extraction method, with the Varimax rotation method adopting Kaiser normalization, and processed with SPSS statistical software. This study shows that the effort and results of the key internal stakeholders of HEIs are influenced by the five factors. In this respect, students’ results are negatively influenced by technology and physical inactivity factors. Moreover, the efforts of auxiliary and non-teaching staff are highly positively influenced by the psychological well-being factor and their results are positively influenced by the individual involvement and skills factor and negatively influenced by the household activities factor.

Teleworking Impact on Wellbeing and Productivity: A Cluster Analysis of the Romanian Graduate Employees

“…They value these aspects, have an increased level of wellbeing, and obtain better results at work. These outcomes are congruent with previous researches (Kowalski and Swanson, 2005;Raiborn and Butler, 2009;Catană et al, 2021).…”

“…During the time, various points of view from several domains (e.g., psychology, medicine, and sociology) have been expressed related to the concept of wellbeing. Thus, wellbeing constitutes not only a broad, complex, multi-dimensional, and multifaceted concept (Catană et al, 2021) but also a state (Dodge et al, 2012). However, two different perspectives seem to be predominant as they operationalize wellbeing as follows:…”

Teleworking in Romania during Covid-19 crisis: From conjunctional adaptation to change of economic paradigm

“…In general, they do not feel comfortable with the telework option and are generally of the opinion that their efficiency is lower than in the conditions of physical presence, which indicates that teleworking is still being improved in relation to the efficiency of the teachinglearning process, this situation being different from other types of activities. For example, Raišiene et al (2021) obtained a similar result in their study, but Catană et al (2021) obtained that teachers state that blended learning (mixed system) is the best way, while students and auxiliary and non-teaching staff consider that the traditional system (face-to-face) represents the best way to carry out the educational process.…”

Modelling the COVID-19 Pandemic Effects on Employees’ Health and Performance: A PLS-SEM Mediation Approach

“…COVID-19 pandemic has changed daily routines and brought great challenges in all areas of activity [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Moreover, it has implicitly contributed to an increase in fear, anxiety, emotional stress, fatigue, insomnia, sadness, and depression among people [12,19].…”