Job demands and well‐being in universities in the pandemic: A longitudinal study

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Stephen Wood
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12376

DOI: 10.1111/irj.12376

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Job demands and well‐being in universities in

the pandemic: A longitudinal study

Stephen Wood

University of Leicester School of

Business, Leicester, UK

Correspondence

Stephen Wood, University of Leicester

School of Business, Brookfield, London

Rd, Leicester LE2 1RQ, UK.

Email: s.j.wood@le.ac.uk

Funding information

University of Leicester's ESRC Impact

Accelerator Award.

Abstract

Concerns about work intensification within universi-

ties have been an issue over the past decade and the

Covid‐19 pandemic may have accelerated any trend

toward excessive job demands associated with work‐

related stress. This paper reports a longitudinal study

conducted in two English universities based on

observations at 11 time points from March 2020 to

February 2021, covering academic and nonacademic

workers. The results show that four measures of job

demands increased during the period and that blended

learning has contributed to these increases. Various

measures of well‐being are negatively associated with

work intensity, while work–nonwork conflict is posi-

tively related to it and mediates the demands–well‐

being relationship. The study also shows that the use of

a variety of methods of accommodating the increased

demands—increasing total hours, working at week-

ends, extending the work day and forsaking breaks,

normal holidays and exercise—are associated with

increased work intensity. The policy implications of the

study are that interventions aimed at employee well‐

being should be focused on the causes of stress and,

particularly, job demands, rather than coping with

stress and that future decisions about homeworking

should take account of these causes and not simply the

satisfaction or performance levels of homeworkers.

Ind. Relat. 2022;53:336–367.336

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2022 The Authors. Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

1|INTRODUCTION

Predictions that the Covid‐19 pandemic would accelerate trends already underway were widely

made at its outset. These focused on digitalisation and homeworking and the signs are that

such prophesies are being realised (BBC World Service, 2019; Cramer & Zaveri, 2020;

Phillips, 2020). One trend neglected in the prophesying was the intensification of work.

Movement in this direction has long been discussed and researched with recent attention

focusing on the intensification of professional work, including that of lawyers, police and

health workers, across a range of countries (e.g., Gunawardena, 2019; Holland et al., 2019; Lea

et al., 2012; Sommerlad, 2016; Tsai & Chan, 2010; Turnbull & Wass, 2015). In this paper, I

concentrate on the higher education sector, where concerns about the intensification of

demands on staff have been expressed throughout the world for much of the last decade, with

an emphasis on the novelty of this as traditional practices were being altered.

1

Soon into the pandemic in 2020, further concerns were being expressed about this work ‐

intensification trend, with speculation that a tipping point may be reached. The title of a 2020 report

on research into the pandemic's effects on Canadian academics captured this view: ‘On the verge of

burnout’(Chronicle of Higher Education, 2020). Its message is equally clear: ‘As the coronavirus

pandemic relentlessly wears on, the professoriate is overworked, stressed and thoroughly exhausted’

(op cit, p. 4). The focus is on the extra work generated particularly by online teaching and its effects

on well‐being and work–life balance. This is consistent with dominant work‐related theories of

psychological strain which place emphasis on the negative impact excessive demands have on well‐

being (e.g., Job Demands–Resources theory, Bakker & Demerouti, 2007 and Karasek's demand and

control theory, Karasek & Theorell, 1990), which are supported by a wealth of empirical studies (e.g.,

Ilies et al., 2010; Totterdell et al., 2006). Moreover, Franke (2015) shows that the addition of new

demands may have an effect over and above the state of intense workloads. Additionally, according

to some theories of remote working, the enforced homeworking environment in which most

university staff worked in the pandemic may itself have contributed to increasing workloads or at

least the hours worked, not least through reinforcing an always‐on culture (Chung, 2022;

Mazmanian et al., 2013; McDowall & Kinman, 2017).

