Margarita Bakracheva, Ekaterina Sofronieva, Martin Tsenov
{"title":"Work-life balance of university teachers after two years of telework during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Margarita Bakracheva, Ekaterina Sofronieva, Martin Tsenov","doi":"10.3233/hsm-230089","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"BACKGROUND: Apart from being a topic of key interest during the last decades for its individual and organizational effectiveness, work-life balance also has specific implications during the period of imposed remote work. OBJECTIVE: The article outlines some of the antecedents of university teachers’ work-life balance. They were the only professionals teleworking during the whole period of imposed restriction and furthermore, university teachers are a group of professionals without any prior home office or remote work experience. METHODS: The cross-sectional study comprises randomized convenient sample of 708 university teachers who were administered an online instrument, measuring the constructs of work-life balance, perceived stress, burnout, job satisfaction, general health, general fears and anxiety, and satisfaction with personal relations. RESULTS: The results reveal that perceived stress, burnout, job satisfaction, physical and mental health, psychosomatic problems and quality of relations are antecedents of participants’ work-life balance. CONCLUSIONS: University teachers have adapted to the new working mode and succeeded in maintaining moderate levels of work-life balance and burnout. However, our findings outline the need of a robust comprehensive framework, accounting for the multiple and multi-level predictors of work-life balance. Future research and HR perspectives have been outlined.","PeriodicalId":13113,"journal":{"name":"Human systems management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Human systems management","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3233/hsm-230089","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Apart from being a topic of key interest during the last decades for its individual and organizational effectiveness, work-life balance also has specific implications during the period of imposed remote work. OBJECTIVE: The article outlines some of the antecedents of university teachers’ work-life balance. They were the only professionals teleworking during the whole period of imposed restriction and furthermore, university teachers are a group of professionals without any prior home office or remote work experience. METHODS: The cross-sectional study comprises randomized convenient sample of 708 university teachers who were administered an online instrument, measuring the constructs of work-life balance, perceived stress, burnout, job satisfaction, general health, general fears and anxiety, and satisfaction with personal relations. RESULTS: The results reveal that perceived stress, burnout, job satisfaction, physical and mental health, psychosomatic problems and quality of relations are antecedents of participants’ work-life balance. CONCLUSIONS: University teachers have adapted to the new working mode and succeeded in maintaining moderate levels of work-life balance and burnout. However, our findings outline the need of a robust comprehensive framework, accounting for the multiple and multi-level predictors of work-life balance. Future research and HR perspectives have been outlined.
期刊介绍:
Human Systems Management (HSM) is an interdisciplinary, international, refereed journal, offering applicable, scientific insight into reinventing business, civil-society and government organizations, through the sustainable development of high-technology processes and structures. Adhering to the highest civic, ethical and moral ideals, the journal promotes the emerging anthropocentric-sociocentric paradigm of societal human systems, rather than the pervasively mechanistic and organismic or medieval corporatism views of humankind’s recent past. Intentionality and scope Their management autonomy, capability, culture, mastery, processes, purposefulness, skills, structure and technology often determine which human organizations truly are societal systems, while others are not. HSM seeks to help transform human organizations into true societal systems, free of bureaucratic ills, along two essential, inseparable, yet complementary aspects of modern management: a) the management of societal human systems: the mastery, science and technology of management, including self management, striving for strategic, business and functional effectiveness, efficiency and productivity, through high quality and high technology, i.e., the capabilities and competences that only truly societal human systems create and use, and b) the societal human systems management: the enabling of human beings to form creative teams, communities and societies through autonomy, mastery and purposefulness, on both a personal and a collegial level, while catalyzing people’s creative, inventive and innovative potential, as people participate in corporate-, business- and functional-level decisions. Appreciably large is the gulf between the innovative ideas that world-class societal human systems create and use, and what some conventional business journals offer. The latter often pertain to already refuted practices, while outmoded business-school curricula reinforce this problematic situation.