Burnout in the workplace has long been studied by psychologists, management specialists, and others in between.
Newly published research highlights disturbing trends for UK higher education professionals. More than half of professional services staff in the UK HE sector reported working long hours on a regular basis and more than two-thirds of respondents said they experience frequent, disruptive interruptions; 40 per cent said they “rarely” or “never” have enough time to get their jobs done, and 65 per cent regularly give up their free time to meet work demands.
Always on
Most worryingly of all, 69 per cent failed to properly step away from work during annual leave and 90 per cent of respondents said they have continued to work despite illness. Additionally, 44.1 per cent of respondents identified always or often “feel(ing) emotionally drained by (my) work”. Some of the reasons for working during illness or annual leave, detailed by the 335 respondents that responded toa July 2022 cross-sector survey included that they were “required to by my manager” and that “they were made to feel bad if they didn’t”.
Others were concerned the absences would be held against them at a later date, or felt guilty taking time off “because the team is so small” and they felt themselves a “single point of failure” within the institution.
These trends indicate a lack of recovery time occurring in the sector, leading to lower productivity and an increased likelihood of employee turnover.
The cost of burnout
Poor employee retention results not only in the loss of experience and efficiency, but in quantifiable expenses around recruitment and training replacements. Turnover administration costs employers 50 per cent to 250 per cent of the individual employee’s annual salary through recruitment and training, not to mention the lost productivity of line managers whilst they onboard new staff, the comparatively slower productivity of new staff and other indirect costs such as loss of knowledge, skill and contacts.
All these combined create disruption for remaining staff and make it difficult to maintain operational productivity through the turbulence caused by staff turnover. The time taken to fill a vacancy averages between 8-12 weeks, but anecdotal evidence suggests this can be upwards of six months in HE and is exacerbated where specialist skills are required.
A recent, global, McKinsey study found 54 per cent of those who have left their education sector job within the last 24 months have left the sector completely, shrinking the available talent pool and further increasing hiring challenges – perhaps unsurprisingly for those in the HE sector, “unsustainable work expectations” was among the top 5 reasons people left their employer.
Researchers focussing on higher education have sounded the klaxon on the pervasive culture of overwork currently dominating HE, which is arguably of much higher priority than continuing to treat individual worker engagement as a panacea for a systemic problem. With ever-increasing financial pressures on the sector, reducing turnover linked to burnout provides a practical opportunity for providers looking to achieve organisational sustainability.
Towards a prevention approach
Research by the Work Institute found that 75 per cent of employee turnover is preventable with the right interventions, so it pays for HE providers to address this in a purposeful way. The strategic use of high-performance work practices such as job design, flexibility, and effective feedback provides one useful tool for HEIs to manage rising work intensity and burnout, though support measures aimed at individual staff are not enough on their own to counter the culture of overwork.
Newly published recommendations also highlight effective managerial interventions and organisational behaviours based on the data and emerging literature. Two behavioural adaptations, in particular, present significant potential to reduce the negative impact burnout has on the bottom line.
- Ruthlessly focussing our time and energy on only the most strategic priorities and retiring or pausing tasks and vanity projects, where possible, reduces perpetual overload on staff.
- And consciously developing an organisational culture that encourages staff recovery time and utilisation of available high-performance work practices would help ensure the investments institutions make in staff wellbeing are getting the most value for money.
Do senior managers still take the time to go “back to the floor” for the occasional reality check? It’s a fantastic (and sometimes humbling) way to ensure we understand the pressures and tools our teams are working with whilst trying to navigate endless requests from the top – some of the most effective improvements I’ve instigated have come about after a deep dive into something my operational staff have been struggling through on the front line. We should be identifying and challenging effort spent on work that doesn’t align with our current strategic objectives. Observing up close how people deliver business as usual provides incredible insight into these opportunities for improvement.
So, what does burnout have to do with the bottom line? Much more than we as a sector have perhaps taken seriously to date. As financial budgets grow ever leaner, we should reflect on how our choices may be exacerbating burnout and choose to make lasting behavioural changes that could benefit us all in the long run.
Addressing employee burnout is not only compassionate on a human level, it makes sound financial sense to institutions as an investment in long-term organisational sustainability.
Some managers are the cause of Employee burnouts!
Thanks for sharing this. I am currently doing my PhD on toxic practices within UK universities. This article definitely resonates with my own findings, as well as my own experiences. My concern about stripping everything back is that we remove the projects that enable us to bond and that bring joy. It is that type of work that enables us to deal with all the other stuff thrown at us.
I definitely agree with this. Stripping back my work to only stuff that supports the key strategic objectives would make it very boring. Professional services staff develop interests too, and we should be supported to follow them!
It’s good to see the research here. I would agree with the comment above that managers are often the cause of burnout. I just wanted to pick up something in the article, around aligning work with strategic priorities. This is commonly what managers at Registrar level want. It typically means responding to whatever change project senior leaders have come up with (often to justify their appointment).
The problem is that, as PS staff know, there’s a lot of work involved just in keeping things going – in the routine administration, student support, running the VLE, responding to regulatory demands etc. The strategic priorities often compete with this work, which is less glamorous and, often, not well understood by senior leadership.
Absolutely. The biggest cause of stress in my job is juggling BAU tasks with responding to the whims and bureaucratic demands of senior management – setting up work on new projects and endlessly writing up briefing papers about ongoing ones. My current HEI’s management team is especially obsessed with briefing papers, which take hours to write and are clearly never read in detail. I much preferred the approach of a previous management team, who preferred you to drop into their meetings and give a five minute update. Often no need to prepare and you know they actually took it all in!
Thank you for this valuable article. As Frustrated PS states, finding the sweet spot between BAU and strategic initiatives is always a challenge. I wonder if there are any institutions across the sector who feel they have really nailed this.
Staff turnover is often the intention rather than a mere side-effect: the longer lecturers stay in post the more they cost.
I can see myself in that stat about 54 per cent of those who have left their education sector job within the last 24 months having left the sector completely. I used to feel like I was making a difference in the lives of students and academics with my work in HE PS. Now I wonder what is the point in putting in all this effort when students can’t afford to make the most of their experience and academic colleagues are often just as miserable. The only reason I haven’t left is that I’ve yet to work out what other sector would reignite those feelings.