Disability of non-academic employees in public universities: an exploration of daily work experiences

Abstract

PurposeThrough addressing non-academic disabled employees in seven public universities in Egypt, the author aims to find out the main struggles facing disabled non-academic employees in their work context pre and post Covid-19.Design/methodology/approachThe author employed a qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews with 28 disabled non-academic employees from seven universities in Egypt. The author subsequently used thematic analysis to determine the main ideas in the transcripts.FindingsThe author of the present paper has discovered the main struggles facing disabled non-academic employees in public universities in Egypt before and after the spread of Covid-19 and grouped them into the following three categories: macro-level struggles (government not serious about adopting a quota system, using disability quotas for political reasons, lack of understanding of the needs of disabled employees, poor infrastructure in work contexts), meso-level struggles (unaware of overqualified disabled employees, underrepresentation of disabled employees at senior administrative positions, assigning disabled employees unfair access to university resources) and micro-level struggles (disabled employees' lack of confidence in accepting promotion, inability of disabled employees to join informal networks and disabled employees' exposure to speech-related harassment).Originality/valueThis paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management and educational leadership, in which empirical studies on the struggles facing disabled non-academic employees in their work contexts have been limited so far.