Advancing Educational HR: Endeavour MAT’s Breakthrough

The challenge

Endeavour Multi Academy Trust were formed in 2017 and consist of four schools with the capacity and desire to grow in the future. They wanted to ensure consistent HR policies and procedures across all their schools while also seeking positive working relationships with trade union representatives for meaningful policy consultations. Endeavour asked us to review all their HR policies and to help them form a Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) with the trade unions. This piece of work was commissioned for a year.

Our approach

Building relationships is very important to Capita People Solutions, so we started by meeting the CEO and CFOO of Endeavour Trust to truly understand their needs. As the Trust did not have a current JNC, we developed a Trade Union Recognition Agreement (TURA) and facilitated a meeting with trade union representatives to agree a way of working. This was positively received by the trade unions who until this time, had little interaction with the Trust.

Our next step was to prioritise the policies for review and development, focusing on statutory academy policies and any areas of concern for the Trust. Our experienced team of HR Consultants rebranded the policies and ensured that they were written in a succinct and usable manner and in line with any legislation changes. Writing a policy is one thing, but understanding how it works in practice is another. Therefore, before any policies were shared with the trade unions, we met with the Headteachers of the Trust to ensure their comfort with the changes and the application of the policies. To facilitate ongoing consultation on policy changes, we established termly JNC meetings between the Trust and the trade unions. These meetings, which were led by our team, have been well-received by trade union representatives.

The impact

This collaboration has created positive working relationships with the Trade Unions and has equipped Endeavour Trust with current workable HR policies. Our ongoing engagement and relationships with the Headteachers and school leadership teams ensures that these policies are not only implemented consistently across the Trust but also resonate with the practical realities of education management.

Speaking about their experience, Mark Highfield, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at Endeavour Multi Academy Trust commented:
“We commissioned the HR team at Capita to set up a Joint Negotiation and Consultative Committee for us, as well as to review and update a number of HR related policies. The work that the team has done for us has been above and beyond our expectations. They have proven themselves to be knowledgeable, supportive, accessible and responsive. The relationship has been so successful that, following a re-tender of our HR advisory contract, we have moved our entire HR provision over to them. Feedback from across the Trust has been extremely positive, and we would highly recommend Capita’s HR service to schools”.

Contact us
For more information on our HR services for schools, contact us by emailing: information@entrust-ed.co.uk