“All of the Work and None of the Enjoyment”: College Instructors’ Diminished Occupational Well-Being in the COVID-19 Crisis

Professors (N = 38) at a small liberal arts college in the Midwestern U.S. retrospectively reported experiencing higher levels of job demands (work overload, emotional labor, home-work interference), no change in job resources (social support), and diminished levels of occupational well-being (higher emotional exhaustion, lower work engagement) during the COVID-19 pandemic than before. Thematic analysis of open-ended survey responses indicates that the increase in job demands may be related to the transition to online instruction, and multiple regression analyses revealed predictive relationships between changes in job demands and changes in professors’ occupational well-being during the pandemic. Parents and non-tenured professors were at particular risk during this time, as parents reported larger increases in home-work interference than non-parents, and non-tenured faculty reported larger increases in emotional exhaustion than tenured faculty. This latter finding indicates that job security (operationalized as academic tenure in the present study) may protect workers’ well-being during crises, and thus should be conceptualized as a job resource. Participants expressed a desire for greater job security during the pandemic, as well as for better communication and increased involvement in decision-making, which could bridge the divide between professors and administrators