Securing long-term teacher retention

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Chetan Sood takes a closer look at staff recruitment and retention, and the strategies schools can use to help free themselves from ‘sticking plaster-style’ approaches.

Here’s a sector-wide situation that will, sadly, feel familiar to many: staff struggling with workload and stress pressures, exacerbated by the fallout of COVID-19; HR teams and in-house recruiters disempowered by the turnover of colleagues; the knowledge that current recruitment strategies are by no means ideal, but that time and support to rectify things feels desperately lacking.

In the wake of recent global events, the education sector has reached a crucial turning point in retention and recruitment, with the real threat of a mass exodus of staff on the horizon.

Such an exodus would not only further impact teacher morale, but would have potentially grave consequences for the future of our schools and the very children we strive to support. If this sounds like the situation that’s developing in your school, it’s not too late to start implementing changes. And, as you contemplate how to go forward, it’s important to bear in mind that support is out there. Accessing that support can start right here.

Adapting and reacting to current conditions

When cracks appear around issues of school staffing, do you stop to pay attention or shy away? You would be forgiven for doing the latter – but doing so only postpones the problem; and possibly makes it far worse in the long-term.

Several models of third-party staff provision have developed over the last 20 years in response to headline concerns, such as the need for candidates who are both flexible and high-calibre, the tightening of school budgets, and the daunting administrative overheads of managing quality assurance. It’s no wonder that on-demand third party agency and job site recruitment services have emerged to meet the challenge.

But the issues that cause staff turnover can be complex.

Staff empowerment

By identifying the root causes of staff issues rather than applying fixes at the time of need, school leaders can pre-empt issues that may arise and react in a responsive, responsible way when they do. For example, if a full time employee feels that switching to a part-time role might suit them better due to a lifestyle change or life event, it can be difficult for them to raise this with their employer. This can be mitigated in an unobtrusive way by ensuring regular, informal check-ins with employees to monitor their job satisfaction and career aspirations. If the perception amongst employees is that ‘the door is always open’, and employers will give genuine consideration to things like working pattern preferences from their staff, then it is likely that retention will be better than if the perception is that expressions of employees’ working preferences are not heard, or there is no room for flexibility in the staffing model.

Prioritising retention – and empowering your staff

Staff retention is particularly important for SEN educators who provide vital consistency and support for the children and young people who need it most.

Simply put, if a school solves its retention issues, it will not have a problem with recruitment. To maintain positive, long-lasting relationships between staff, three key ingredients are required:

• High levels of trust, built through direct and timely communication – beginning when staff are recruited, and continuing while they are supportively trained.

• Transparency and even-handedness when it comes to pay and working conditions.

• Scope for flexibility to candidates’ work preferences, such as options for remote working, and opportunities for development and progression.

Shifts in staff mindsets towards ‘empowerment’ are especially helpful in making teachers feel important and valued; united by a shared sense of purpose.

In certain situations, instilling that sense of empowerment might be as straight-forward as finding a tool that helps your staff do their job more seamlessly. Technological support such as collaborative working tools encourages additional communication between staff, leading to a stronger sense of support. Micro-interactions between staff like being able to comment on a live document (e.g. a lesson plan or learning resource) as it is being developed can add an extra dimension to intra-staff relationships and empower staff to share their ideas more regularly and with greater confidence.

Finding, attracting and retaining the right staff

With an innovative model on hand to help give schools practical guidance, it is more than possible to recruit staff without incurring overwhelming bureaucracy, administrative processes or excess costs. 

This year, Teacher Booker developed a Total Workforce Management approach (TWM) to enable an enhanced, consistent quality of staff provision – as well as happy, motivated teams.

By integrating TWM into existing provisions – avoiding the need for schools to outsource their recruitment to other parties – key leaders can retain a better handle on:

• The costs of bundles and partnerships with third party recruitment service providers

• The amount of admin overhead incurred in workforce management, such as that involving payroll and reporting

• The integrity of data around candidates, compliance and invoices

The overall candidate experience

As an example, SEN roles tend to have complex and often unique requirements, particularly if the care required is specific to a particular pupil or cohort. By adopting a TWM approach and sourcing, engaging, and evaluating candidates in-house, hiring schools can perhaps establish a better match between candidate and pupil/job role than a third party recruiter. Third parties often have a different balance of incentives to hiring schools – a placement generates revenue for a recruiter, and so this will play a part in the speed and execution of the introduction to a candidate, whereas for a school there is no real financial incentive to make a speedy hire. Making better matches should enable better retention of staff, as we can hypothesise that job satisfaction will be higher due to a closer alignment of expectations.

Considering in-house management for your school

Bringing workforce-focused models back in house can entail additional liabilities – such as new accountability for worker quality, and the responsibility of fulfilling urgent requisitions at short notice. But just as the school environment is now shifting to more flexible ways of working, the process of workload management can integrate flexibility too.

We consider there to be four key parts of the contingent worker management process:

Recruiting staff

• Marketing and talent attraction

• Vetting and onboarding

• Resourcing and deployment

• Payroll and employment.

When outsourcing parts of the process, schools can play to their existing strengths. For example, they might manage their own talent attraction for long-term and permanent roles, but outsource day-to-day supply cover bookings where there is an urgent need to fill the vacancy. Another example might be to outsource the payroll and employment function to a third party, as this can maintain the flexibility of having workers off-payroll (which can confer benefits for both school and candidate), without impacting significantly on employer brand or candidate experience.

Where to go from here

With the financial, resource, physical and emotional strain of the past 18 months on schools, you would be forgiven for thinking that this is just another thing to add to your (already too long) to do list, or considering a strategic recruitment strategy as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a necessity. In reality however, we’ve already had to adopt a raft of new technological solutions and ways of working to ensure continued provision for pupils, so there is no reason why education recruitment should not also benefit from this same change in perspective.

And, what we are talking about is not a radical shift in approach. Recruitment agencies, third-party sites, vendors and staff banks will – and rightly should – play their part in education recruitment strategies for years to come, but the specific role they play should be determined by you and support your preferred recruitment approach and spend.

By implementing these small changes, we believe that you can not only reduce recruitment and retention costs but also the administrative burden and often high levels of stress involved in the process. As a result, more time and money can be spent on what really matters – delivering consistent and high-quality education for your pupils, not just today, but long into the future.

Chetan Sood
Author: Chetan Sood

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