The pandemic created a challenging environment for academic advisors. Coping with personal crises and continual exposure to intense and sometimes emotionally charged conversations with students required additional energy and empathy from academic advisors. Over time, this caused many academic advisors to develop compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. While colleges have been hyper focused 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. Recent CUPA-HR data indicated that more than 56% of higher education employees are looking for alternative employment in the next twelve months. This article reviews the concepts of trauma-informed leadership and how the trauma-informed leadership approach can support and retain advisors experiencing workplace burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma.
[Read the rest of this article...]