Navigating Dual Roles: How Perceived Work-Life Balance Shapes Recovery Experience and Well-Being of Student Workers in Service Industries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47747/icbem.v3i1.3253Keywords:
Perceived Work-Life Balance, Student Workers, Recovery Experience, Subjective Well-Being, Dual Role, Time ManagementAbstract
Student-workers in postgraduate education represent a growing and increasingly visible workforce segment, yet research on how mature learners navigate the intersection of academic progression, employment responsibilities, and personal life remains limited. Unlike traditional undergraduates, postgraduate workers aged 28-55 often manage wider spheres of responsibility, including family caregiving, organizational leadership, and long-term financial obligations, which makes their work-study-life equilibrium uniquely complex. Grounded in work-life balance theory, recovery experience, and subjective well-being, this study investigates how postgraduate students employed in cafés, retail services, public institutions, professional offices, and other customer-facing roles negotiate dual-role demands while pursuing advanced degrees. Using a qualitative exploratory design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten respondents working 20-30 hours per week alongside ongoing postgraduate coursework and research. The study centers on three core questions: (1) How do postgraduate student-workers perceive and sustain work-life balance? (2) What recovery strategies help them regulate stress, fatigue, and emotional strain? (3) How do these mechanisms reinforce subjective well-being, academic clarity, and personal growth as long-term learners and workers?. Findings reveal that boundary-setting, time-blocking routines, micro-recovery activities, reflective or spiritual grounding, and intentional psychological detachment serve as core balancing strategies. Well-being is supported by schedule autonomy, academic-work alignment, and socio-emotional support from family or peers, whereas challenges commonly include research deadlines, rigid scheduling, emotional overload, and domestic responsibilities that intersect with academic demands more heavily than expected. Theoretically, this study extends work-life balance and recovery literature into the postgraduate context, highlighting the psychosocial load experienced by mature dual-role learners. Practically, the findings offer insight for universities and service-sector employers to develop flexible and humane policy structures that reduce burnout risk, support research continuity, and sustain academic-professional performance among adult students. This study further recommends institutional collaboration in designing mentoring systems, time-management literacy, and recovery-supportive academic environments for postgraduate workers to thrive.
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