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Now that the pandemic seems more clearly in our rearview mirror, many observers assume that the low morale, disillusionment, and burnout that fueled the “Great Quit” among people who work on campus are in the past, too. But problems remain, and the academy’s faculty and staff are still struggling to find their footing. Numerous factors have exacerbated these problems, including leadership turnover at the highest levels of the academy, continued “raising” of performance expectations and constant requests from institutional management to do more with less.
At the same time, most recommendations about what to do about problems still refer to individual-level responses. We also hear many people blame employees with low morale for not being appropriately engaged in their work, which is referred to as “quiet quitting.” But I agree with note Jim Detert, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says it’s a mistake to describe what is actually a rational response to poor working conditions, lack of support and burnout. Instead, what we see is individuals trying to recalibrate so that they can re-establish boundaries and focus on well-being in ways that their colleges and universities fail to foster at the institutional level.
The big takeaway is that this is not an individual-level problem, one that faculty and staff simply need to manage their calendar and work responsibilities to solve more effectively. Organizations must also ask themselves difficult questions, such as: In what ways is our institutional infrastructure exacerbating the problem? What can we do as institutional administrators to ensure more equitable workloads for faculty and staff? What policies, practices and action steps need to be developed, implemented and evaluated to establish boundaries and people’s well-being as core institutional values?
In this article, I highlight the importance of institutional measures to support and encourage boundary setting and well-being, starting with the need to create a much improved institutional culture and its corresponding infrastructure.
What is needed: an institutional response
Higher education institutions and their leaders face diverse challenges, including dwindling resources and the need to reimagine enrollment and retention strategies. They must also meet the needs and expectations of key stakeholders, such as representatives of accrediting bodies, prospective students and their parents, and members of the public, whose distrust of higher education continues to grow. These realities undoubtedly place tremendous pressure on campus administrators and place many on the defensive rather than taking a proactive stance focused on advancing strategic priorities and goals. Thus, institutions often respond to challenges by introducing new policies and practices that require faculty and staff to continually adapt, often with little explanation as to why change is needed or how to advance the institution’s strategic imperatives. Working in an environment characterized by a constant state of chaos harms well-being and sets boundaries. I suggest some actions that organizational leaders should consider to avoid such a situation.
Action 1. Explain the purpose of the “Ask”. As someone who trains faculty and administrators throughout the academy and as a department chair, I know how real it is to be constantly exposed to institutional requests for departmental reports and data—which often seem repetitive—or to learn about new institutional platforms being adopted that require… Immediate changes in how work gets done. Most of these requests come from the administration building without any accompanying explanation about the reason for the change, why this change (or information) is important, how it will be used and support a more efficient workflow, and how the results of this change will advance institutional strategic priorities. Even more problematic is that such changes are often made with little, if any, input from the individuals themselves who must now adopt or adapt to these changes in their daily work – and are also tasked with training others how to do so.
Communication is a necessary building block for setting boundaries and instilling a culture of well-being. I urge all campus leaders to step back before implementing any change that impacts workflow. Ask yourself: Why is this change necessary? How will this change improve efficiency and effectiveness? What supports – such as training – will we provide to enable individuals to navigate this change? How can we evaluate the success of this change and communicate these results to everyone in the organization?
If you do not have answers to such questions before introducing the change you deem necessary, you should stop and reconsider that change and/or the planned strategy for enacting it.
Procedure No. 2. Conduct pulse surveys. Faculty and staff struggle to manage all of their work responsibilities. They need help. Sometimes this help is as simple as providing a place where grievances and concerns about workload can be aired, heard, and acted upon. As a management professor, I believe that the only thing worse than not asking for feedback is asking for it and not doing anything with it.
Creating opportunities for more regular feedback helps foster an institutional culture in which faculty and staff feel empowered to speak up, with boundaries and well-being at the heart of their concerns. Realizing that cultivating a new culture takes time, and that time is also a challenge for administrators, I recommend using pulse surveys. A pulse survey is just that: a targeted feedback-gathering tool that helps one take the pulse of an organization on a particular issue or need.
For example, a dean seeking to understand the time it takes faculty and staff to administer a new expense tracking and reporting system might conduct a pulse survey asking questions such as: “What is the most time-consuming aspect of the new expense and reporting system?” and “What is What changes do you recommend that would help reduce the time required?
The results of implementing more regular but targeted feedback collection tools allow campus leaders to strengthen communication channels. Additionally, the above approach exemplifies the importance of creating structures that help organizational leaders identify key issues and get actionable feedback to effectively address the needs of the people who matter most.
I say this with the caveat that some workload responsibilities are essential to the stability of the organization. For example, assessment data and related reporting are considered non-negotiable given the impact of data and reporting on student learning and institutional accreditation. All higher education institutions face some degree of challenges, and it is important to encourage faculty and staff to offer possible solutions to those challenges, and to promote a more collaborative approach to promoting the change needed.
Action 3. Avoid a performance penalty. A former dean once told me that they are well aware that 30% of the faculty at their institution do about 80% of the work. I appreciated their verbal acknowledgment of this fact. However, I was also deeply disturbed that they took little, if any, action to change the unfair workload; The workload significantly affected the well-being and limitations of nearly a third of teaching staff who were suffering from overwork and lack of support.
I urge all campus administrators to be aware of the performance penalty: “rewarding” excellent work and institutional contribution by assigning more work to individuals who are effective at their jobs. Doing so comes at the expense of the physical and emotional safety of powerful institutional shareholders. Building clearer accountability measures for those who underperform and adequately compensating those who consistently contribute at a high level – with financial and human resources, for example – are critical steps toward supporting boundary setting and well-being.
In short, higher education as an industry, and those working in it, feel the very real stress of working in a challenging environment. Individuals have lost any sense of the boundaries of personal work due to the requirement of 24-hour accessibility and the need to manage multiple roles in understaffed and under-resourced departments and units. As individuals attempt to re-establish those boundaries and make well-being a priority, their actions are often received negatively and viewed as surrender or quiet disengagement. However, if staff wellbeing and boundary setting are viewed as an institutional responsibility – as they in fact are – the Academy will be better placed to attract, retain and engage diverse talent who work collaboratively to effectively address current and future challenges. .
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