Different working arrangements, different roles: Simon Fraser University managers creating equitable workplaces post-COVID-19

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 virus a global pandemic, mandating workers to work remotely, if possible. The pandemic resulted in an everlasting change to the "typical" workday structure (Infection Prevention and Control Canada, 2023). Institutions of higher education were forced to pivot quickly, enabling many staff and/or faculty to work remotely full-time and create ad hoc hybrid work arrangements for even essential higher education support service workers. In my research, I explored the perspectives of Simon Fraser University (SFU) managers who manage teams with different working arrangements post-COVID. I interviewed five SFU managers and found that the qualitative data collected from these interviews provided the following emergent themes: key components of a hybrid working arrangement, how technology advanced throughout the pandemic, and how the "ideal higher education worker norms" changed along with what staff and/or faculty expect from their workplace post-COVID.