Rachel Hall, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

When it comes to academic and transitional issues, advisors have always served on the front lines. In the past, advising teams could often predict student needs and plan downtime around peak and off-peak times. During the pandemic, students needed to communicate with advisors more than ever (White, 2020). Intense and sometimes emotionally charged conversations required additional energy and empathy from academic advisors. Over time, this caused many academic advisors to develop compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. To mitigate the ramifications of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma, advising administrators can use a trauma-informed leadership approach to support and retain advisors.

The pandemic created a challenging environment for higher education. Comparable to the rest of the world, higher education professionals were coping with homeschooling children, sickness, loneliness, financial challenges, and grief. Academic advisors pivoted from in-person and hybrid meetings to 100% virtual student meetings. In addition to academic and technology inquiries, students needed to discuss personal issues they were experiencing such as anxiety, depression, food and financial insecurities, and loneliness (Velez, 2023). Coping with personal crises and exposure to the emotional distress disclosed by students caused many academic advisors to experience compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. Compassion fatigue refers to the emotional and physical depletion that occurs when helpers are unable to rest and recharge. Vicarious trauma refers to damaged perceptions and belief systems that helping professionals can experience due to the constant exposure of traumatic information disclosed by clients (Saakvitne & Pearlman, 1996).

Recent data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) survey indicated that more than 56% of higher education employees indicated they are likely to look for alternative employment in the next 12 months (Bichsel et al., 2023). While colleges have been hyperfocused on increasing enrollment, improving student retention numbers, and recovering from the financial fallout from the pandemic, academic advisors continue to grapple with additional responsibilities, low support, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and working in politically charged environments. According to the Workplace in America Survey, 57% of employees experienced negative impacts associated with workplace burnout, compassion fatigue, lack of motivation, desire to self-isolate, desire to quit, and lower productivity (American Psychological Association, 2023).

Advisor turnover is detrimental to institutions and students. Employee attrition can lower productivity, increase employee burnout, create a loss of institutional knowledge, waste time and money spent recruiting and training new advisors, and lower the quality of advising received by students (Wallace, 2023). In addition to lower quality advising, students lose an experienced advisor with whom they have formed a relationship.

Trauma-Informed Leadership Approach

How do advising administrators stop the bleed of advisor attrition and support their advisors? Trauma-informed care is an approach that considers how traumatic experiences impact individuals’ lives and applies that understanding to policies and services that accommodate the needs of trauma survivors. (Buffalo Center for Social Research, 2024). This approach improves healing and wellbeing and ensures an equitable work environment (Carello & Butler, 2015). The guiding principles to a trauma-informed approach in the leadership of academic advisors are creating a safe environment, establishing trust, peer support, teamwork, empowering advisors, and recognition of multicultural issues (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2019).

Creating a Safe Environment

Academic advisors need to feel physically safe in their workspace and with their students. Advising administrators can create a safe environment by following university safety guidelines and protocols and requiring advising staff to participate in emergency preparedness training. Academic advisors should also feel safe when working with students. Smart phone apps such as Livesafe enable users to instantly call 911 or campus police and share location information with other users or campus police.

Establishing Trust

Advising administrators are privy to confidential information such as employee conflicts, illnesses, evaluations, and salary information. To establish trust, advising administrators should not share confidential information with other advising team members. Another key component of trust is transparency. There are times when university leadership will share confidential information such as enrollment data, budgetary constraints, and impending organizational changes with advising administrators. When advising administrators are given permission to share information with the advising team, it is important to share consistent information, encourage questions, and listen to concerns.

Peer Support

Individual check-ins, team meetings, and mentor programming are proactive ways for advising administrators to uncover issues negatively impacting the well-being of individual advisors or the advising team. Individual check-ins create an opportunity for supervisors to assess, prevent and eradicate burnout and compassion fatigue by encouraging employees to establish boundaries and use sick or personal leave when they need a mental health break. Team meetings and mentor programming provide an opportunity for advising team members to share successes and failures with one another. Sharing humanizes working conditions and teaches coping strategies for handling difficult student and professional situations.

