Disrupting Burnout
Disrupting Burnout with Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson is dedicated to overworked, undervalued high-achieving servant leaders who give all to serve others and leave very little for yourself. You are an accomplished woman with many responsibilities and you often find yourself overwhelmed, exhausted, and burned out. I’ve been there. As a matter of fact, burnout almost cost me everything. Compassionate work can carry a high price tag: your mind, body, spirit and relationships may be in distress as you serve the needs of others. I am here to equip your hands and refresh your heart so you can serve in purpose and fulfillment and permanently break cycles of burnout.
Disrupting Burnout
143. The Invisible Labor: Why Educators Need Burnout Prevention Now
When was the last time your school implemented a crisis plan—not for students, but for the faculty and staff who are drowning in invisible labor?
Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson (PBJ) tackles this urgent question, revealing a troubling paradox in education: we meticulously plan for every student crisis while having zero systems in place to prevent, respond to, or recover from faculty burnout.
Drawing from her dissertation research on campus crisis management, PBJ introduces a groundbreaking approach to educator burnout using the National Incident Management System (NIMS) framework. This episode focuses specifically on prevention—the crucial first phase that can halt burnout's devastating progression.
Through four essential prevention strategies—early warning systems, workload analysis, institutional culture development, and resource allocation—PBJ provides a practical roadmap for educational leaders at all levels. She challenges us to move beyond empty "people first" rhetoric and implement tangible support mechanisms that acknowledge the unaccounted labor weighing down our educators.
"It does not count until you count it," PBJ emphasizes, highlighting how mentoring moments, emotional support, and crisis interventions remain invisible in workload calculations. These missing pieces explain why traditional employee satisfaction surveys fail to capture educators' true experiences.
Whether you're a school administrator with budgetary authority or a team leader with limited resources, this episode offers actionable steps to begin preventing burnout today. PBJ's message is clear: "Stop focusing on what you can't do... Do what you can do and do it now."
Ready to disrupt burnout in your educational setting? Download the STOP Plan to incorporate micro-breaks into your routine and create sustainable rhythms of rest for yourself and your team. The education crisis is real—but with these prevention strategies, we can start building solutions that truly put our people first.
Upgrade to Premium Membership to access the Disrupting Burnout audiobook and other bonus content: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1213895/supporters/new
So it's not just meetings and it's not just the actual programs and it's not just executing the things, but I know you're also meeting with students who just pop up in your office. You are mentoring, you are wiping tears, you are giving money so students can eat. I know that those things are happening. How do I know? Because I did it and those things are not accounted for and those things are not accounted for. The invisible labor is not accounted for. Those mentor moments, those support moments, those crisis moments that you can't put on the calendar, those things that keep you after work to seven, eight, nine o'clock at night, those things that keep you after the program till midnight and then you come back at eight o'clock the next day. Those things are not accounted for in the workload. So when we go forward and say my folks are overworked, they're tired, all we hear is everybody's tired, everybody's overworked. But, friend, you can count it. It does not count until you count it. Hey, hey, friends, I am Dr Patrice Buckner-Jackson, but you can call me PBJ.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of the Disrupting Burnout Podcast, where we are equipping you with the strategies for pouring out purpose without continuing to live through the consequences of burnout. Friend, I'm excited about the conversation that we are going to have over the next few weeks and I'm just going to jump right in today because I'm ready to share this with you and it's important for you to hear. I will say that this is focused on educators, but I believe it's applicable to any organization. I will also say this is one that you need to share. You need to share with whoever your supervisor is. You need to share with whoever your dean or your AP or your principal or whoever needs to hear this. You need to share this forward, because we have every plan in the book to prevent, to respond to, to recover from crisis concerning our students, and we have no plans concerning our faculty and our staff, and it is high time we need a crisis plan. We need a crisis plan for faculty and staff and let me tell it to you this way. So my dissertation research is on crisis management on college campuses and, of course, I was specifically focused on how we're responding and who's responding to crisis concerning students, specifically, the role of the dean of students in crisis management concerning our students. Right, and most of us are concerned about crisis when it comes to our students, so we have fire drills and fire plans and active threats and weather plans and all of these things. And if we're really good at it, we've done tabletops and we've practiced and we have regular conversations about it. Now, sometimes it's just written and it's off in a corner somewhere and when we need it we have to go find it. That's another issue. But if we're really good at it, we've written it, we've rehearsed it, we've tabletopped it, we've shared it with folks and we know what to do, or at least we know how to put our hands on it quickly when the need comes.
