We never volunteered for it, but we have all been participating in a social experiment on remote work. And it turns out that however much we may miss face-to-face interaction with our colleagues and students, there are aspects of our work that many of us now prefer to do remotely. Our recent survey asked members about their preferences when it comes to remote work once campus reopens in the fall. But we also wanted to know about your longer-term preferences, so we asked: “Of the following work activities that you regularly engage in, which would you like to remain remote (for you) even after the pandemic ends?” Possible responses: almost always, sometimes, or never.
As you can see from Fig. 1, looking beyond the pandemic, between 70 and 95 percent of faculty respondents prefer to perform their various duties remotely sometimes or almost always. Fig. 2 shows that Academic Professionals exhibit similar preferences over the range of duties that they perform (with the exception of budget administration).
We will be discussing these and other findings from the membership survey on remote work during the upcoming membership meetings. Come and help us dig deeper into what these findings tell us about our collective experience with remote work and the implications for the future.
Member meetings are scheduled for May 24th at noon, and again May 27th at 4pm.
Members - look for the invite link in your pdx.edu inbox!
