I wanted to know how the lockdown and working from home was experienced by staff in the University of Edinburgh. And I wanted to know whether this was experienced differently by different demographic groups.

Luckily I have a Data and Equality Officer working with me.

We conducted a survey at university level during 26th June – 6th July to better understand the experiences of staff members while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 5069 staff members participated in the survey. We used ONS standard questions on Wellbeing measures so we could benchmark and compare with similar studies.

The key purposes of the survey were to:

• Understand EDI and other impacts of the COVID period and home working.
• Serve as data for immediate decisions on how to better support staff working from home.
• Serve as data for next steps for academic schools and Professional service groups on decisions on their return to campus plans.
• Serve as data for decisions/discussions on longer term home/hybrid working and other reshaping thinking both locally and at a University level.

A report  was produced and a ‘power BI dashboard’ was  created so that managers and other staff members can interrogate the data (including demographic differences where this was possible) independently.

The Power BI dashboard however, does not highlight where differences in responses are statistically significant, and the overall report highlights where statistical difference is associated with high percentage differences. So Lilinaz produced a further report  to fill this gap by including all statistically significant findings for all demographic groups.

This report will be of interest to EDI officers and anyone who likes dis-aggregated data.

Professional staff were more likely to be interested in complete homeworking in the future. This was the case for more than a quarter (27%) of professional staff, compared to 12% of academic staff who were less likely to be interested in complete homeworking in the future.

Staff Homeworking Experience Survey Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Report – Comparing Demographic Differences at University of Edinburgh.University of Edinburgh Homeworking EDI Report

You can read the whole thing, but here’s a taster:

Gender

• Men were more likely to report a large negative impact of space, internet, working hours, and non-work responsibilities while working from home. They were more likely to report an overall large negative impact of home working on their work experience. Men were more likely to report low ratings for life satisfaction. They were more likely to not be interested in homeworking in the future.
• Women were more likely to not have previous experience of home working, and were more likely to have their equipment wholly supplied by the University. They were more likely to report a large positive impact on working hours, non-work responsibilities, and other caring responsibilities while working from home. However, they were more likely to report a large negative impact on childcare while working from home. They were more likely to report a large negative impact on their research output. They were more likely to report an overall large positive impact of home working on their work experience. Women were more likely to report much more productivity than before. However, they were also more likely to report much more tiredness than before. Women were more likely to think that they are kept informed about matters affecting them, and be satisfied with the University resources in place to help them at this time. Women were more likely to report very high values on happiness, and high values for anxiety ONS measures.