The Quality of Life of High-Skilled Employees in Hungary. The Experts' Opinion

Abstract

This article aims to provide an overview of the working conditions of high-skilled employees in Hungary, by resorting to comparisons with the other Central and Eastern European countries, based on research carried out by the author during a three-month placement (August 1st-October 31st 2011) at the Institute of Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This work combines several sources and methods for gathering information: theoretical documentation, secondary analysis of data, in-depth interviews with some experts in the field. The study results indicate the presence, for the knowledge workers in Hungary, of some common problems of this category of employees in all former communist countries, such as number of working hours per week more than EU average, low rate of participation in training, problems health such as stress, depression, heart disease etc., employees' complaints related to overworking associated with low wages in the public sector and with rigid hierarchy, lack of work-life balance, standards imposed by the parent company etc. in some multinational firms; cases of good practice appear at the micro level, mainly in Scandinavian capital firms or in companies in the IT sector.

Keywords

• high-skilled employees
• working conditions
• quality of life of employees
• working time
• professional training
• learning economy