Leadership Insights From Surveying Over 12,000 University Staff During COVID-19
How COVID-19 impacted the employee experience of university staff
The challenges of COVID-19 have hit higher education harder than most industries. Arrivals of international students in Australia dropped by more than 50%, revenue shortfalls across the sector are around $4 billion a year, and 20,000 jobs may be lost in Australian universities.
During the crisis so far, over 140 organisations across a range of industries have taken part in Voice Project’s free COVID-19 Staff Check-In Survey. In this article we pull together the data from the first eight participating universities, representing feedback from 12,796 academic and professional staff. Some caution is needed in interpreting these results given the experience of eight universities doesn’t represent the whole higher education sector in Australia. Nevertheless, the consistent insights across this very large data set deliver lessons for all Australian university leaders.
The Survey Purpose, Model and Method
Our COVID-19 Staff Check-In Survey is designed to be a short (39 questions), quick (5-10 mins) measure of staff wellbeing and business continuity, and gather feedback about a range of related work practices including safety, resourcing, communication, involvement, supervision and leadership. We asked about working location (eg, home, office), caring responsibilities, and hierarchical level. We also have insights into the challenges of both academics and professional staff who interact directly with students.
How Universities Differ to Other Industries
Results across all industries have been surprisingly positive. You can read about these results and our comments here. It’s likely there is some sample bias from more progressive and high performing organisations being more likely to survey staff at this time, as well as staff being grateful for the level of attention most organisations are giving to the safety of their employees.
Nevertheless, there are some important differences between universities and other industries. Across most questions, universities scored below the average of other industries. Universities weren’t the worst performing organisations – the industries with the lowest scores were hospitality, early childhood, schools and hospitals. But universities were noticeably lower than average for:
Confidence in the future (24 percent favourable lower)
Staff being aware how COVID-19 will impact their jobs (11% lower)
Having a manageable workload (10% lower)
Being able to meet family responsibilities (9% lower)
Confidence in senior management decision making (9% lower)
Coping well with stress (7% lower)
Ability to continue supporting customers (6% lower)
One area in which universities were relatively strong was safety, with staff saying they felt safe carrying out their role (5% above the average of other industries) and staff believing their colleagues were taking appropriate precautions in the form of distancing, cleaning, etc (4% above average). It may be that these results reflect a strong safety compliance culture at universities, and perhaps also that universities were willing and able to quickly transition to online service delivery.
Demographic Groups Within Universities Most Impacted
Results for universities became even more interesting when we started to drill down into subgroups of staff. Some of the stronger differences between staff groups include the following:
Reflecting the dramatic change in how university services are delivered, staff in student-facing roles scored 4-13% lower than their non-student facing colleagues across all categories, with the greatest differences being wellbeing (9% lower) and work-life balance (13% lower).
There was a strong impact of hierarchy, with frontline student-facing staff scores ranging from 5% (work-life balance) to 18% (involvement) lower than senior management.
Staff with caring responsibilities experienced greater struggles, with parents reporting worse wellbeing (4% lower) than non-parents, and staff with caring responsibilities for people other than children (such as elderly, disabled, or people deemed a high COVID-19 risk) scoring worse on wellbeing (6% lower), work-life balance (7% lower) and involvement (8% lower).
Staff who met two or more of these conditions faced particularly challenging times. For example, if you were a university staff member with student-facing responsibilities, had caring responsibilities, and were personally at high COVID-19 risk, your scores ranged from 10% (safety) to 24% (involvement) lower than the average worker across all industries.
Four Key Lessons
Given the substantial financial and operational challenges faced by higher education, it was inevitable that staff at Australian universities would feel greater strain than many other employees. Still, our results suggest a few key lessons for how university leaders can better manage business continuity and wellbeing of staff:
Communicate openly and often to staff as much as possible about the pressures your university or work area is experiencing. Even though there may be a noisy minority opposing some of the tough decisions, the large majority of staff are responding positively to sincere regular messages from senior leaders and supervisors who stay in touch, in as personal a manner as possible, explaining decisions and next steps.
Continue to care for the safety and wellbeing of staff. Universities have performed strongly regarding staff physical safety. Continue this vigilance but extend the focus to the broader wellbeing of staff. Recognise and empathise with staff facing extra challenges including dealing directly with students, and those staff caring for not just children but also other high-risk groups including the elderly and people with disabilities and other diseases that don’t play well with COVID-19.
Empower staff in some of the decision making, especially regarding their day-to-day duties. Because of unavoidable pressures and deadlines, many high-level decisions will need to be made quickly by leaders with little consultation. But look for ways where you can involve your staff in decisions directly impacting their work, including how best to educate and liaise with students, and how to structure their hours and location to meet unique challenges associated with caring responsibilities and online course delivery. Staff are responding very positively to leaders who provide a little more autonomy and flexibility for staff who are experiencing unique challenges.
Check in regularly. Senior leaders and HR can use surveys, and our COVID-19 Staff Check-In Survey is still free for all universities and work area leaders. Supervisors can use a mix of face-to-face, video (Zoom, Teams, Hangouts, BlueJeans), chat tech (Slack, Teams, Hangouts, Yammer), and good old email and phone to stay in touch with staff and ask “Are you OK? Any problems or suggestions?”
Through greater communication, caring about both physical and mental health, empowering staff and checking in, you’ll better manage health and safety risks, as well as strengthen your understanding of the challenges faced by staff and hence make better decisions based on higher quality information.
Call or email us (1800 8 VOICE, enquiries@voiceproject.com) if you’d like more information about our free COVID-19 Staff Check-In Survey.