Using a people strategy to support the recruitment and retention of critical talent

The Education Policy Institute recently published a report, sponsored by Capita and Entrust – The Features of Effective School Groups. 

The report established that multi-academy trust (MAT) leaders identify recruitment as their biggest challenge, with trusts having significantly higher annual turnover of classroom teachers at secondary level than local authorities (16.9% in the median MAT, 14.4% in the median LA), and annual turnover being even higher in larger MATs (19.5% on average).

In this context school and trust leaders may wish to understand, track and address recruitment and retention issues in a strategic way. Schools and MATs spend up to 85% of their budgets on people costs per annum, yet the lion’s share of our clients still don’t have a people strategy in place. A people strategy is a data informed road map of staffing initiatives that uses key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure impact over time.

A well-defined people strategy can give leaders the best chances of attracting, developing and retaining quality and motivated staff in an increasingly competitive market.

A people strategy doesn’t need to be long or complex. The starting point is tracking data such as feedback from your staff wellbeing survey, turnover and retention figures and ideally, using key themes from stay interviews as well as exit interviews. These strategies can help leaders prioritise focus areas and turn insights into meaningful action. Stay interviews focus on what employees like about working for you as well as the “even better ifs”. Conducted appropriately, they can give leaders the chance to make preventative changes in the workplace to retain valuable colleagues before they leave. By contrast, exit interviews, whilst useful to address perceptions of departing employees about workplace culture and to turn feedback into action, are carried out once an employee is disengaged and focussing on their next step!

Leaders invest a significant amount of time planning and delivering their school or academy improvement plan each year. But with recruitment and retention of staff showing no signs of abating, it’s essential not to leave your people issues to chance.

Capita Entrust’s team of HR experts can support leaders with the creation of a people strategy. In addition, we can support with or carry out structured stay interviews and/or exit interviews to support your people issues in a strategic way, leaving leaders to focus on teaching and learning.

If you would like to talk to us about workforce development or a people strategy you can email information@entrust-ed.co.uk