Teamwork

Teamwork emphasizes the value of working together to create and innovate, problem-solve, and make shared decisions that are mutually beneficial for the advising team and the students. Moreover, it promotes a sense of belonging among team members and encourages equal participation and investment in the development and implementation of new advising initiatives.

Empowering Advisors

Academic advisors are elemental and essential to student success and the institutions they serve. As such, they should feel valued and validated. Advising administrators can empower advisors by encouraging advising staff to voice concerns, supporting participation in training and professional development, providing opportunities to use leadership and decision-making skills, offering constructive feedback when mistakes are made, and getting buy-in from the advising team when decisions are being made that could impact their jobs.

Recognition of Multicultural Issues

Advising administrators have the responsibility to create and maintain an inclusive and accessible workplace. They must implement clear policies and procedures responsive to the racial, cultural, ethnic, gender, and physical needs of the advising team. Working conditions, morale, and compensation should be assessed regularly to correct workplace disparities. Advising administrators and team members should practice cultural humility and actively participate in on-going multicultural training to improve multicultural competencies.

Low-pay, compassion fatigue, workplace burnout, and loneliness have led to the highest number of voluntary turnovers since the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) began collecting employee retention data in 2017 (Jackson, 2023). Advising administrators have the potential to positively impact advisor retention, burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma. Using a trauma-informed leadership approach validates and empowers advisors, builds a stronger advising team, and promotes equality. The path to success and promotion in higher education is rarely linear. Sharing failures and setbacks can humanize working conditions and teach coping strategies for handling difficult student and professional situations. Assessing workplace conditions, morale, compensation, and resources are essential to advisor retention. While it is important for institutions and the advising profession to recruit new advisors, it is equally important to support, retain, and reward experienced advisors that have contributed their time and talents to the students and institutions they serve.

References

American Psychological Association. (2023). 2023 Work in America Survey: Workplaces as engines of psychological health and well-being. https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/work-in-america/2023-workplace-health-well-being

Bichsel, J., Fuesting, M., Tubbs, D., Schneider, J. (September 2023). The CUPA-HR 2023 higher education employee retention survey. College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. https://www.cupahr.org/surveys/research-briefs/higher-ed-employee-retention-survey-findings-september-2023/

Buffalo Center for Social Research. (n.d.). What is trauma-informed care? https://socialwork.buffalo.edu/social-research/institutes-centers/institute-on-trauma-and-trauma-informed-care/what-is-trauma-informed-care.html

Carello, J., & Butler, L. (2014). Potentially perilous pedagogies: Teaching trauma Is not the same as trauma-informed teaching. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 15(2), 153–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2014.867571 

Jackson, L. (September 28, 2023). Employee Retention in Higher Ed Remains a Challenge. Higher Ed Jobs. https://www.higheredjobs.com/Articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=3641&Title=Employee%20Retention%20in%20Higher%20Ed%20Remains%20a%20Challenge

Saakvitne, K. W., & Pearlman, L. A. (1996): Transforming the pain: A workbook on vicarious traumatization. W. W. Norton.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2014). SAMSHA’s concept of trauma and guidance for a trauma-informed approach (HHS Publication No. [SMA] 14-4884). https://ncsacw.acf.hhs.gov/userfiles/files/SAMHSA_Trauma.pdf

Velez, G. (2023, June). College and COVID-19: The pandemic's reverberations on adolescents and emerging adults on campus. Current opinion in psychology, 51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101592

Wallace, L. (2023, March 21). Five hidden costs of employee attrition. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeseq/2023/03/21/five-hidden-costs-of-employee-attrition/?sh=711864e362f4

White, E. (2020, June 15). Academic advising in a pandemic and beyond. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/06/16/importance-academic-advising-during-and-after-pandemic-opinion#