Work from Home during COVID-19: Perceptions of Academic Professionals in India

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic, also known as COVID-19, spread worldwide, leading to an ongoing global pandemic. The pandemic has severely impacted educational systems globally as well as in India. Most governments have temporarily closed educational institutions, with many switching to online education. Around 168 million students and youths were affected by the closures of schools in response to this pandemic by September 2020. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of academic professionals working in higher educational institutions (HEIs) in India about working from home due to the COVID-19 outbreak. A total of 615 academic professionals working in HEIs across India took part in the survey. An online questionnaire was designed in 'Google Forms' and sent to the respondents via E-mail, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter to collect the required information. The data was entered and analysed using IBM SPSS [version 28.0.1] to find the frequencies and Chi-square tests. Results indicated that gender, designation, employee age, and stream teaching were found to have significant influences on perceptions of work from home (WFH) policies, productivity while teaching from home digitally, work-life balance (except for gender), and the quality of teaching from home (except for stream teaching).