ARLINGTON, Va. — With the vast majority of schools across the U.S. continuing to offer distance learning as their only student instructional model, working parents are feeling the pain.
A new national poll of the U.S. workforce indicates that 65% of employees with children in remote learning situations are feeling burnout. Even for workers without remote learning children, the burnout levels also are high at 52%.
“These findings shouldn’t be surprising to employers. Families and workers were burnt out even before the pandemic,” said Melissa Jezior, president and chief executive officer of Eagle Hill Consulting. “This isn’t an easy situation for employers to resolve, with work life balance taking on a whole new meaning during this health crisis.”
Jezior noted that the only solutions is for employers to work with each employee to help manage the situation, whether it involves adjusting work hours, workloads or job expectations.
“Employees are bouncing back and forth between their work computer to their child’s device, struggling to do two jobs at once,” she said. “Our research makes clear that employers have got to find way to make the situation manageable for employees because the pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon. Otherwise, companies will suffer financially and risk harming their brand.”
When asked about the causes of burnout, parents with children in remote learning situations reported:
- 45% attribute burnout to their workload.
- 42% say it’s balancing work and their personal life.
- 33% indicate it stems from a lack of communication, feedback and support.
- 32% point to time pressures.
- 28% say it’s a lack of clarity around expectations.
- 25% say it’s performance expectations.
These findings are contained in the 2020 Eagle Hill Consulting COVID-19 Employee Burnout Survey conducted online by Ipsos from Sept. 13-17. The survey included more than 1,000 respondents from a random sample of employees across the United States.
