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Faculty and staff at colleges and universities have the second-highest burnout rate out of any industry in the country, just behind K-12 workers, according to a recent Gallup Panel Workforce Study.
What’s driving higher than ever turnover? Why are faculty and staff leaving their positions? What is the impact on students? And, what can be done to help the entire campus community be well and thrive? These are some of the questions panelists addressed – and offered solutions for – during a TimelyCare webinar “GenZtressed: From Burnout to Balance – Prioritizing Faculty and Staff Well-Being.”
The lively discussion moderated by Megan Zahneis, Senior Reporter, Chronicle of Higher Education included panelists R. Kelly Crace, Ph.D., Associate VP for Health & Wellness, William & Mary; Adriene Hobdy, Ed.D., Director of Leadership Development and Talent Management, Montgomery County Community College; and Jacqueline Bichsel, Ph.D., Director of Research, CUPA-HR.
A retention crisis in higher ed
“There’s a retention crisis in higher ed,” according to Bichsel. “In 2023, CUPA-HR conducted a second annual employee retention survey to uncover the factors that have led to this crisis.”
“Since the pandemic, voluntary turnover for full-time exempt staff increased from 7.9% in the 2020-21 academic year to 14.3% in 2022-23, and full-time non-exempt staff turnover increased from 9.4% to 15.2% during the same period.”
“There’s also record turnover for faculty,” said Bichsel. “Normally faculty turnover is very low. However, voluntary turnover for non-tenure track faculty was 7.3% last year and 3.7% for tenure track faculty.”
The CUPA-HR research aligns with what Hobdy has personally observed at Montgomery County Community College. “The retention data, specifically, is on par with what we’ve experienced initially after the pandemic and we started to return back in person in the workforce. We really started to see an uptick in people resigning and leaving and looking for different work because there was still this fear of coming into the workspace and the concern with safety and health has now shifted to burnout exhaustion, emotional tiredness, and just looking for something different.”
Crace witnessed the same changes at William & Mary. “Before the pandemic, stress was being overworked, and being stressed was a common discussion as well. Since the pandemic, though, it went from overworked to overwhelmed and from stressed to strained. And while stress is a healthy thing, because it’s a function of what we care about, strain is unsustainable.”
“Chronic Too Muchness”
Overwork is a significant predictor of retention, according to the CUPA-HR research. “We found out that half of higher ed employees work additional hours regularly beyond what’s expected of full-time employees. Along with that, employees are absorbing additional responsibilities and demands of staff who have already left. So high turnover in and of itself is producing the burnout that is leading to reduced job satisfaction and a higher likelihood of leaving,” said Bischel.
CUPA-HR found the strain is particularly evident among supervisors, who were far more likely to work additional hours, which can lead to burnout and a toxic trickle-down effect, panelists said.
To combat this trend, Crace said one of the most popular seminars for supervisors on his campus is focused on flourishing despite a societal norm of chronic too muchness. “We are trying to address policies that enable a stress glorification culture, policies that can chip away and cause strain rather than a flourishing culture.”
“Our students can’t be fully well unless their faculty and staff are well.”
R. Kelly Crace, Ph.D.
Associate VP for Health & Wellness
William & Mary
William & Mary is among the campus partners who provide TimelyCare’s no-cost, no-insurance needed, 24/7 virtual medical and mental health care to faculty and staff, in addition to students.
Work-life harmony
Another contributing factor to the higher education retention crisis post-pandemic is the continued desire to work from home. Hobdy said office workers wanted the flexibility that wasn’t in her college’s existing policy. “We started to notice detachment from the college and detachment from their work. So they automatically wanted to start looking for other jobs.”
“Initially, it was ‘everyone needs to return to work five days a week’. And we started to develop programming and policies to support work from home to bring more balance so that employees felt heard, but it actually was an incentive for them to want to stay.”
The CUPA-HR employee retention survey showed two-thirds of employees say their tasks can be done at home. Yet two-thirds of employees are forced to work all or most of their time on campus. “So that is a mismatch, a misalignment that we show in that data to be a strong predictor of whether an employee looks for other employment,” said Bichsel.
“We used to rely on that student-centered mission to keep people in employment in higher ed. That is no longer strong enough. We need to be offering these same opportunities that the corporate world is offering if we want to retain our most talented employees,” Bichsel said.
Help your faculty and staff thrive
Focusing on faculty and staff wellness
Recognizing contributions, valuing opinions, building a sense of belonging, and opportunities for development and advancement are among the “low-hanging fruit” to address the retention crisis in higher education, according to Bichel. “If you’re going to prioritize anything in the space, attend to those basic job satisfaction tenets first.”
Hodby adds, faculty and staff wellness initiatives must be more than a one-and-done exercise. “The one thing I just can’t stress enough is the collaboration across the campus with leadership, faculty and staff, and really looking at your wellness efforts on a cyclical basis. Don’t allow it to grow stale.”
Crace emphasized that faculty and staff wellness doesn’t happen with a one-size-fits-all solution, but instead requires a comprehensive approach and continuous communication. Extending TimelyCare access to 24/7 health and wellness support to faculty and staff is one part of the strategy at William & Mary. “We have to be courageous and step into this right thing of really looking at community wellness. And even though it’s hard, the hardness is really finding what works for every individual,” he said. “And we have to constantly dose this information over and over again through multiple portals of communication.”
Three out of four faculty and staff say more mental health support would improve their job satisfaction. See how TimelyCare can support faculty and staff.
