Work-life balance among athletes

Abstract

The application of the work-life balance conception has become increasingly popular in recent years. This conception draws not only from legal solutions, but from psychological sciences and those related to human resources management. In the field of labour law, the instruments used may be, inter alia, rights related to parenthood (maternity, paternity, parental and extended parental leave), the use of fixed-term contracts or part-time employment, the use of individual working time schedules, the use of task-based schedules, equivalent or intermittent working time, telework regulations, variable work start and end times. However, employment in professional sports is atypical. The very essence of providing sports work is different from the essence of performing both office and industrial work. It consists in the provision of a special type of work of a multiple nature aimed at maximising the performance of athletes, carried out for profit. The athlete’s ability to achieve success results from the effect of actions taken as part of the employment relationship with the club as well as from leisure activities. Such activities include preparing appropriate meals, keeping a balanced diet, refraining from an unhealthy lifestyle and from the use of unauthorised substances, not using drugs that could be considered doping, taking care of proper regeneration and rest, and refraining from betting on matches in the practiced sport discipline. Herein, firstly, the characteristics of sports work was presented and, secondly, the possibilities of using work-life balance tools in shaping everyday sports work were analysed. The paper analyses the phenomenon of blurring personal and professional lives among athletes. The main conclusion of the paper is the inability to effectively guarantee a work-life balance among athletes, and that athletes can effectively use legal tools of WLB only if they simultaneously perform services or work elsewhere. The paper uses a dogmatic and legal method (analysis of the literature on the subject, analysis of normative acts) and the results of research carried out by the author, i.e. a survey addressed at professional athletes

Keywords

• athlete
• work-life balance
• working time
• sports law