Work-life balance and remote working in the pandemic and beyond: the lived experiences of university academics in The Netherlands and UK

ABSTRACTPoor work-life balance (WLB) has been linked to negative outcomes such as increased stress, anxiety, depression, and a perceived reduction in the overall quality of life. At an institutional level, these may include lowered employee commitment and decreased productivity at work. The advent of COVID-19 has necessitated fundamental alterations to work experience and the ways in which WLB may be perceived. This phenomenological study employed qualitative, in-depth interviews to explore higher education academics’ lived experiences of remote working and how they perceived this had impacted their well-being (WB) and WLB. Using purposive samplings, respondents were drawn from HE sectors in the Netherlands, and the UK. The findings offered an understanding of how remote and hybrid teaching delivery during the pandemic affected academics’ actual experiences of WB and WLB. These findings serve to enhance policymakers’ understandings of significant occupational health and WB issues within a post-pandemic education service paradigm.KEYWORDS: Remote workingwork-life balanceHEwell-beingHE policyHRM policies Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Declaration of interestThe authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAbdul RaufAbdul holds a PhD in Human Resource Management from UT in addition to an MBA and MSc in Business. His main focus in research is on issues related to Human Resource Management (HRM). Currently he is interested in researching on HR competencies for future industries such as competency profiles required for smart industry (industry 4.0). He loves teaching and supervising graduate and post graduate students for their graduation assignment / final projects. He contributes actively to University’s HRM department in the screening and hiring process of academic staff for various schools of the university. He has developed and implemented various HR strategies and procedures for the HR function of the university. He has presented many research papers at several international conferences in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands. He is conversant with the Standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education system and is also part of different assessment panels for educational programmes and institutional accreditations assessments.Shohreh ParhamShohreh Parham holds dual positions as an Assistant Professor at AMSIB (Amsterdam school of International Business) and an Associate Professor (on assignment) at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences. With a specialty in Human Resource Management, she also imparts knowledge in various business and management disciplines. Shohreh earned her MBA from the University of Greenwich in 2011 and later achieved a Doctorate in Business Administration from Maastricht School of Management in 2016. In the academic year 2022-2023, she enhanced her expertise by completing a "People Analytics" course at Cambridge University. Beyond instructing, Shohreh has contributed to academia with multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals. Currently, alongside her teaching and research endeavors, she is broadening her horizons by diving into "Nutrition courses" at Wageningen University.Conor SheehanConor’s earlier published work related chiefly to pedagogy and curriculum design, in particular the development of work-based learning programmes within the hospitality and tourism industry. Conor’s PhD and later research attention focussed upon exploring service workers’ experiences of managing their emotions and how they made sense of these in relation to their perceived well-being. His work responded to calls within the sociology of service work for a more definitive focus upon the dynamic complexity of service agents’ ‘emotional self-management’ and their self-care across, in addition to within, specific occupational contexts. Much of his research work adopted the still novel qualitative methodology, interpretative phenomenological analysis (‘IPA’) which emphasises the value of gathering experiential data from a first person viewpoint. Conor has presented award winning research papers on the influences of organizational culture upon service agents’ emotional self-management and occupational health at the CHME (Council for Hospitality Management Education), BAM (British Academy of Management) and Psychosocial Studies Network annual conferences. His work has also been published in journals and, most recently, in leading human resource management texts.