Speaker 1:Concerning our students, what are we doing for our faculty and staff? Specifically concerning burnout, what is the crisis plan? How are we preventing, preparing for, responding to, recovering, from mitigating the impacts of burnout in our faculty and our staff? We've had so many conversations, friend. We've talked and talked and talked around burnout, but we're not getting to the heart of it, and you know that the foundational strategy that I share here is disrupting burnout. So check your baggage. You need to build your boundaries and you need to discover your brilliance, and those are personal strategies. Those are strategies that an individual, a professional, an educator has to do for themselves, and I believe that's the first stop. You are your first advocate. You have to value you first. Beyond the personal, we know that our work environments contribute to the impacts of burnout on our people. We know that we have lost some very good educators because they just can't take it anymore and they don't know what else to do. They still love the work, they still love the students, but they just can't do it like this anymore. So it is high time that we create a crisis plan for our faculty and staff concerning burnout Now, pbj, I can't stop.
Speaker 1:I don't have time to stop. If I stop, all of this falls apart. We're short-staffed. I don't have anybody that can take my place at work. I don't have support at home or at work to stop friends work. I don't have support at home or at work to stop friends. If any of these thoughts come to mind when you think about taking a break, you are the person who needs to stop the most. I want to offer you our stop playing simple. I want you to use the same strategies and wisdom and skills that you use at work, and I'm going to guide you to using those strategies to plan micro breaks. I'm not talking about a month's sabbatical, but can you incorporate micro breaks into your life as a regular rhythm of rest so that while you are serving, while you are giving, you can have moments of revival, so that you can live the life you're living sustainably. Friend, you need to grab this stop plan. Make sure to click the link in the show notes or wherever you're watching or listening to this, so that you can get what you need right now. It can't wait. I know you do a wonderful job, but people don't know what it costs you to be you, and you know what the cost has been. It's time to stop. Grab the plan today, Now.
Speaker 1:As I was thinking about this recently and I'm so excited to share this with you all, I was reflecting back on my dissertation work and in my research, I focused on the phases of crisis management given to us by NIMS through the Homeland Security Department and our federal government here in the US. Nims is a system that allows the federal government, local government organizations, private folks to come together to work in collaboration concerning a variety of incidents. Right so if there is a hurricane. Recently, here in Augusta University, we experienced a hurricane, and the response to that hurricane was not just from our local government or our local organizations, but our state government was involved, our federal government was involved. Our federal government was involved. Fema came down and set up offices here for a while, and not just the water that was being given away here on the ground, but we got resources, not just water and food, but people, resources from other areas.
Speaker 1:Because NIMS has a structured system that encourages all of the agencies and entities to work together to prevent, to prepare for, to respond to, to recover from and to mitigate crisis. That's what NIMS is about. It's a common language, it's a common structure for all of us to be aware of and to fall into so that we can respond appropriately. So when I think about the NIMS structure, I'm thinking, man, we can use this in our schools to respond to burnout. And I know it's not a massive hurricane, I know it's not a structure fire or wildfires. Right, I know that's not what we're talking about, but, friend, it's a fire and it's a wildfire. And you may not see the smoke when you look out your windows. It may not be people losing their homes, but people are losing their minds, they're losing their health, they're losing their passion for the work. So we are in a crisis in the academy, in education. We're in a burnout crisis and there is a proven structure. Nims gives us a proven structure for responding to crisis and managing crisis. So I want to take that structure over the next few weeks and let's talk about how we can apply this proven, acknowledged national structure to the crisis of burnout in education.
