Psychosocial Hazards of Job Content among Academics at Malaysian Private Research Focused Universities: Qualitative Study

Psychosocial hazards are negative experiences that people face when dealing with any possible factors that could risk their psychological, physiological, or social well-being, which might detrimentally affect their performance at work. As one of the growing countries that emphasises the development of its education, the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) has underlined its focus on research activities and set this as a quality standard. MOHE has also set the target that by 2025, Malaysian Higher Learning Institutes (HLIs) must rank their standard against the international rankings. To maintain the universities’ performance against the set targets and standards, it has been identified that academics have been facing a lot of possible psychosocial hazards. Thus, this study explores the psychosocial hazards experienced by academics at Malaysian private research-focused universities when dealing with their job content. This study was established on the qualitative paradigm, garnering responses from seventeen academics employed by leading private research-focused universities in Malaysia using the interview. Data were analysed using the thematic analysis software Atlas.ti version 23 employing the main framework of psychosocial hazards of Cox & Griffith (2005). Based on the findings, five psychosocial hazards of work content were determined, including two identified as new emerging themes: workload & work pace, task design and work schedule, KPI requirements and research and consultancy. It was also revealed that the academics in this research did not experience stress when dealing with work equipment and facilities. Therefore, this study provided essential management implications for university governing bodies, policymakers, academics, and other societies in similar contexts.