Editor’s note: This is the sixth installment of a column on how to improve the higher-ed workplace. Read the previous essays in the Working Better series.
My quest to study the campus workplace began as I recovered from a serious case of burnout. May has always been my favorite time of year, watching students walk across the graduation stage, but during our virtual commencement in May of 2020, I was more interested in staring at the back of my eyelids. That was one of several moments that month when I said to myself, “Something’s wrong here.”
It didn’t take much online sleuthing to realize I had all the classic signs of burnout. Making matters worse was the deep shame I felt. I considered myself a responsible, organized adult. How had I let this happen?
In an effort to make sure it was a one-time deal, I started reading more deeply (and seeing a therapist). My burnout slowly gave way to a burning curiosity. It soon became clear that there was more to my story than a lapsed self-care routine. Burnout, as defined by the World Health Organization, is an occupational phenomenon caused by chronic stress due to poor working conditions — things like an unrelenting workload and unreasonable time pressures.
I’ve now spent the last five years reading scientific literature on workplace culture, traveling to a dozen campuses, and interviewing more than 150 administrators, professors, and staff members across the country. All of which led me to two main conclusions:
- Many problems in the higher-ed workplace are not about individuals’ failure to practice self-care. Rather, they stem from cultural norms and structures on our campuses.
- We need institutions to better demonstrate care for employees by pursuing organizational change to support their well-being.
But what does it mean for a university to care? And is that even possible?
Tressie McMillan Cottom, the sociologist and writer, has famously argued, “Institutions cannot love you.” Meaning: You shouldn’t give your heart and soul to earn the affection of something that isn’t capable of feelings, let alone love. And she’s right. A brick building with columns and Latin inscriptions will not wrap you in a warm embrace.
However, it is possible for a college to demonstrate care for employees — and I know that because I’ve seen it in action. My new book, The Caring University, out this July, shares examples and offers an organizational model to help institutions step boldly into their responsibility to demonstrate care for employees. For any campus that wants to be a “top employer” or “employer of choice,” here are six principles from my research to guide you in prioritizing employee well-being.
Remember that we are the university. Think of the institution as a collection, not just of buildings, but of people. It is our joint labor and our relationships with students that really keep the whole edifice intact.
At a basic level, a caring university is not about hiring a particular leader, adopting a warm fuzzy slogan, or establishing a new “office of caring.” It is about the collective of people who — working together day in and day out — factor employee well-being into our interactions, decisions, and policies. And it’s a team effort, not something that should be relegated to one person or department.
Don’t expect a final destination. I have yet to encounter a perfect university when it comes to supporting the well-being of workers. Just when I find a place that’s doing something innovative for its employees, I hear another story about something it’s struggling with, such as a tense contract negotiation with faculty members or a sudden leadership turnover. Progress is sometimes more like a spiral than a straight line.
Becoming a caring university isn’t an exercise in attaining an ideal state. Higher ed has accepted the idea that student success is a goal without an end date. The same is true here: Support for employee well-being has to be a routine part of campus life where there’s always room for improvement.
Stop waiting to act until trouble emerges. Pursuing a caring university doesn’t happen organically — it is the product of planned and intentional effort. Universities tend to be reactive when it comes to dealing with workplace problems and employee expectations: We pay graduate students more only after they have gone on strike; we institute a well-being program only after a crisis (say, a pandemic) causes such concerns to crescendo.
Reactive responses usually mean institutions are trying to put out fires and minimize damage, rather than craft a plan to attract, grow, and retain talent. Caring about people means the institution makes improvements before an emergency forces its hand.
Think organizationally, not individually. Our tendency in higher ed is to see workplace problems through an individualized lens: You took on too much, you didn’t say no, you didn’t pursue the right professional development, your expectations are unrealistic. That mindset leads you to individualized solutions: I have to set better boundaries, go for more walks, pay for a new tech-based productivity hack.
Which may be true in some cases. But my research shows that many problems in the academic workplace can be traced back to organizational cultures and structures — things like poor compensation practices, few advancement opportunities, inadequate recognition systems, and paltry investment in leadership training.
To think organizationally means to investigate whether certain challenges are really just about the individual or are instead connected to campus norms and structures codified in policy and organizational charts. For example, if a faculty member complains of being bogged down with service, a department chair may develop a specific plan to reduce the professor’s load. An approach reflecting organizational thinking would consider whether the problem affects the whole department and would prompt the chair to examine how service expectations are articulated in tenure policies. The result is better solutions aimed at the root causes of common problems.
Is your university asking enough workplace questions? As Joan C. Tronto, a political scientist, has argued, one sign that an institution is not caring for its people very well is that it sees their needs as fixed and unchanging. The truth is: Many colleges simply don’t know very much about the employee experience because they haven’t asked. And even when a college has asked, its efforts at organizational transformation may be hamstrung by insufficient personnel, money, or knowledge of how to go about garnering worker buy-in.
Think of the employee experience on your campus as an ongoing line of inquiry. Running a periodic survey of employee well-being can be useful, but it’s also limited because the data are a reflection of a particular moment and usually don’t get into the nitty-gritty of practices and policies. So beyond campus surveys, do more specific studies of employees’ workplace experiences, which can be conducted by faculty and staff members with such research expertise. Your institution needs to make sure it has personnel in human resources, institutional research, and faculty-development offices who have the training and bandwidth to translate these findings into practical steps.
Take responsibility for worker well-being. The employee experience has been a low priority for many institutions. Searching for that issue in an institution’s official statements is a little like a Where’s Waldo puzzle — it’s there, but you really have to squint. Assisted by a graduate student, I reviewed the values statements and strategic plans of a random sample of campuses, and precious few indicated a sense of responsibility for employee well-being.
A caring university recognizes that it is responsible for the well-being, not just of students, but of the people it employs. The model I developed includes six types of concrete organizational changes:
- Make the employee experience a strategic priority in campus planning and data collection.
- Humanize policies and practices on remote work, leaves, and other workplace issues.
- Commit to fair compensation, clear career paths, and in-house professional development.
- Empower employees’ rights and voice (e.g., job security, shared governance).
- Pursue equitable hiring practices and policies that support a sense of belonging.
- Cultivate caring leaders with both training and realistic leadership expectations.
In the years since my experience with burnout, I have been privileged to interview scores of remarkable people who have endured numerous challenges in the workplace and persisted through their sheer will. They fought to find a place in institutions that worked more diligently to push them out than honor their contributions and nourish their growth. Some reached a point of burnout and didn’t have a chance to recover, instead leaving the field in search of organizations that showed greater promise of caring about them.
Based on my research, however, one thing is crystal clear to me: A caring university is possible. It isn’t some wild idea pulled from a utopian fantasy. But it requires a commitment to re-imagining the workplace, even, or especially, in times of great financial and political stress.