It is too early to assess whether the work‐intensification trend will continue after the

pandemic. Consequently, I explore whether the trend has already been broken by the pandemic

or is continuing, by examining the pattern of job demands and their effects on well‐being and

hours worked and other adaptations made during the pandemic. If demands increased within

this period, then the possibility exists that the trend will continue after the pandemic. This is

particularly likely if employers gauge that such working arrangements have been successful

and do not anticipate a need to relax workloads. However, if increased workloads had adverse

effects on well‐being, employees may be less willing to continue to accept them or work–home

imbalances, even if they have been largely satisfied with working at home. My investigation is

based on data on university staff in two English universities while they were working at home

1

For examples of coverage of overworking see, in the United States: https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/06/30/students-

dont-deserve-underpaid-overworked-professors, in Australia: https://www.theeducatoronline.com/k12/news/teachers-

overworked-and-underappreciated–report/269859, in Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/

uvic-internal-covid-survey-1.5862848 and in India: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/delhi-university-

teachers-boycott-du-evaluation-of-papers-2829615/andhttps://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/

overworked-assistant-professors-of-general-medicine-in-tiruvannamalai-write-to-tamil-nadu-chief-minister/

article32620676.ece

JOB DEMANDS AND WELL‐BEING IN UNIVERSITIES

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as part of the government's pandemic response. I first introduce the issues further and the

research questions before reporting the results of the study.

2|CONCEPTUAL FOREGROUND AND PROPOSITIONS

Demands are the ‘things that have to be done’, say Schaufeli and Bakker (2004, p. 296). The

concept of job demands within the Job Demands–Resources theory, goes beyond this as it refers

to ‘physical, social organisational aspects of the job that require sustained physical or mental

effort’(Demerouti et al., 2001, p. 3). While they need not be associated with undesirable or

negative features of jobs, within this theory they are expected to have adverse effects on health

and well‐being (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Any decrease in these demands is, therefore, likely

to promote well‐being by reducing psychological strain.

Recognition of the increasing and more complex demands placed on academics in the

decade before the pandemic was widespread across the globe. Wray & Kinman (2021), who

have been monitoring demands on academic‐related university staff in the United Kingdom for

over a period of 15‐years, found a progressive increase such that, using the UK's HSE stress

standards indicator tool, their level has reached the point that flags up an ‘urgent need for

action’. Research in Australia and New Zealand has revealed a similar story of increased stress

levels in higher education (Lee et al., 2021; Tham & Holland, 2018).

Underlying these increases were rising student numbers without commensurable increasing

staff levels so student–staff ratios increased. But other forces were at play, increasing publication

pressures, an increase in administrative tasks and responsibilities, bureaucratic procedures, use of

‘customer service’and other metrics that entail judgements, difficulties in getting tenure or

permanent appointments, calls for more public engagement, the complexity of student support

(particularly relating to mental health) and the growing sophistication of computer‐based

administration, teaching and research tools (Naidoo‐Chety & Du Plessis, 2021). Many of these also

contributed to increasing workloads for nonacademic staff.

In the United Kingdom, neoliberal government policy has underlain these developments;

founded on marketization and what Maisuria and Cole (2017, p. 606) call the ‘businessification

of education’, it has transformed higher education ‘from a public good into a commodity’

(op cit: p. 607). A reversal of the trend in increasing job demands would require a reversal or

relaxation of this policy. However, the UK government's response to the pandemic was within

the neoliberal approach to universities. Its underlying message was that business must be as

normal as possible. A core element was that fees must continue to be paid with no discounting

and hence teaching should be online and not curtailed. Some universities reduced the time

nominally allowed for research to free up time for this. Consequently, new demands were

created by the lockdown, initially, these were dominated by tasks involved in creating the

conditions for working in the lockdown, including establishing IT facilities and making

decisions about how to cope and adjust teaching and services during the pandemic;

subsequently, the organisation and preparation of on‐line teaching would dominant the

innovative activities. The use of mass homeworking as an intervention in managing the

pandemic may have increased the saliency of employees' work–life balance, but the pandemic

was not treated as an opportunity to take stock of the accelerating demands on university staff

or for them to catch up on any backlog of work. The increasing attention given to the ‘well‐

being’agenda in universities remained within the neoliberal approach as it is centred on

individual's ability to cope with stress and not on its underlying causes. In the pandemic,

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