Emergency remote work during the Covid-19 Pandemic : lived experiences of employees at a tertiary institution, Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract

The emergence of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in campuses around the world to be closed. Following the implementation of the lockdown restrictions, traditional South African universities were forced to adapt their way of operation to emergency remote work (ERW). While not a completely new method of work, the concept is novel to residential university administrators who must quickly transition from a face-to-face setting to one that allows for remote work to take place. The research aims to explore the lived experiences of the senior administrative staff in academic departments. To achieve this, qualitative data were collected using semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions from seventeen non-randomly and purposefully selected senior administrative staff. The participants were in various academic departments in four faculties on the upper campus. Microsoft Teams platform was used for interviews as face-to-face meetings were prohibited due to lockdown restrictions. Hanging between national load shedding and connectivity issues, three of the interviews had to be rescheduled to accommodate the participants. One participant pulled out an hour before the actual interview due to being overwhelmed with remote work and mental health issues. The interview was then carried out three weeks later. Thematic analysis was done on the transcribed data collected during the interviews. Although the participants had unique experiences, key findings show that there were similarities as well. Participants have embraced remote work, enjoyed the flexibility of work from home and would welcome a three-day office week and two days’ working remotely, or vice versa. Increased productivity at home was identified as a result of less disruptions at home. Mental health issues were a concern to participants although they understood that these were exacerbated by the psychosocial impact of COVID-19.