In a series of blogs, Ady Tomsa, Director of People at Futura Learning Partnership, outlines his views on why a People Strategy is crucial to ensuring the pupils in schools achieve the outcomes they deserve, why the approach to recruitment needs a rethink and how we need to look outside the sector for inspiration.
We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas" is the famous quote by a certain Steve Jobs, and certainly since I have joined the world of Education one thing that has struck me is the openness at which everyone shares ideas and initiatives, which is very refreshing. I was fortunate to speak about all things People Strategy and Culture when the Challenge Partners hosted a day at Futura, which was incredibly insightful for me and a process you just do not see in other sectors. However, one of my reflections is whilst the Education sector shares within, it does not often look outside for inspiration.
The Trust sector in general terms is in its infancy, so when looking to create a People Strategy, why would we not look to other businesses for ideas? Even if it is to simply learn from their mistakes!
In a future blog I will outline how we at Futura have approached creating our People Strategy but first, I thought I would start by looking at some of the People challenges facing the sector and how looking over the fence and perhaps 'stealing' some ideas may not be a bad thing.
There is no need for me to list all the challenges facing the world of Education in 2025 as they are numerous and complex and would involve drafting a novel rather than a blog. What I am very enthusiastic about at this present time is recruitment, retention, and organisational design. I am so passionate about recruitment I am going to dedicate an entire article to it (my soap box moment) but when looking at the other two, I fully believe reviewing good practice and importantly, context from other sectors, is imperative when looking at solutions to solve the issues.
Let's start with retention. Research by the University of Bristol showed the average tenure of teachers in the UK is 6.7 years. Developing teaching staff is extremely resource heavy in terms of time and money, both of which are in short supply, so it is painful in many ways. Recruitment is also a challenge, so finding a replacement is tricky and we know that disrupting a pupil's teacher can often impact outcomes. It's an issue that is receiving huge media and political attention with many referencing wellbeing, workload, pay, conditions, and behaviour (amongst others) as factors which contribute towards teachers wanting to leave the profession. As such, any People Strategy would need to include plans and interventions to improve these key areas. But what if we look outside education?
In 2025, 'Gen Z' will make up one-third of the working population. Research has shown that this generation stay in a role on average for 2.3 years. More anecdotally, in my previous organisations a general rule of thumb would be to expect someone to stay with you for c2-3 years. So why is this relevant? Is it just to highlight that Education doesn't have it so bad? Certainly not, as the above issues highlight losing teachers is an expensive and disruptive process for all concerned, but what it does show is that this problem is not just our own and simply looking to 'improve' what we currently have won't move the dial.
Society is changing and we now need to expect a higher level of turnover as people today do not want to do the same job for the rest of their life. The stable income and job security previous generations craved is being replaced for the want and need for experiences, portfolio careers and continual learning and development. As such, irrespective of how much time and effort we put into improving the internal conditions listed, in 10 years I fully anticipate the average tenure to have decreased further. Bleak, isn't it? Not really, because once we accept the reality, we can plan for a different future.
I am not for one second saying we should not look to improve wellbeing, pay, working conditions etc for our people, and consequently a huge chunk of our people strategy is dedicated to that. What I am saying is we need to change other approaches. What other sectors do is accept this inevitability and set up structures and practices to combat it. As an example, the question we are asking in our Trust is given the desire of people to change roles more regularly, how do we facilitate and encourage that? In a previous organisation, we encouraged staff to rotate into different departments outside of their specialism as they often brought different insight and perspectives. We have twenty-six schools; we should be able to encourage rotations around those and therefore retain our best staff. Being a larger Trust, we are lucky to have multiple 'non -teaching' roles and activities, why can we not encourage teaching staff into these opportunities, either on a secondment or job share capacity? These basic activities can help people 'scratch the itch' to try something new whilst allowing the profession to retain its top talent.
What about those inevitable leavers? Firstly, if they are going to leave, we need rigorous succession planning processes in place. Secondly, if they are leaving earlier, let us make sure we get the best of them whilst they are here by helping them get up to speed as quickly as possible, so the quality of teaching and learning they deliver is optimum earlier in their career. Thirdly, lets expand the routes into the profession by increasing the number of apprentices, PGCE’s etc we take on to counter the forecasted numbers, so we have a bench of people waiting. It's not easy, but it's not all doom and gloom either (more on that another time) and if we take a leaf out of other sectors who also have recruitment and retention issues, we might improve the picture.
The other area I feel we could learn from others on is organisational design and specifically, how Trusts set up their functions to deliver. As I mentioned, Trusts are young in terms of history with 'larger' trusts being a comparatively new concept. I have been extremely fortunate to have met and spoken with various leaders at larger Trusts who have all been incredibly candid and generous with their time, taking me through the process they have completed or are embarking on in relation to their organisational set up. Many have exciting plans over the next few years, and I look forward to seeing how they progress and take the sector forward.
We too are looking at how we should be set up, but when we strip it back, where should we be looking for best practice? Yes, to those who are already paving the way in the sector because we would be silly not too, but what about those organisations who have done this before many many times and undoubtedly made all the mistakes we are currently or will be making? Running a multi-academy Trust is closer to running a large multi-site organisation, retail franchise or charity than it is running a stand-alone school. Achieving economies of scale and efficiency in non-teaching services tends to be what profit / commercial organisations do best, as shareholders who expect a return on their investment tend to look poorly on inefficient functions - it tends to drive a sharper focus! In addition, Education is extremely hierarchical so could we learn from other sectors who have adopted more matrix style type management with reduced layers and what could that do for culture / communication / opportunities for growth etc?
"Ah but the education sector is different, every setting is different, and you cannot compare". True, but it is no different to a retail organisation, a manufacturing unit, or a utilities provider. They all have different challenges, but principles can transfer, and we can certainly learn or 'steal' a few ideas.
A last point on the word efficiency, it doesn't mean shoestring or under investment. To truly see the benefits of a high performing professional services / shared services / central services or whatever name you have given them, long term investment and time is required. Having a yearly funding cycle does not support long term investment planning that you would traditionally see in corporate organisations, but to truly see improvements in key areas it may take circa 5 years to see a return on investment. Trusts as they are now should have the capacity to do that and meet that challenge. Based on this, what is our current operating model? What could it look like in 5 years? How will that benefit us as a Trust and most importantly, improve the outcomes of the pupils in our schools? By looking elsewhere, we may find some ideas that can be incorporated.
To wrap up, I have yet to work anywhere that has all the answers, and we certainly will not solve all of them in the next few years, but by lifting our heads and exploring what other sectors do, we might find a few nuggets that help us on our way.