Leadership Response to COVID-19: Impacts on Workplace Culture in Alberta Schools

Abstract

Times of crisis can highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of established systems (Aberle & Hoekstra, 2020; Schleicher, 2020; United Nations, 2020). With the COVID-19 pandemic circumnavigating the globe in multiple waves, Alberta’s education system, including its high schools, has experienced unprecedented pressures on economic, political, social, and psychological levels, revealing both inherent strengths and weaknesses in the functioning of the system (Aberle & Hoekstra, 2020; Alberta Teachers’ Association, 2020a). This mixed methods study uses perceptions of prior and ongoing pandemic work experiences in Alberta high schools to explore administrators’ influence on workplace culture through the research question: How has leadership’s response to shifting work conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted school culture in Alberta high schools? For quantitative data, 17 Alberta high school teachers and administrators responded to a Likert-type survey, and a subset of four were selected through combined purposive and convenience sampling for an interview to gather qualitative data. Both data sets revealed themes of increased levels of stress and decreased levels of workplace satisfaction for both teachers and administrators, with a shift to relying on support from outside of the workplace. While communication patterns remained stable when comparing prior and ongoing pandemic conditions (i.e., effective communication patterns stayed effective; ineffective communication patterns stayed ineffective), trust in leadership broadly diminished for teachers during the pandemic, while self-efficacy increased for both administrators and teachers as solutions to emergent issues were found. With a preference for unstructured, spontaneous, and as-needed support within the workplace, there was a strong indication that pre-existing relationships were the most significant source of sustainable well-being in the workplace for teachers and administrators. While staff flexibility was essential to surviving the multi-factorial impacts of the pandemic, effective, predictable communication patterns and meaningful, authentic relationships were pre-existing conditions that played an important role in sustaining Alberta administrators and teachers during unprecedented times.