Education Today Education Today Magazine
In his regular column this month for Education Today MARK SOLOMONS, creator of triple ERA Award-winning Welbee, an online evaluation and staff wellbeing improvement tool, shares his insights in developing a people strategy.
Last month’s publication of the DfE’s second annual survey, ‘Working lives of teachers and leaders’, confirmed what we already know, ‘rating workload and job satisfaction’, 88% of the education workforce are experiencing stress, and only 46% report job satisfaction.
When too many employees feel they have an unacceptable workload over which they have no control, and little job satisfaction, it doesn’t provide the best recipe for success. So, what might MATs and schools do? ‘People strategy – creating a coherent framework for employees to be hired, managed, and developed to support an organisation’s long-term goals. It helps ensure that the various aspects of people management work together
to drive the behaviour and climate to meet performance targets.’ Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
A people strategy is designed to get the most out of your staff, by ensuring they get the most out of their job. It encompasses a significant number of components designed to attract, support, develop, build and retain staff expertise, commitment and belonging. For example, the employee offer, rewards and benefits; equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging; employee management and development; talent identification, workforce, and succession planning; and of course, staff wellbeing and mental health. These strands overlap and the
greatest challenge is usually finding time to make sense of them all, in our far too busy world. So where to begin? A great question to ask is ‘How well do your staff see themselves represented within your organisation? Do they feel a part of it? Do they share your values, feel listened to and well supported?’ Every MAT and school has a mission, vision, and values, and these should reflect a focus on the wellbeing of everyone in the community. Where the values are ‘lived’ and staff can consistently articulate behaviours that demonstrate this, they are far more likely to be effective and satisfied. Happy, contented, and supported employees give more, and in the long term ‘cost less’, with lower absence and longerterm commitment, leading to higher retention of valued staff.
Building the right culture, one where staff want to work and can do their best work, is like building a house and putting down firm foundations. Instead, many choose to start at the top by addressing external motivators and focusing too much on the package they offer to staff, including perks and benefits. Schools may provide staff activities, such as yoga, breakfast and cakes, or perhaps staff training on how to improve their own wellbeing;
there’s nothing wrong with any of these as additional actions, but they are not the place to start.
Addressing the causes of poor wellbeing, culture, and retention, rather than symptoms, ensures the delivery of much needed change, not just sticking plaster solutions. Striving for improvement and actively supporting cultural transformation by increasing and maintaining wellbeing, is a continual process. Whether in a MAT or school, assessing and understanding where you are now is so important. It means you can be clear on where you want to get to, establish your success measures, set out the actions you will take to get there, track progress and then repeat.
Seeking regular staff feedback, using an anonymous survey and other data analysis tools, such as the ‘9 box grid’, will help inform your action plan. Effective follow up means workforce planning is ‘built in’ to the development plan. Improvements and challenges are highlighted and using data to make decisions, usually provides a better outcome.
Be sure to:
• Ensure consistency and parity across the trust or school and adopt those practices that demonstrate the best return.
• Effectively share resourcing and knowledge across the trust or school.
• Develop a proactive recruitment strategy, guided by internal workforce planning and foresight into external factors and influences.
• Implement effective mechanisms for enabling everyone to contribute.
• Use intelligent insight to enable a review of progress and address any shortfalls in a timely and supportive way.
• Identify talented staff members and create a pipeline which underpins your succession planning and which enables staff to see their next steps.
• Develop a mobile workforce, based on need and support.
Identifying talent and building a succession plan
There are two key areas to focus on when identifying talented staff members – their
‘performance’ and ‘potential’.
Performance is what they have done – their track record, and more importantly how they have done it – their behaviour. We all know of people that deliver their objectives but leave a trail of destruction behind them! Potential is their likelihood of being stretched and being able to undertake more senior roles, and their ambition, whether they want to progress.
MATs usually offer a greater opportunity to develop a pool of talent, given the number of staff and ability to work across schools, particularly where they are geographically well located. The same approach can be successful in schools, identifying the current and likely future value of individual staff members, highlighting the available opportunities and the extent of any challenges.
Focussing on performance and potential, makes it easier to provide the right development and training to meet individual and organisational needs. These might include local workshops, national qualifications, coaching and mentoring, additional responsibility, developing new projects or working with others identified as having talent.
Other opportunities include those for high performers who lack ambition. These can be among the many staff to leave because they can often be taken for granted and feel unappreciated. Career paths that allow progression without moving to a leadership role are something that MATs will usually find easier to offer, compared to individual schools.
As part of the process you follow, you should also identify those at risk of leaving, their likely
future roles, potential replacements, and other key insights, allowing you to build an effective succession plan.
For further information, support, and advice
about creating a culture with staff wellbeing at its
centre, please contact www.welbee.co.uk
