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

Purpose: Through 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/approach: The 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. Findings: The 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/value: This 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.