Covid placed a particular strain on workers from around the world. Research from HSE University highlights how it was particularly stressful for academics, who found their typical working week extended by 11 hours. What’s more, this longer working week appears to have become the new normal in the sector.

The authors highlight that the pandemic introduced considerable ambiguity into academics working lives. They were forced to adapt to new online platforms and adopt new teaching methods, all while assessing student performance and providing the usual high-quality feedback.

“Scholars already work more than the norm. And during the crisis, they started working even more in order to alleviate the ambiguity during the pandemic,” the authors explain. “This adaptive behavior only reinforced the long-standing trend. Such a strategy could have been both their personal choice and the result of pressure from their university or their co-workers.”

Academic strain

The researchers examined how Covid impacted the workload and distribution of time for academics, with participants randomly selected from those who had published in the Scopus academic database in 2019. They were each asked to complete a questionnaire to determine their current workload and the amount of time they would spend on research, teaching, and admin versus the amount of time they would like to spend on each.

The questionnaires were initially completed in May 2020 and then again in November that year. The results show that a typical academic was working three hours more per week than they were in 2019, with the typical working week stretching to 51 hours.

This increased workload was primarily due to additional teaching requirements, as the pandemic imposed considerable demands to adapt to new teaching methods. Academics also spent a lot of time moving their courses onto new online learning platforms.

“Working overtime makes researchers more and more susceptible to stress and burnout. During the pandemic, a new norm evolved that saw researchers working even more. The questions are how sustainable this situation is and what its long-term consequences will be. This is particularly interesting, since other industries, by contrast, are looking into decreasing the number of working days and hours in order to improve performance and quality of life,” the authors conclude.