COVID-19 Impacts on Faculty and Staff: Changing the way employees work

Why and how we conducted this research

The goal of this project is to investigate the impact of current working arrangements at York University (among academic and administrative staff), arising from adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acknowledgements

This report is based on findings from a survey conducted at York University in August/September 2020.  This study is a part of the COVID Homeworking for University Staff Survey (CHUSS) project. The CHUSS is an international research collaboration (including researchers at 14 universities – seven in Australia and seven in Canada) looking into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the working arrangements of faculty and staff at universities, and it is led by Dr. David Peetz at Griffith University, Australia. Thus, original survey was designed and led by Professor Emeritus David Peetz and Professor Emeritus Glenda Strachan at Griffith University in Australia, then adapted slightly for the Canadian context, and administered at a total of seven universities in Australia and seven universities in Canada. The local research at York was led by Assistant Professor Kelly Pike, School of Human Resource Management, on behalf of the Global Labour Research Centre. Quantitative data analysis is being led by Assistant Professor James Chowhan, School of Human Resource Management. This research has received ethics review and approval by the Human Participants Review Sub-Committee, York University’s Ethics Review Board and conforms to the standards of the Canadian Tri-Council Research Ethics guidelines.

The authors are grateful to GLRC Director Luann Good Gingrich for her guidance and ongoing support of the project, as well as to Andrew Mitchell for support with initial data management and analytics.

Further, the authors are thankful for the following graphic and information design contributions: poster by Ingrid Wong (BDes ’23); website by Sean Reibling (BDes ’23) with guidance from Professor Angela Norwood and Lucy Bilson (BDes ’16, MDes ’20) in the Department of Design/AMPD.

This report represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of York University.

More information about the “COVID-19 Home-working by university staff survey” is available on the project home page.