The adaptation of academics to the Covid-19 crisis in terms of work time allocation

Plos One. 2022. Vol. 17. No. 8. Article e0273246.

Horta H., Anna Panova, Santos J., Maria Yudkevich

Academics have seen their work environment and routines severely affected by the Covid19 pandemic. This topic has been analyzed by the literature, mostly from personal and descriptive perspectives, that highlight the challenging transitions and adaptations that academics have endured concerning their work and life-balance. This research complements those studies, by using a sample of university academics working all around the world in all disciplinary fields and focuses on a longitudinal perspective of workload and task time allocation of academic work. The findings show that academics which in general had long working hours, further increased their time of the week dedicated to work leading possibly to the reported cases in the literature of increasing stress and burnout during the pandemic. These effects were found to be similar to all academics, independently of their gender and disciplinary field. More concerning is that this increased number of hours worked per week appears to have established itself as part of the new normal. The main driver for the increased workload is associated with teaching, and to a lesser extent with administrative duties.

Keywords: academics, workload, University, COVID-19 pandemic

Publication based on the results of: Markets and Institutions in a Changing World: Economic Agents’ New Strategies under Substantial Changes in Institutional Environment and Their Regulation Efficiency (2022)