Background: Minimization staff performance antagonists is crucial, and one of the key antagonists to staff performance work-life imbalance. By all means therefore, work-life imbalance ought to be minimized among all staff, and particularly humanitarian staff, in Europe. Europe is currently home to more than 12 million refugees, some of whom are resettled there, implying that performance gaps among humanitarian staff, partly due to work-life imbalance would undermine international humanitarian law. Ensuring WLB among humanitarian staff in Europe requires evidence-based interventions informed by studies on its magnitude and determinants.

Objective: To conduct a systematic scoping search for evidence of the prevalence and determinants of work-life balance among humanitarian staff working in resettlement countries in Europe.

Method: A mixed method scoping review design was adopted. For the scoping review, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-analyses extension for Scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) was used along with the Population Intervention Comparison and Outcome (PICO) criteria. Databases including CINHAL, Web of Science, EBSCO, MEDLINE, PubMed and PsyINFO were searched with a look out for studies that were conducted between 2014 and 2024. Both quantitative and qualitative studies were included if they explicitly focused on WLB and their determinants. Initially, the study targeted studies that were conducted among humanitarian staff in Europe, however, given the dearth of such studies in that context, studies from other regions, and not explicitly targeting humanitarian staff were also included. In addition, a qualitative study among humanitarian staff in Sweden was also included. Those were purposively sampled and engaged in in-depth interviews. Data generated from those interviews was thematically analyzed.

Results: The scoping review identified a total of 6871 articles that were to be screened for eligibility, among which 278 met all criteria, and were hence reviewed to reveal existence of evidence on the determinants of work life balance, among both humanitarian and non-humanitarian staff. The determinants of WLB identified in that study were congruent with the ones that were qualitatively identified in the current study. Work Life Balance is prevalent among as low as 4% to only as high as 60%,on average. At an intrapersonal level, characteristics including age, sex, position at work, being a parent, education, and job satisfaction are associated with work life balance. At institutional level, the most significant determinants of WLB include flexibility of schedules at work,  belonging to a work union or association, high job demands, and supervisory support and trust. 

Conclusion: Work life balance being a renowned antagonist of staff performance, there have unsurprisingly been hundreds of studies conducted to assess it and its determinants in Europe and elsewhere in the world. However, while that is the absolute case, there has been little interest in the study of WLB among humanitarian workers in Europe, despite of the fact that Europe is home to more than 10 million refugees whose quality of life solely depends on the performance of humanitarian workers. Only one study could be identified, and it was conducted almost decade ago, in 2016. Nonetheless, the findings of that study largely concur with what has been reported in many other studies that have assessed prevalence and determinants of WLB among non-humanitarian staff, and as well as what the study revealed from the qualitative exploration of the determinants of WLB. This study concludes that positive Work Life Balance is not highly prevalent; only 6 in every 10 staff have a positive WLB, and that is influence by both intrapersonal and institutional characteristics, almost in equal measure.