Reducing Friction, Burnout, and Bottlenecks in Research Administration

In our March webinar, Reducing Friction, Burnout, and Bottlenecks in Research Administration, we had the pleasure of hosting a panel discussion with two incredible practitioners: Mark Lucas, Chief Administrative Officer, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Health Sciences, and Stefanie Keto, Financial Compliance Manager at North Carolina State University. The conversation was candid, practical, and more than a little cathartic.

You can view the full webinar recording here, but in the meantime, here are some key takeaways from the discussion. 

Key takeaways

• Burnout is not a personal failure, but instead a sign of systemic issues in need of improvement
• Repetitive, manual processes are a primary contributor to burnout in research administration
• Teams can reclaim time and avoid burnout by appropriately prioritizing tasks, automating repetitive processes, and keeping workloads varied
• Change management is less stressful when teams set realistic goals and approach the process proactively
• Speed doesn’t necessarily mean efficiency; time savings should be passed down throughout workflows to avoid bottlenecks
• Administrative software like the Cayuse Research Suite can help improve processes to reduce burnout and improve employee satisfaction

Burnout is a signal, not a failure

Early in the discussion, we asked attendees to identify which of the following major signs of burnout they were experiencing: 

• Constant exhaustion
• Emotional detachment
• Difficulty focusing
• Feeling perpetually overwhelmed

The overwhelming response? All of the above.

However, feeling these symptoms of burnout isn’t a personal failing. Instead, it’s a signal that something needs to change.

As Stefanie described, burnout on her team first showed up as delays on simple tasks and training not sticking, especially for team members who were clearly struggling to keep their heads above water. For Mark, it crystallized during the pandemic: “People got a chance to finally take a breath, and they realized — we really can’t take the breath. The wheel continues to spin.”

The good news is that recognizing signs of burnout and viewing them as signs of systemic issues, not individual weakness, is an important starting point for change and an opportunity for kicking off necessary improvements.

The hidden costs of manual work

An eye-opening part of diagnosing burnout is examining how much of an employee’s work feels “hidden” and how much time these hidden tasks add to individual workloads.

To give an example, Mark shared a story about an incredibly efficient administrative assistant who had built such an elaborate system for retrieving historical data that she spent most of her time maintaining that system. Building infrastructure to support your team can be a great idea in theory, but when the maintenance of such a system consumes a disproportionate amount of time and effort, it’s actually counterintuitive to progress and can contribute to burnout.

Stefanie pointed to shadow systems as one of the biggest culprits of hidden work. Excel spreadsheets and workarounds might feel necessary (and sometimes they genuinely are), but they also can introduce human error and create downstream chaos. She provided an example where a team discovered that an incorrect fringe rate in a budget template had ripple effects all the way to the sponsor level.

Let’s also not forget about the invisible task of just keeping up, which includes staying current on NIH caps, federal policy changes, and regulatory updates. As Mark put it plainly: “If you don’t have the bandwidth, processes, or tools to maintain the updates, you’re going to fall behind very quickly.

Practical ways teams are reclaiming time

So what actually works? A few strategies came up repeatedly within the panel and chat discussion.

The five-minute rule 

Stefanie shared her adaptation of the “five-minute rule”: if something on your list can be done in five minutes or fewer, just do it! If it takes longer, use those five minutes to plan when you’ll do it: send a quick reply, set an internal deadline, or block time on your calendar. This will lead to a growing sense of accomplishment instead of an overwhelming backlog. Not everyone on Stefanie’s team adopted the five-minute rule after it was introduced, and that’s fine! What mattered most was the shift in attitude it created.

Automate repeatable tasks

Stefanie’s team was spending two full weeks per month manually sending grant closeout reminders at 90, 60, and 30 days. After streamlining the process, they were able to reduce that figure to two days. Finally, after introducing automation, that same task only required twenty minutes a month, and the emails were more accurate. That freed up a team member to contribute to higher-value work.

Role variation and cross-training

Mark’s approach to preventing burnout over the long haul is keeping people engaged through new challenges. He described a team member who cycled through roles in pre-award, HR, purchasing, and back to full-lifecycle management over a 20-year career. This wasn’t a sign of dissatisfaction, but rather of interest in staying engaged with different sides of the organization. As Mark put it, “New challenges are what people need.”

Managing change without adding chaos

Paradoxically, the teams that most urgently need to change their processes are often the ones with the least capacity to manage that change. So, how can they move forward without making things worse?

Both Mark and Stefanie emphasized pacing and empathy. Change doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. Stefanie used a great analogy: think of it like the debt snowball method. Find the smallest win, free up a little time, and use that time to tackle the next thing. Momentum builds.

Mark’s advice was to become a subject matter expert early. He encouraged team members to get in and learn the new system before their team does, because half the fear of change is just unfamiliarity.

And if a change doesn’t go perfectly? Don’t scrap it. Look for what did work and build from there.

Redefining what “efficient” really means

As we wrapped up, we discussed how to know if a change really worked. The answers were more nuanced than you might expect.

Mark’s take might sound familiar: “Perfect is the enemy of good. If it works, we don’t have to perfect it.” Efficiency, for his team, means keeping everything running with as few problems as possible, and not seeking to achieve a perfect system, but rather managing toward a functional one. He also flagged a distinction one attendee raised in the chat: efficiency and effectiveness aren’t the same thing. Something can be done quickly and still not achieve the right outcome.

Stefanie added that it’s important to ask for feedback from your team and your researchers. A process change that looks smooth on your end might be creating bottlenecks somewhere else downstream.

The bottom line

Research administration can be a tough role. Workloads are up, staffing is tight, and the pace of change isn’t slowing down. But as Mark put it: “We’re all on the same ship, and we all have to paddle and help each other, or we’re all going to sink together.”

Small, strategic, empathetic changes add up. And you don’t have to make them alone.