Internationally Recognized Researcher Burns Out and Starts New Podcast Talking with Experts on Solutions for Working Mom Burnout

 On International Podcast day, September 30 each year, we celebrate podcasters from around the world. This year we welcome a new international podcaster who is based in San Diego.

Dr. Jacqueline Kerr, originally from the UK, is a world renown public health researcher, in the top 1% of most cited scientists. But her path to scientific success, also led her down a path to burnout. In 2018, she left her position as a Public Health Professor in a School of Medicine.

“Being in public health doesn’t prevent you from burning out. I did lots of healthy stress management through diet and exercise, but the pressures of leading and funding a research group, teaching, being a community advocate and being a mom got too much.”

Dr. Kerr’s new podcast “Overcoming Working Mom Burnout” focuses on “Mindset and Managerial Solutions to unrealistic expectations and inequality at home and work.” Dr. Kerr is using her research skills as a behavior change scientist to think about burnout differently.

“The COVID-19 epidemic has shown us that working mom burnout is a societal problem. Individuals can manage how they cope with stress but the stressors have to change. Working moms need government policies that support childcare, workplaces that provide flexible work schedules, equal pay, and equal promotion opportunities, and homes where both moms and dads share the parenting burden equally.”

Women-led companies have faired much better during COVID. Although only 7% of venture capital funds go to women, their return on investment is double that of male founded businesses. When women lead companies they are more diverse. Despite the economic and societal benefits of women working, working moms are shunned. They face a maternal wall in their careers and many moms leave their jobs. During COVID over 5 million women left the workforce.

“The situation is way worse for Black mothers. They are subject to daily microaggressions in the workplace. They earn 62 cents to the dollar. And they live in fear for how they children will be treated by society. When I learned it would take 200 years to have global equal pay, I was shocked.”

Dr. Kerr’s podcast focuses on the solutions to burnout, how to prevent burnout and how to treat it. She interviews guests from around the world, moms who are experts in burnout research, in stress management, and in corporate culture change.

“Working mom burnout is a worldwide problem. It’s recognized by the World Health Organization. But different countries have different approaches. We can learn from them. There isn’t a one size fits all solutions. Burnout is a complex problem. If you’re a perfectionist you will struggle, if your partner has little work autonomy you will struggle, if your organization has a 24/7 culture and is male dominated you will struggle, if you don’t have universal childcare and healthcare you will struggle.”

Solutions can include working with a coach to help you set boundaries and prioritize your own needs. Asking friends and family to help more and acknowledging that you need a break to be a good mom. Society makes Dads out to be heroes anytime they step up, but they don’t acknowledge when moms do the same tasks day after day. COVID has shown us that maybe kids don’t need so many after school activities that moms have to organize and drive to. Companies need to trust their employees to work effectively from home on their own schedule, but they also need to identify what tasks are most impactful and focus on them.

Busy work serves nobody. Performance should be based on delivering results not how many hours you put in. And allowing employees to focus on those tasks that most benefit the goals of the company are key. Companies should also celebrate teams that are collaborative and leaders who model healthy work habits. Leaders should be asking about people’s personal situations and providing psychologically safe environments for discussions about mental health, racial traumas, and workplace problems.

“There’s a lot of great ideas out there. Companies and families have to be willing to experiment, try, fail and try again with a new strategy. You have to give something a chance to work by investing enough resources and thought into it, but you also have to recognize when it isn’t working and be able to shift course. This is what we do when we are implementing quality improvement programs, you continually learn and adapt, collecting impact data and checking in with team members along the way. We need to apply the same principles to fixing burnout.”

Dr. Kerr strongly advocates for us to move from awareness to action. Implicit bias training, for example, is just the start. It addresses our awareness, but if we stop there we end up doing more harm because we do not recognize the daily effort needed to create work environments that support all people. We need to practice standing up to workplace harassment and speaking out for victims. We need role models who demonstrate justice through their everyday decisions and enforcement of policies that protect against bias. We need to invest resources in Employee Resource Groups who are paid for their efforts to guide ongoing workplace evaluations and improvements.

“We also need to let go of doing it perfectly. We need to let Dads parent in their own way, do laundry on their own terms. We need to quiet our inner critic. I have read over 150 books during my burnout journey, and there’s a lot I have learned. But it all starts with the belief that I am still a work in progress and everything I do is helping me grow. I don’t have to prove myself but I do have to believe that I am doing my best, and that some days that looks pretty messy.”

Some of the topics Dr. Kerr talks about with her guests are: addressing work-family conflicts through supervisors tracking their behaviors, how leaders need to ask, listen and respond to employee needs, valuing what you bring to the world, balancing stressors and resources, giving yourself a parenting break, changing culture through policies and data, creating boundaries, encouraging moms back to work, female role models, more diverse representation, allyship and belonging, job crafting, letting go, and integrating change into what you are already doing.

International Podcast Day will be hosting several events on September 30.