Speaker 1:So there are five phases of crisis management according to NIMS, right, and those phases are prevention, preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. So let me say them again Prevention, preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. And if you have been listening to me for a while, then you've heard me use some of this language, because crisis is what I do, like it's my thing, right, it's my thing, it's my research, it's what I've done in my career, it's my thing. So I've used some of this language. But I specifically want to walk through this prescribed process concerning burnout for our faculty and staff and building a crisis management, not just a plan, but a system for how we are addressing burnout in education. So today I want to start with the first phase of crisis management according to to NIMS, and that is prevention.
Speaker 1:So how can we prevent the burnout epidemic from escalating even further? How can we prevent the loss of more educators? How can we prevent the physical and mental and cultural and organizational impacts of burnout from going to yet another level? What can we do to prevent what we see coming and what has been happening? So let's talk through prevention. The prevention stage is all about what can we do to stop the negative impacts of the incident right or of the crisis. So the crisis that we are talking about is burnout and faculty and staff. What should schools, academies, colleges, universities, organizations be doing right now to prevent the consequences of burnout from escalating even further? So there are one, two, three, four. There are four different areas I want to talk to you about today of prevention. All right, so we're focused on prevention, and those four different areas are early warning systems, workload analysis and management, institutional culture development and resource allocation planning. So these are, um, these components of prevention are the same things that we do or should be doing concerning NIMS, concerning wildfires, concerning hurricanes, concerning other things that could be happening in our community, and we want to apply them to the academy, to education, to supporting our faculty and staff.
Speaker 1:So let's start with early warning systems. So, in higher education, serving as Dean of Students and Vice President and Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, I was deeply involved in early warning systems and we had several levels of early warning systems right. So we had some communication levels that we were responsible for. If we were aware of any potential threat, if we had any knowledge that there was a potential threat on or around our campus, we had a communication plan and a communication system to let everyone know. So no hiding what the possible threat was, and not just letting folks know about the potential of a threat or a known threat, but giving them instructions of what to do. And sometimes those threats had nothing to do with our campus, they were just near us, but they were close enough that they could impact our people. So we worked in the Dean of Students Office. We were responsible for communicating with students, but we also had our communications department on campus who would communicate with faculty and staff, and we had to make sure that message was streamlined. We had to make sure that message was accurate. We had to make sure that there were resources and instructions and calls to action in that message.
Speaker 1:So how are you communicating to your faculty and staff concerning the impacts of burnout? What conversations are we having beyond take a walk and get a facial, okay, beyond work-life balance, which is not a real thing. Y'all already know how I feel about that. How are we communicating the impacts of burnout to our faculty and staff? I'm telling you, the most popular thing I hear as I travel and talk to folks about burnout is I finally have a name to it PBJ. I thought it was me. I thought it was me. I thought I was weak. I thought I was the problem. I thought I couldn't handle it.
Speaker 1:We are not talking about it. We have not created space and a culture for people to raise their hand and say they're struggling. We have not defined burnout in our context. We are not having conversations about how to prevent and what the impacts of burnout are. We're not warning. In higher ed it was called a timely warning. We're responsible for sending a timely warning. We're not warning our faculty and staff about the impacts of burnout. We're not talking about what leads to burnout. We're not having these conversations. So in the early warning system, you need some communication. We've got to stop talking about it. We can't keep pretending that it's not a real thing or it's not a serious thing. We've seen the impacts of it over and over and over. So it is time for us to have some timely warning conversations about burnout, with our faculty and our staff Going forward.
