Objectives: In February 2020 our wellness committee completed a survey assessing the wellness needs of library employees. The data were meant to inform creation of employee wellness programming and serve as baseline data for evaluating the program's effectiveness. Within a month of the completion of data collection the work environment drastically changed. Most of us were no longer working onsite. In November 2020 we once again distributed the survey. The objective of the follow-up survey was to discover how wellness concerns and priorities may have shifted in light of COVID-19 and the resultant changes to the work environment.
Methods: An anonymous online survey was distributed via our library employees email list in November 2020 as a follow-up to our February 2020 survey. Topics covered in the 7-minute Qualtrics survey included the dimensions of wellness respondents would like a wellness program to address, health topics of interest, and concerns regarding wellness within the work environment. For the follow-up survey, respondents were instructed to answer the questions based on their current work environment, whether that be on-campus, working from home, or some hybrid arrangement. Aggregate responses to the two identical surveys were compared to identify any changes.
Results: Ninety-seven employees completed the February survey and 80 the follow-up in November 2020 (38% and 30% response rates, respectively). The top wellness concerns identified by respondents included morale (n=55) and mental exhaustion (n=51) in February, and mental exhaustion (n=48) and work/life balance (n=42) in November. Wellness dimensions most respondents would like a wellness program to address included physical (n=75), emotional (n=67), and occupational wellness (n=65) in February, and emotional (n=56), physical (n=54), and occupational (n=43) at follow-up. Stress management was the topic of most interest to respondents both in February (26.8%) and November (32%).
Conclusions: Our preliminary findings suggest overall library employee wellness concerns remained fairly stable, despite a major change from an onsite work environment to a predominantly work-from-home model. The top three wellness domains remained the same, although the order changed, and stress management remained the health topic of most interest. The main difference we noted was that work/life balance rose to one of the top concerns in the follow-up survey. This may reflect an increased difficulty in maintaining boundaries between work and home life when both are occurring in the same location. Going forward, our library wellness committee will prioritize content on stress management given the ongoing interest in the topic.