Balance of Career and Personal Life (on the Example of Higher Education Employees)

Abstract

Work-life balance (WLB) is extremely important in the modern world. Every person strives to achieve goals in all spheres of his or her life and therefore needs to be able to balance. When the boundaries between work and personal life vanish, a person inevitably comes to stress, burnout, problems at work and at home. The purpose of this article is to identify the level of WLB and to suggest alternative ways to improve it in Ukrainian families with both working partners, specifically in families with research and teaching staff of higher education institutions (HEIs). The research implied analysing previous studies to determine the influence of family models and the state gender policy on the level of WLB. We found out that people who follow traditional family models are less likely to change their initial choice between office and personal life than families where both spouses work and share childcare responsibilities equally. The intersection of gender issues in the labor market and the requirements for a competitive employee highlights the need for psychological support of a personal career development, taking into account the peculiarities of its gender identity, overcoming gender stereotypes and prejudices. In Ukraine, in the field of higher education, there is no gender imbalance at work, except for the management positions in which the number of men significantly predominates. Still, almost one third of women respondents report that they alone are responsible for housework, which demonstrates the gender imbalance at home. A survey of employees of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Ukraine was conducted on their satisfaction with the state of the work-life balance. It has been proven that employees often, consciously or unconsciously, contribute to imbalance on their own, which is the cause of many problems in the future, such as lack of time for self-development, family and sports; deterioration of physical and mental health; lack of time for rest and travel; a possibility of professional burnout. Therefore, the main advice to employees is to be able to refuse or ask for help, improve time-management, reward themselves, and check whether they are doing the right thing. JEL classіfіcatіon: M12, I31, I23, J28 Manuscript received 30.04.2020