Five ways to support your staff

Leading, motivating, and supporting staff is no mean feat – here’s how you can show your staff that you appreciate and value them

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Education Support

Teachers and education staff throughout the sector are constantly dealing with a wide range of issues, meaning maintaining a sense of wellbeing has never been more important. 

Here are five ways school leaders can support their staff.

Clear management structures

• Encourage staff to establish a work routine – if this doesn’t need to be rigid, give as much flexibility as possible to allow people to manage childcare, and other personal demands
• Agree manageable weekly/fortnightly goals
• Debrief your team – teachers are dealing with new and difficult boundary issues, meaning they’ll need support to reflect on these issues and deal with the emotional impact

Purpose

• Help staff to maintain a clear sense of purpose – what they are there to do and what is most important – and help them to make it meaningful in this current situation
• You might want them to focus on how they can support students to remain connected with the school community

Control 

• We all like a sense of control. Managers needs to encourage staff to distinguish between what they can and can’t control: 

What can’t be controlled

• Learning outcomes
• The extent to which families comply with the school’s approach
• Normal standard for safety and safeguarding

Focus instead of areas where they can make a meaningful difference: 

• Demonstrating care for their students
• Offering support 
• Offering feedback where possible

Relationships

Education is a profoundly social profession and it’s essential to have good collegiate relationships to promote teacher resilience. 

• Help staff to identify which colleagues can energise and support them and encourage them to reach out and connect with these colleagues
• Help them recognise who they can support
• Develop a two-way flow across school or college network, supporting and supported

Mental health hygiene

Good mental health hygiene is important to keep everyone well. Managers need to encourage staff take care of themselves and need to role model this behaviour:

• Regular exercise, good nutrition, enough sleep and limit social media
• Creativity – rearrange room, learn to sing a song, cook new dish, grow plant, make/do/mend, TikTok routine
• Practice gratitude – focus on the positive and celebrate small victories and be liberal with praise
• Accept uncertainty – when will school go back? How can they safely? These are all things we cannot control, so try to focus on what we can control
• Talk about feelings and accept as normal feelings of anger, sadness, fear, and grief at the loss of our way of life or bereavement for the loss of a loved one

We hope these tips have proven useful. At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember is that you can best support your teachers and education staff by being human first and line managers second.