Speaker 1:In addition to communicating to students, I was also the chair of the behavior assessment team or the behavior intervention team, whatever you call it BAT BIT, whatever different campuses have different names for it. But basically it was a way for folks to let us know when they were concerned about a student and if you're doing it really well, not just about a student but a faculty or staff member. It was a way to say, hey, I saw, observed, heard, know of this situation and y'all might need to be aware of it, right? So it was a way for us to become aware of folks who are struggling and to take some action to support them before that struggle became some sort of incident, an incident for the individual or an incident for our campus. So there were faculty and staff members who might say this student hasn't shown up in two weeks and they won't respond to my email. Or maybe there's a coach that would say I think this student needs to be referred to a counselor. Here's what I've seen. Or maybe a student that says, hey, my faculty member said some things in class and I'm a little worried about them, you know. So it's not a system to shut down rights or to what am I trying to say? Just to spotlight people, but it is a system for identifying who might be struggling and to take action to support individuals who are struggling in our communities.
Speaker 1:So it was our early warning system and what we had to do was we had to educate the entire campus. We have a system. People don't just know this. This is not second nature for folks who are not doing this work every day. So we had to say hey, faculty staff, students, there is this link, this website that you can go to to let us know when somebody is struggling. When you're worried about a roommate, you're worried about a friend and you don't know what to do, there is a thing, there's a thing that you can go to and you can tell us about it. You can even do it anonymously. You don't even have to tell me who you are, but tell me who's struggling and, based on the information we receive, we take appropriate action. If action is called for, right, we take appropriate action to support the person or the people who are impacted or involved.
Speaker 1:What is the early warning system for burnout? How can faculty and staff in your institution raise their hand and say I'm struggling, I'm in the weeds, I'm blown, I'm overwhelmed, I'm burnt out, I am struggling. I need some help. What is the early warning system and what are the steps you take after an early warning has been given? It's not good enough just to have the system where people are submitting. What are you going to do with it? Who's responsible for triaging what comes in and walking through what the appropriate next steps are? This is to prevent large incidents. This is to prevent the massive negative impacts of burnout.
Speaker 1:This is before a person gets to rock bottom. This is before a person needs FMLA. This is before a person walks off rock bottom. This is before a person needs FMLA. This is before a person walks off their job. What are you doing when someone raises their hand? Is there even a system, is there a process for someone to raise their hand and say I am struggling, I'm struggling, I need help?
Speaker 1:So you need an early warning system, friend, not an employee satisfaction survey. Your employee satisfaction survey is not telling you how your people are doing. It's not even telling you how satisfied they are. Can we just be honest? I'm not. How safe do your people feel telling the truth on those surveys and we love to laud the great outcomes that we got on the survey. Friend, your people don't feel that way. They're not telling you the truth and you know how. I know Because I've been in the room where people say how they really feel. But then when we hear the outcome of the employee satisfaction survey, it does not align. It's not in alignment with what we're seeing and hearing from our people.
Speaker 1:Where is the wellness check-in? How do you periodically check in on your folks on different levels? Maybe it's through one-on-one conversations Do your folks even get one-on-one check-ins? Or maybe it's through anonymous surveys, or maybe it's through some sort of reporting mechanism. How are you checking in on the wellness of your people? How do you know how folks are doing before the burnout incident? So you need early warning systems. You need a workload analysis and management. One of the things that I recommend in workload analysis is a desk audit.
Speaker 1:So often desk audits have been done when we don't think people are doing their work, when they say they don't have time to do a good job. It's often a HR mechanism or tool that we use to say, okay, let's see what you're really doing, let's see what you're doing with your time right. But what I am suggesting here is not like a punishment or a tool to prove that somebody is not doing their work. There was a time that I went to my entire area and I said I'd like for us to do a desk audit for the next two weeks and I want to know where you're spending your time and what you're doing. And the reason why I did that and I told them this is because I can't accurately tell our story, because I need data. I need to be.
