A Publication Target Won’t Fix Burnout — But Coaching Can Prevent It from Derailing Your Top Talent
Academia has a retention problem — and it’s not just about funding or job security.
It's about burnout.
Every week, I speak to high-performing academics who are rethinking their place in the profession. These are talented researchers with promising trajectories — the ones who win grants, publish well, mentor students, and carry the weight of departmental leadership. They're exactly the kind of people institutions should be investing in. And yet, they’re sliding quietly toward the exit.
Why?
Because they’re exhausted. Overstretched. Disillusioned. And in too many cases, completely unsupported in the work that matters most to their career — their research.
Institutions often respond to this problem with well-intended but misaligned measures.
More workshops.
More writing retreats.
More ambitious publication targets.
But here’s the truth: you cannot spreadsheet your way out of burnout.
You don’t fix disengagement with tighter metrics.
You don’t retain people by increasing pressure without changing support.
✅ What Really Works
I work with universities that are serious about developing and retaining research talent — not just monitoring it. The institutions that succeed in this space don’t just ask for more outputs. They ask better questions:
What’s getting in the way of this researcher’s writing?
What support structures are missing [these are not difficult to put in place]?
How do we create time, safety, and clarity for deep thinking and creativity?
How do we invest in their growth — not just their productivity?
In my work with early-, mid-, and senior-career academics across the UK and Europe, I’ve seen a few key interventions that actually move the dial. They’re not flashy. But they’re powerful.
Let’s break them down.
1. Strategic Workload RETHINKING
A 40-40-20 model in theory does not translate to 40-40-20 in practice.
Research time is often the most vulnerable part of the academic workload. It’s the part that gets eaten by teaching prep, student crises, admin, committee work, and increasingly complex internal systems. When institutions fail to protect research time, they create a slow bleed — and researchers pay the price.
The solution is not simply for individuals to ring-fence hours in a diary. It’s to work differently - and think differently - about how work is executed with a clear, values-aligned vision of what kind of academic the institution wants to support.
That includes:
Conducting honest workload audits
Reducing low-value service expectations and the pseudo productivity garbage that drowns out actual value work
Empowering researchers to create a writing focused environment (and be backed when they do)
A researcher with time to think is a researcher who can write. It’s that simple — and that hard.
2. High-Trust Coaching Relationships
Many academics are reluctant to disclose how lost or blocked they feel around their writing. They’ve spent years building expertise and fear that admitting struggle will make them appear incompetent or weak.
This is why coaching is so effective.
In a confidential, non-judgmental space, researchers can reflect, reframe, and rebuild their practice. They can be honest about what’s not working — and receive expert support to change it.
Writing coaching, in particular, provides:
Structured accountability
Tailored strategies for writing under pressure
Techniques to overcome perfectionism, fear, and procrastination
When done well, coaching doesn’t just help researchers write more. It helps them write better — and feel more grounded, confident, and in control.
3. Safe, Structured Research Development Spaces
Too many research environments operate on passive silence or punitive critique. That’s a recipe for creative paralysis.
Researchers thrive when they can test ideas, receive constructive feedback, and be encouraged to think ambitiously. Structured spaces — such as facilitated research groups, accountability circles, or writing sprints — offer exactly that.
The key word here is safe.
A space where someone can say “I don’t know where to start” or “I’m stuck” without fear of judgment is a space where real progress can happen. Creating that environment isn’t about tone-policing. It’s about leadership — modelling trust, curiosity, and collective support.
4. Tailored Writing Support for Real Outputs
Generic writing advice doesn’t work for complex research outputs.
Academics don’t need another webinar telling them to write daily (though I stand by this basic advice). They need help diagnosing what’s going wrong in their process, addressing longstanding writing baggage, and developing methods that work under pressure. Better technique, better processes, better workload management: just better.
This is exactly why I develop my Coaching Programmes and work closely with institutions to embed them as a live, high-impact intervention. They enable researchers to:
Build a sustainable writing habit
Identify and overcome internal writing blocks
Learn powerful techniques that improve quality and quantity
Leave with tangible progress — not just good intentions
It’s fast. It’s strategic. And it meets researchers where they are — overwhelmed, overworked, but still ambitious.
👥 Institutional Change Starts with Human Insight
If you’re a Dean, Head of Research, or Director of Staff Development — and you’re watching talented researchers burn out or disengage — the time to intervene is now.
Not when the REF looms.
Not after a resignation letter.
Now.
Your researchers don’t need more pressure.
They need more support. You need their outputs, and they desperately want to be world class researchers delivering them. Your needs align beautifully, but you are not putting in place the catalysts for productive writing.
You need more insight into their barriers.
More strategies that work in the real world.
And they need more belief that the institution values their intellectual labour — not just its outputs.
When you provide that?
You don’t just protect your publication pipeline.
You protect your people.
And ultimately, that’s what sustains excellence.
📩 I work with universities across the UK, Ireland, and Europe to design custom academic writing interventions and coaching support for staff. If you’re looking to retain top talent and improve research culture, I’d love to talk.
Let’s build institutions where researchers can — and want to — stay.