Faculty Well-Being during the Intermediate Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed from the immediate crisis in the spring of 2020 to its intermediate stage a year later, workers and their families continued to struggle to meet the challenges of what was becoming the new normal, raising the question of how the pandemic affected people’s well-being as it dragged on. Using survey data collected from the late spring through the summer of 2021, this paper analyzes the well-being of 157 academic staff at three private small liberal arts colleges (SLACs) in New York State along six dimensions during the intermediate stage of the pandemic: satisfaction with work-life balance (WLB), feeling used up, depression, anxiety, stress, and sleep problems.

We conducted six regressions to identify the significant predictors of each well-being measure. The one predictor that was significantly associated with all six measures was the work-family conflict scale. In contrast, the family-work conflict scale was not significantly associated with any of the six well-being measures. The regression analysis revealed that the more work interfered with the faculty member’s personal life, the less satisfied they were with their WLB, the more often they felt used up at the end of the day, the more often they have been bothered by trouble falling asleep, the higher their depression score, the higher their anxiety score, and the higher their stress score. The emotional labor demands also significantly predicted WLB satisfaction, anxiety, and stress, but not feeling used up, depression, and sleep problems. Faculty who worked more during the academic year 2020-2021 reported less WLB satisfaction and more often feeling used up at the end of the day. By increasing the spillover from work to family, the emotional labor demands, and the number of work hours during its intermediate stage, the pandemic continued to harm the well-being of workers and their families.