It’s clear from the high-profile media evidence that teaching, as a profession, is continuing to feel the effects of a recruitment and retention crisis. What can employers and school leaders do in these challenging circumstances?
We take a look at a few of the practical steps employers and school leaders can take to mitigate and improve this position and pay particular attention how to maximise and retain existing talent, much of which is maturing, in their own schools.
What does the ‘maturing workforce’ research tell us?
As we all live longer, many of us will have to work for longer than we had perhaps planned. Research suggests that over the next five years, the number of estimated vacancies is unlikely to be filled by those leaving education or by migration alone, so increasingly, employers will have to rely on older workers to fill vacant jobs.
Research has also found that the social benefits of work are important to older workers; work gives meaning and purpose, provides social contact and keeps us active. Working in later life has wider economic benefits too: reducing welfare costs, increasing tax revenue to the government as well as enabling individuals to save more for retirement.
Research also tells us that more than 50% of workers older than 55 are planning to work beyond the state retirement age. People most commonly cite finances as the motivation for delaying retirement, but older workers also cite wanting to continue to use their skills and experience and enjoy the social interaction of the workplace as key factors.
The government removed the Default Retirement Age in October 2011 to help employers and employees alike adapt to these economic and social trends that are transforming the workplace and the wider labour market.
So, what can schools do to respond? NAHT recommends a three-step approach:
Step one. Develop a costed workforce profile of your school, including age profiles for all your staff. This information will give you an ideal starting point for planning purposes for a ‘departure’ point.
Step two. Draft a succession plan to ensure that you identify and capture anticipated capacity shortfalls. For each year and key stage, this will help to set capacity objectives and a ‘destination’ point.
Step three. Create a talent action plan to ensure you can track staff dialogue and supporting actions. Such a plan can help you to schedule staff consultation and timely management interventions.
Brought together, these steps amount to a Resourcing Plan for your school – it makes sense and few would argue against what amounts to prudent management and stewardship of your most valued asset – your staff – lets look at these steps in turn.
Step one – workforce profile
At this step, the capture of biographical data, especially age profile data, is relatively straightforward and simply draws on information already held by the school or employing body.
To add value to this information, you need to capture additional and relevant workforce data. This could include the following:
- ‘Date of commencement’
- Subject expertise
- Specific knowledge
- Skills and experience
- Performance management ratings (for say, the last three years)
- A record of capability proceedings (historical and current)
- A record of any disciplinary proceedings (historical and current)
- Any recognised disability
- Sickness absence records (say, over the last 12 months)
- Occupational health reports.
Such an audit of information will provide you with a comprehensive profile of your staff and will help you take a proactive approach to manage and support a maturing workforce and, at the same time, exercise your employer duty of care.
Step two – a succession plan
As a school leader, working alongside the governing body or equivalent, you will, from time to time, need to take a longer-term strategic view of your school, its structure, governance and leadership arrangements, its curriculum model and the resources needed to deliver the curriculum, among other matters. Typically, this will be over a three to five-year period or horizon.
Such a plan will set out the school’s objectives and how these are likely to be achieved and by whom.
Step three – talent action plan
Actions arising from a talent action plan will help to maximise human resources for the school, including managing and supporting a maturing workforce. For example, such actions may include the following:
- Develop a staff retention policy, consulting staff and trade unions at agreed intervals
- Consider retirement and financial planning workshops for staff (NAHT run courses!)
- Commission the NHS to provide free and confidential workplace health assessments for staff
- Ensure your flexible working policy is up to date and available to all eligible staff
- Consider flexible working options – eg job sharing, term-time and part-time working
- Phasing-in retirement will be an attractive consideration for mature workers
- Consider what ‘reasonable adjustments’ you can make.
Remember that talent may be intangible and mature workers bring the following:
- Experience and judgement
- Knowledge and know-how
- Skills
- Trust and loyalty.
A word about ‘reasonable adjustments’
Whether or not you need to make an adjustment, depends on how ‘reasonable’ it is, and that’s something that will hinge on the individual circumstances of each case and the resources and professional judgement of the employer. Typically, reasonable adjustments may include the following:
- Reallocate tasks that a disabled person may find difficult
- Move workers with depression to non-frontline roles to help reduce stress
- Change the location of work (eg moving wheelchair users’ work to the ground floor to ease access)
- Put in place a phased and flexible return to work policy
- Find alternative work, a new role or swap jobs with a colleague
- Source new equipment, such as a special keyboard for someone with arthritis
- Put audio messages in lifts to signal which floor it is on for partially-sighted/blind employees
- Allow additional breaks or improve refreshment facilities for someone whose condition demands it (eg diabetes)
- Use ‘access to work’ and other third-party providers to support continuous working
- Provide appropriate training or mentoring.
Some final considerations (dispelling a few myths)
- No employee, irrespective of their age, is immune from performance management
- Employers should have regular discussions with all employees about their future aims and aspirations; the important thing is for managers not to single out older workers just to ask specifically about their retirement plans
- There is no longer a default retirement age, only a state pension age (ie the age that an individual becomes entitled to receive a state pension)
- Flexible working requests are open to all staff with 26 weeks’+ continuous service
- If the employer approves the flexible working arrangements for the employee, they will be deemed permanent; in exceptional circumstances, a review of the arrangements may be built-in subject to agreement
- Once an employee makes an application for flexible working, they can’t make a subsequent application for at least 12 months
- Mature workers (including school leaders) may have significant domestic responsibilities – eg dependent children (who may be in education or training) and (concurrently) a dependent parent or parents (whose health may be failing)
- While age is a legally-protected characteristic (Equality Act 2010), it’s important to state that it is perfectly legitimate and lawful to dismiss an individual if their ill-health related absence reaches a level that is no longer sustainable or compatible with continued employment as defined in the employer’s sickness absence policy and practices.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
There’s no doubt about it: the management and support of a maturing workforce are likely to be an enduring responsibility for all school leaders and line managers. It will be continuously and increasingly important to keep on top of developments in this crucial area of resourcing for schools.
Talk to and consult with your staff in the development of retention strategies and about how your school can face the challenges of attracting, recruiting and retaining staff and creating innovative resourcing solutions. By working together, you can avoid (or at the very least, minimise) the gaps in skills, knowledge and experience that you may have faced in the past.
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