Work-life balance of teaching staff at higher education during COVID 19 pandemic

Abstract

The issue of work-life balance of teaching staff at higher education institutions is becoming more interesting for the researchers due to complexity in responsibilities of teachers which include not only teaching and preparation of lectures, but primarily scientific research and scientific papers writing, as well as various administrative and managerial duties (vice deans, department chiefs, etc.). This topic is getting importance not only in regard to women in higher education teaching positions, but to overall attracting and retaining talent This complex problem has been particularly evident in disaster circumstances such as the COVID-19 virus pandemic. This paper studies attitudes (in the form of interviews) of teaching staff -teaching assistants, lecturers (languages), assistant professors, associate professors and full professors towards the achieved work-life balance during period of working from home during the lockdown imposed in Serbia from March, to May when the most higher education institutions returned to semi-regular ways of operations on the example of the School of Engineering Management from Belgrade, the Republic of Serbia. Even though the sample is small, it can be concluded that all levels of teaching staff have had difficulties in maintaining work-life balance during the work from home, especially the ones with children of school age.