Changes to working life for PhD students during the COVID-19 pandemic: Networking and Social Activities

Abstract

Building of a strong network during the PhD education is essential for future career opportunities, but also central for personal development and well-being. Obtaining and maintaining a strong professional network relies on informal social activities at the workplace and on attending courses, meetings and conferences interacting in real-life with peers. Face-to- face interaction with peers is strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore we decided to investigate the effect on social networking by PhD students during the time of the pandemic. Through four focus group interviews, including in total 19 PhD students, we asked questions on what they perceive as good social networking activities under non-pandemic times and how these were affected by the necessary changes implemented by the universities to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We also investigated how the students perceived the effects of this on their work productivity. Based on our qualitative study we can conclude that nearly all students directly expressed that they are missing in person interactions at the workplace. Especially the lack of informal spontaneous discussions were identified to prevent social networking and have a negative effect on productivity.