Speaker 1:I know you're working hard. I know you're working so many hours over 40. I know that so much of your time cannot, has not been accounted for right. So it's not just meetings and it's not just the actual programs and it's not just executing the things, but I know you're also meeting with students who just pop up in your office. You are mentoring, you are wiping tears, you are giving money so students can eat. I know that those things are happening. How do I know? Cause I did it and those things are not accounted for. The invisible labor is not accounted for. Those mentor moments, those support moments, those crisis moments that you can't put on the calendar, those things that keep you after work to seven, eight, nine o'clock at night, those things that keep you after the program till midnight and then you come back at eight o'clock the next day. Those things are not accounted for in the workload. So when we go forward and say my folks are overworked, they're tired, all we hear is everybody's tired, everybody's overworked. But, friend, you can count it. It does not count until you count it. I don't love that, but it's the truth. It does not count until you count it. So do a desk audit, have your folks write down. For this hour I was in staff meeting for this 15 minutes a student dropped by with this challenge. Or for this two hours I was walking around campus with a student trying to calm them down because they struggle with anxiety. Or I was walking a student to the counseling center because they wouldn't go unless I went with them. Like these are the things that are not accounted for. Or I'm a faculty member and I serve here and I serve there and I serve on this committee and that committee and then I have to do the work of the committee outside of the committee meetings.
Speaker 1:How are we accounting for the invisible labor? What system do we have in place to reward this kind of labor and don't run away, friend, because we all automatically think we can't pay them more. We can't pay them more? Ok, then be creative. How can it contribute to promotion? How can it contribute to tenure? How can it contribute to awards and recognition? How can it contribute to giving people more time off? Oh my gosh, you were here till midnight last night. I don't want to see you until noon today and you don't have to take a time off because you already worked hours.
Speaker 1:How are we paying attention to the workload Instead of just saying everybody's tired, count it. Know what you're dealing with. Know how many hours your folks are working. Know what they're doing with their time, not to micromanage them, but to make sure that we are not wearing out our good people. We have to manage the work better. We have to manage the work better. We have to find a way to get it all done without using, abusing, misusing our most dedicated people. So we need some service tracking systems. We need some transparent tracking systems so that people can say what they're doing. Tracking systems so that people can say what they're doing and we can really tell the story of our departments, of our areas, of our divisions, of our universities, our schools, so early warning systems.
Speaker 1:We're talking about prevention today, workload analysis and management and management. We need institutional culture development. I can't tell you the number of times that I hear people first, people first, people first. We are family Like. We are the whatever family, we are the this family, we are the that family. I almost said a name, but I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it because this is not about any individual institution, because all of us are struggling here.
Speaker 1:What is the culture around wellness and boundaries and care for your people? Friend, listen, hear me, it's time out for just talking about it. It's cute, it looks good on the website, it looks good on the marketing materials, but your people don't believe it. They're not experiencing it, they're not living it. How are you really putting people first? What is the culture for someone to raise their hand and say they're struggling? What happens? How are they perceived? Are they now the problem? Do we treat them like someone who's inept or can't deal? Or is the weak link? What happens? Do we gossip about it and talk about it and spread news about somebody's struggle?
Speaker 1:What is the culture of your institution in really taking care of people? Are you even aware of your people? Are you thinking about them? Do you see them or are you just looking at the outcomes? Look at your KPIs. Is there anything in your KPI that's counting how you're taking care of your people? Not in a surface way, not in a check the box way. Yeah, we say this. We say that we have this program and nobody comes to your program, or they come because they're voluntold or mandated to come and it's a waste of their time.
Speaker 1:Friend, we got to talk. We got to talk. Can we be real? We have to be real. We cannot continue to pretend that this is not happening. We cannot continue to pretend that our people are okay. They are not okay. Everything is not fine. It's on fire right now. So we got to really really get down to the nitty gritty and have a plan. So culture matters, culture matters.
Speaker 1:And are you telling folks just to take care of themselves or are you showing them People will do what you do, not what you say? What are the boundaries concerning when we're sending email, when we're responding to email? Well, I work best four o'clock in the morning. Pbj, I got you. So do I, but you can schedule that message to go out at 930. It doesn't have to go out at four. When it goes out at four, then you make people feel like that's when they should be working.
