Getting the right people in the right place at the right time

Recruitment and retention is a key concern for any back-office operation working in today’s education landscape. Strictly Education’s Caroline Cusselle explains the ways you and your team can improve recruitment and retention

The facts of that challenge are well known but bear repeating. Some 40,000 teachers resigned from state schools in 2021-22, according to the DfE’s School workforce in England report of June 2023, while the numbers leaving remain a concern.

According to Strictly Education’ latest annual MAT leaders’ Challenges Survey Report, finance and operations (46%) and workforce resilience and wellbeing (43%) remained the most important challenge areas for MATs. The survey also revealed that 40% of schools and trusts did not have a people strategy or written people plan in place that could address those issues, increasing to 49% of all MATs and SATs.

Any tools or support to make the challenge of recruiting and retaining people at the right time will be crucial to the success of your trust or school’s people strategy. Get the right people in the right place at the right time – supported by the right systems – and it will be easier for you and your team to fulfil your mission to support your school development plan.

Achieving this ideal isn’t straightforward if resources – and your own recruitment problems – are a factor. That’s where Strictly Education’s Edupeople HR and payroll system and HR support and advice services come in.

With the tools and the support in place, you can build a solid retention strategy. Our HR advisory team has put together the following quick guide:

Create CPD opportunities for all teachers

Good teachers who are keen to progress tend to move elsewhere if they feel that there is no room for growth. Use appraisals and half-year reviews to understand the career goals and aspirations of your teachers and facilitate objectives which have these in mind. Although there is a place for formal CPD such as courses and qualifications, job shadowing, mentoring or networking opportunities and secondments with partner schools is great CPD as well.

Give performance feedback regularly and often

Lead by example by noticing and acknowledging the contribution of all staff and encourage your managers to do likewise: this is not an onerous or time-consuming commitment but is of great value. A simple thank you can be very powerful.

Get to know your teachers and their talents

If you understand your team’s talents they’ll feel understood and supported and your establishment will benefit. Stretch your most able teachers: competent performers need both autonomy and encouragement to use their skills and do their jobs in their own way. Some will need to be regularly challenged to use their skills in different ways, pick up new knowledge and have opportunities to add real value. Make use of temporary or permanent TLRs (or equivalent) to give teachers a chance to lead on initiatives or areas of the curriculum. If you can map out career paths which link to opportunities this will feed into succession planning in the longer term.

Understand where stress is coming from

Teachers still frequently cite workload and stress as chief reasons for leaving the profession. Regularly workforce surveys are a way to understand the key sources of that stress and help you to come up with solutions to tackle them.

Create opportunities for people to succeed

Individuals feel satisfied and motivated by a role where they can carry out their job requirements without feeling so pressurised that they are unable to cope. Even a heavy workload feels more manageable when there is a supportive line manager able to offer advice and support. Don’t suppress opportunities for pay progression on financial grounds. Payroll often seems like one of the few areas left to make savings when budgets are tight, but it is a false economy in the long run as teachers will depart, leaving you with recruitment and supply cover costs and a loss of skills and knowledge built up over time.

 Make everyone count

When people understand how their effort contributes to the aims and objectives of your school or trust it lends a sense of purpose and value to what they do. Communicate the overall vision and work with teams to support the understanding of their contributions. Encourage and welcome ideas for improvements and see these through with action plans. And support staff wellbeing by looking at work-life balance and introducing measures such as after-school fitness sessions and social events.

 Nurture new recruits

A bad or non-existent induction tends to linger in the minds of new recruits for a long time. Teachers in their first few years in the profession can be particularly vulnerable and should have access to extra support to navigate the more difficult and unexpected trials they may face, such as managing parental communication effectively.

This is a sponsored article, brought to you by Strictly Education.

 Edupeople is an education specific HR, payroll and pension system and service designed by Strictly Education.

EduPeople takes care of employee management from recruitment to retirement, automating processes, reducing admin and giving your trust or school real-time insights into your workforce to inform decision making and strategic planning.

The system is designed so that employee information is entered just one and then feeds seamlessly into all related HR areas, removing the need for duplicate data entry which can create errors.

The system provides you with a dashboard to identify trends and manage your workforce more effectively. Strictly Education’s team of expert HR advisors can support and work alongside you, giving you the expertise and additional resource needed to tackle any HR challenges.

Caroline Cusselle is head of education HR at Strictly Education, which provides professional support, advice and guidance to more than 2,000 schools, 900 academies and 180 MATs across the country. www.strictlyeducation.co.uk.