Expert Appraisal of a Six-Domain Academic Staff Wellbeing Framework in Saudi Higher Education: A Mixed-Methods Study

Academic staff wellbeing is often treated as an outcome of institutional practice, whereas transformative educational leadership is commonly discussed through policy, governance, leadership, innovation, and organizational learning. This separation can obscure the staff-centred conditions through which institutional aspirations become sustainable change. This study appraises a literature-informed six-domain academic staff wellbeing framework and examines its institutional implications for transformative educational leadership in higher education. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design combined a six-point expert-rating questionnaire with semi-structured interviews. Eighty academic experts from 26 Saudi higher education institutions were invited; 44 experts from 21 institutions participated in both strands. Experts strongly endorsed six domains: support and empowerment, academic leadership, continuous development, health and fitness, work–life balance, and workplace quality. Academic leadership and continuous development received the highest ratings (M = 5.75); experts also strongly endorsed wellbeing’s perceived contribution to academic performance (M = 5.77) and job satisfaction (M = 5.84). These ratings reflect expert judgments about perceived relationships rather than directly tested effects. Qualitative findings described the six domains as interrelated institutional and experiential conditions associated with trust, participation, professional growth, and sustainable engagement. Interpreted through the Job Demands–Resources perspective and educational leadership literature, the findings suggest that wellbeing-supportive institutional conditions may have important implications for policy, governance, and leadership processes associated with transformative educational change, providing theoretically informed propositions for future research.