Obesity and Job Performance among Teachers in Malaysia

Despite the growing interest of teacher performance in relation to factors such as leadership, work and/ or family conflict or stress, studies which linked teacher with overweight or obesity with job performance and productivity are insignificant. Moreover, Malaysia is Southeast Asia’s “most obese” nation with an obesity incidence of 17.7% and an overweight of 30%. Data is a review of newspapers and official reports as well as academic journal articles and theses from established databases such as Wiley Online Library, Taylor and Francis, ScienceDirect and ProQuest. The scope is obesity or overweight experiences which may affect performance or productivity at workplace taken from 2010 onwards including the level of noncommunicable disease, productivity assessments and annual reports. Study about obesity and its impact towards teacher’s performance or productivity is almost none. The impact of obesity on job performance can be seen from its impact on individual, social and economy. The impact towards economy and individuals are discussed with focusing more on Malaysian context. Evidence used in this study come solely from the mentioned resources. Conclusions reached are thus qualified by that limitation. Further studies should be conducted on the exact obesity trends among teachers and the impacts on performance or productivity. More in-depth studies are needed specifically on the definite and diversified factors and the effective ways to tackle this issue among adult especially teachers.