Speaker 1:What is the culture of doing work after your work hours? What does that look like and how are we compensating for that in some way? In some way, even if it's not money? How are we compensating for that time? Friend, we have hired folks and we expect them to give their entire lives to our workplaces, our organizations, our schools. We expect them to give everything for the sake of the student. You're doing it for the sake of the student and we love our students. Come on, come on. We love our students and your people are tired. They're tired. The context in which we are serving right now is not the same. There is nothing normal about what's going on right now. Nothing, nothing normal about the issues that students are bringing to school, nothing normal about the context in which students live outside of school and it bleeds over into school. There's nothing normal about the challenges to teaching and learning right now. There's nothing normal. So we need a culture. We need a culture change.
Speaker 1:So early warning systems, workload analysis and management, institutional culture development. And we need resource allocation. We need resource planning. How are you budgeting to support your folks in high stress times? Show me the money. You put people first. Show me the money. I'm telling you where your money is. Your heart is every single time. Where your money is, your heart is. So if you really want to count it, if you really want to know, if your people first look at the budget, where are we spending the money? How much professional development are we doing? How much coaching and development are we doing? How how much personal resources, counseling and otherwise do we have? And it's not just spending money to get these things. It may be a partnership, it may be community resources, it may be people resources, but what are we doing to support our people? How are we allocating the limited resource that we have? One of the workshops I do is called managing capacity, and when I talk to teams about how are you managing the limited time and energy that you have? How are you prioritizing? When everything is a priority, when everything feels urgent and important? We have to allocate resources appropriately in order to prevent further consequences of what resources are available to you and your team.
Speaker 1:I'll give you an example. So I know in K-12 school, one of the issues is folks never get a break between teaching your actual classes, supervising lunches and recess, and all this. You don't get your real planning time, like there's supposed to be a planning period. It's not like it's not happening. That's what teachers are telling me. They don't have their planning time, they don't have their downtime, they don't have their think time. So what can we do, pbj? How can we help our people rest when there's not time for you?
Speaker 1:Bringing substitutes for everything else. If they couldn't come to school, you would bring in a substitute. So can you bring in substitutes that will give coverage so that teachers can have their planning time? Listen, it's about strategy and creativity. We get locked into. There's nothing I can do. There's nothing I can do, and that's not true. That's not true. Even I don't care what level you're at. I know you don't control the whole thing, I know you're not responsible for everything. But, friend, start where you are.
Speaker 1:What can you do this week? What can you do this week to implement some prevention for your faculty, your staff, your team? Think about early warning systems. Think about workload analysis. Think about institutional culture. What can you put in place? Think about institutional culture. What can you put in place. Think about resource allocation.
Speaker 1:What can you do this week as a prevention measure to support your folks? I'd love to hear about it. I'd love for you to comment under this podcast, wherever you're listening to it, watching it. I'd love for you to post on social media or reply to an email from me. Let me know what are you doing right now?
Speaker 1:One thing, what is one thing you can do to move towards prevention and preventing further consequences of burnout with your folks. It's time, friend. We have to do something. And if you are an individual, what are you doing for you? I told you we're disrupting burnout, checking your baggage, building your boundaries, discovering your brilliance. I've offered you to stop playing. How can you plan your next micro break? What does it look like for you to change the rhythm of your life and incorporate some stops and some breaks so that you can breathe? You should get that stop plan. Go to my website, patricebutnerjacksoncom, or on social media, you can respond and grab it right. We need to do something now. Stop waiting. The wait is over. We know what we're dealing with and it's time to do something about it. All right, so for the next few weeks, we're going to be talking about building a crisis plan to prevent, to respond to, to mitigate, to prevent, to respond to, to mitigate, to recover from the impacts of burnout in our schools, our colleges, our universities.
Speaker 1:I hope you're down for this conversation because I'm ready to share it with you. All right, friend, as always, you are powerful, you are significant, you are brilliant, you can figure this out. Oh, friend, listen to me, you are brilliant, you can figure this out. Oh, friend, listen to me, you are brilliant, you're brilliant. Do what you can do. Stop focusing on what you can't do, what you're not in control of, what they won't approve. Do what you can do and do it now. Do it now, do it now, and if I can help you, you let me know. You are brilliant. Love always, pbj. Bye, friend.
