Informative audiovisual animation on working remotely as probation officers during the COVID pandemic.
DOCUMENT
At present, COVID-19 has caused a possible paradigm shift in education, especially in education delivery for higher educational and learning institutions. To align with the national government and relevant national/international authorities’ policies and to avoid the spread of the virus, educational institutions in many nations have decided to temporarily suspend the traditional classroom-based education and replace it with online-based education. This studyaims at exploring the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and obligatory remote working on work-life balance, mental health and productivity of faculty members working in higher education institutions (HEI). The study is exploratory and uses a qualitative approach using an online survey strategy to include voices of faculty members from different countries. While the results of this study indicate both positive and negative effects of obligatory remote working on faculty members’ work-life balance, well-being and productivity at the same time our findings indicate that university administration must pay heed to address concerns presented in the results.
MULTIFILE
Poor work-life balance (WLB) has been linked to negative outcomes such as increased stress, anxiety, depression, and a perceived reduction in the overall quality of life. At an institutional level, these may include lowered employee commitment and decreased productivity at work. The advent of COVID-19 has necessitated fundamental alterations to work experience and the ways in which WLB may be perceived. This phenomenological study employed qualitative, in-depth interviews to explore higher education academics’ lived experiences of remote working and how they perceived this had impacted their well-being (WB) and WLB. Using purposive samplings, respondents were drawn from HE sectors in the Netherlands, and the UK. The findings offered an understanding of how remote and hybrid teaching delivery during the pandemic affected academics’ actual experiences of WB and WLB. These findings serve to enhance policymakers’ understandings of significant occupational health and WB issues within a post-pandemic education service paradigm.
DOCUMENT
