Working From Home Burnout in Higher Education

In higher education, people keep talking about working from home like it's a preference, like it’s for comfort or people want an easy option, and that framing always really jars me. It ignores what the work actually asks of people, the pressure, the interruptions, the constant expectation to keep things going. Once it gets reduced to preference, the rest of the conversation starts from the wrong place.

Working from home is not a preference

People in these roles already feel significant pressure. They absorb constant change, tight deadlines, and huge responsibility, realistically, with very little control over the systems or decisions that create it. In higher education, burnout is baked into many PS roles.

For many people, especially neurodivergent and disabled PS staff, working from home was never a perk. It made work possible. WFH reduces sensory overload, cuts down on constant masking, and allows people to manage their energy in a way that reduces burnout.

Offices are often treated as neutral spaces, but many aren’t. They support some people and actively harm others, and removing flexibility hits some much harder than others.

This does not mean that presence never matters. Clearly, it does. Some roles genuinely need it, and learning and connection do not always happen by accident. But when blanket policies are applied, that nuance is lost. There is talk about culture and people being around each other, but people rarely ask the question, “Who is paying the cost of this?”

This isn’t about one model over another. It’s about how universities are designing workplaces. Are they sustainable for the people who keep them running, or are burnout and attrition being quietly accepted as the cost of doing things the old way?

The pressure professional services staff carry

All too often, we hear people talking about “preference”. This implies that WFH means an easy ride. It immediately delegitimises people’s lived experiences by turning a structural issue into a personality flaw, implying laziness, unsociability, or dishonesty.

Working in professional services is hard. We all recognise that. It isn’t flexible, and it isn’t predictable, despite running on fixed cycles. Supporting the university means supporting students, academics, regulators, and senior leadership. The work is deadline driven, compliance heavy, and often emotionally draining. People are accountable, but they have little control.

Working from home didn’t remove that pressure. The work still has to get done. What WFH changed was the cost of that pressure on people. There is reduced sensory input, fewer interruptions, and more control over energy, pace, and recovery. People can deal with the job, not the job as well as the demands created by the environment.

Calling this convenience ignores the labour people are already doing. Removing flexibility does not remove the work. Students still need support, and deadlines still exist. What does change is who absorbs the strain.

People who are less affected by noise, interruption, sensory load, or constant visibility may barely notice the shift. For others, especially neurodivergent people, disabled staff, those with chronic illness, or people affected by trauma, the very same policy creates a much higher cognitive cost.

Removing WFH flexibility tends to benefit:

• Leaders and managers who rely on visual control
• People whose bodies and brains already work well in that environment

And it costs:

• People who pay for those environments with exhaustion, masking, and burnout
• Teams that lose experienced staff through burnout and churn
• The institution itself, long term, through burnout and attrition

In effect, the pressure doesn’t disappear. It gets shifted onto the wrong people.

There is a long standing assumption in many organisations that “proper work” can only be done in person. That assumption no longer reflects the technology universities rely on every day. It also survives despite the evidence from COVID that effective work does not always require physical presence.

For many PS staff, the question is not “Do I prefer this?” It is “Can I keep doing this without burning out?” Most people never say this out loud. Professional services staff are, by and large, compliant, committed, and reluctant to cause trouble.

Once WFH is framed as a preference, it becomes negotiable. Support becomes conditional rather than necessary.

The problem with “hybrid with an expectation”

Many institutions now offer hybrid working, usually with an expectation that people will be in the office for a set number of days. Leaving aside the loaded nature of the word expectation, this approach isn’t the solution it’s often presented as.

It puts the timing of presence on someone else’s terms. Sometimes that’s genuinely unavoidable and driven by real business needs. But in many cases, the number of days feels arbitrary, chosen because it sounds reasonable or because it avoids difficult conversations.

The problem is that each trip into the office has a cost. And in some cases, this can actually be worse for productivity than being fully on site or entirely remote.

Every switch between working at home and being on site has a start up cost. The commute, settling in, noise, interruptions, sensory load, and social effort all take time. People adjust, form coping strategies, and commonly mask to get through the day. None of that happens instantly.

Hybrid with fixed days means people are constantly starting up, cooling down, and starting again. The system never really settles. That transition cost isn’t just paid by the individual. It’s paid by the institution too, through lost productivity and increased fatigue.

The issue isn’t being present. It’s the repeated shift between modes on someone else’s terms. That’s where inefficiency and burnout come from.

The Hidden Cost of Restricting Working From Home in Universities

Once working from home is framed as a preference, it stops being about something people may need and becomes something they are allowed. People have to ask for flexibility.

As already established, the work does not change. What changes is how legitimate it feels to ask, and how easy it becomes to remove that flexibility. Restricting it through tightly controlled hybrid working or a full return to the office often sounds reasonable, but in practice it makes support conditional.

Professional services staff are rarely the ones who challenge this. They are dedicated, used to adapting, absorbing pressure, and keeping things working without complaint. So instead of pushing back, they absorb it. They cope.

• They mask more
• They over function
• They manage exhaustion silently
• They push themselves until they break
• They quietly disengage and leave

From the outside, people may look fine. There may be small signs, but colleagues are often too busy or stressed themselves to notice. From an organisational perspective, there is no single crisis moment. Experience is slowly drifting out the door.

Because this happens gradually, it is easy to miss the link between restricting flexibility and what is being lost. The policy sounds reasonable. Boxes are ticked. The cost stays hidden.

This is not resistance to change. It’s what happens when organisations rely on people carrying more than is sustainable, for far longer than is fair, without ever naming it.

Designing a Workplace That Doesn’t Burn People Out

It’s worth being clear about what this does not mean. It does not mean everyone does whatever they want, ignoring institutional requirements or colleagues’ needs. What it does mean is that leadership has to do its job.

The problem isn’t flexibility. It’s the absence of clarity. Blanket rules and rigid expectations are often used as blunt substitutes for effective leadership because they’re easier than having proper, meaningful conversations about how work actually happens.

Good leadership in professional services doesn’t rely on visibility to ensure work is being done. A good leader understands the work well enough to know when people being together adds value, and just as importantly, when it doesn’t.

That means being clear about what actually matters and what comes first. It requires trust based on outcomes, not bums on seats to prove commitment.

Once there’s trust, people stop coming in just to prove they’re there. People come in because it’s the right thing to do, it helps with the work, supports learning, or enables colleagues.

Good leadership also isn’t one size fits all. Different people need different things at different times to work well. Treating everyone the same pushes the cost of culture onto the same people every time, while only benefiting a few.

Trust doesn’t mean having no structure. It means having a structure that actually makes sense for the work and the people doing it.

If universities want professional services teams that don’t burn out, flexibility has to be designed in. Not granted reluctantly. And that responsibility sits with leadership, not with staff quietly absorbing the impact.

If this feels close to home and you want space to talk, I work with people in higher education professional services and I’m here. You can find out more about how I support PS staff here.