Where did your wellbeing journey start as a trust?
Sarah Orves: We started our wellbeing journey back in 2019, even before COVID-19 brought wellbeing to the forefront. Often, in schools and trusts, it’s easy to work on the same persistent problems every year: attendance, staff retention, motivation, etc. We decided to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
We came back to the good old saying, ‘happy, safe and secure children thrive’. But quickly realised that this didn’t just apply to the children; it applies to everybody. It’s a human thing. If you are happy, safe and secure in what you are doing, then you’ll thrive. We took that idea and prioritised wellbeing to hopefully tackle some of our persistent problems.
Today, I’m happy to say that we have achieved exactly that. I always come back to the quote: ‘Good teachers teach, great teachers sing’ – when you are feeling motivated and so happy in what you’re doing, the children feed off that and their learning goes through the roof.
Sarah Casemore: Our trust strapline is ‘One community, many ideas, everyone’s
future’. Five years ago, when I was brought in as the first HR Director, the trust knew it
needed a focus on staff wellbeing. Only when staff are thriving and they’re at their
best, can you really do the best for the children in your schools. We wanted to focus
on providing the best experience that we could for all of our staff. As a result, we
have made changes and we’re focusing on areas that have the
biggest impact and the best outcomes for our children and young people.
How did you get started?
Sarah Casemore: Like most schools around the country, the number one challenge for our trust has been around workload. It’s well known that high workload is one of the biggest reasons why teachers are leaving the sector. We recognise that workload is a problem, and we wanted to get under the skin of that to try to address it.
We understand there’s a tension: What might be right for an individual member of staff might not support how you intend to deliver for the children. Our wellbeing strategy is about recognising individual challenges while also trying to put systems and processes in place which improve working life across all of our schools.
So, how did we do this? We started our wellbeing journey in 2021, looking at our retention data. We conducted our first trust-wide equality, diversity and inclusion survey to understand the experiences of our staff.
One of the key themes emerging from the survey was that our staff wanted more opportunities to work flexibly. There was head-scratching at first, but after talking to the DfE Flexible Working Ambassador schools to see their approach, we introduced our bespoke ‘extra flex’ scheme for staff. It sits alongside the normal statutory flexible working processes, but works in a slightly different way. It fits around the rhythm of school life. We ask staff to express an interest in flexible working by the February Half Term, giving us plenty of time to plan it for the new academic year. This helps when we’re doing our September recruitment or the timetabling for the next academic year. It’s agreed for a year, but staff can ask for it as a permanent change if it’s been working well all round. It’s allowed us to be braver and much broader in terms of what we’ve been able to accommodate. My HR hack is to call everything a pilot when it feels revolutionary! That’s the way to make the change!
Sarah Orves: There’s such a high percentage of people leaving teaching because of the workload and the amount of stress. Back in 2019, when we started our wellbeing journey, we looked at the Netherlands: the schools there have excellent child and staff wellbeing. What better place to start than to find out exactly what is going on in those schools that is making this the case? A group of us went out there to visit a range of schools, and we came back with buckets of practical case studies at our fingertips.
At the same time, we were looking at positive psychology, which led us to a psychologist called Martin Seligman. He’s written a range of books looking at the theory of wellbeing, which became our theoretical base.
Bringing together our Netherlands research and Martin Seligman’s theory, we created a model which we call the Complete Human Strategy. The model has six pillars – relationships and communications, positivity, time well spent, structure and stability, expertise and finally, place (the physical environment).
How have you used systems to support some of the changes and processes you’ve implemented?
Sarah Orves: Having created our Complete Human Strategy model, we were then faced with the challenge of how to actually get this strategy into schools and make sure that we address those pillars. As there are six pillars, we split these across six half terms to allow us to focus on and monitor each area individually. It’s a shared language between us; we’re all talking about the same thing, which is really important in terms of getting everyone on the same page. In that half term, we ask everybody – children, staff and family – to reflect on their wellbeing in that pillar area. Children do it in class, families have the option to do it at home, and staff complete a survey.
Our staff survey is split into two halves, one half focused on personal wellbeing and the other on workplace wellbeing. Staff have suggested ideas that I, as Headteacher, wouldn’t have thought of.
I don’t walk in the shoes of each of my members of staff, so I don’t know which things they’re finding stressful, or taking over all their time. Asking them and getting their feedback helps me to realise what we can do to support them best. It’s been really, really effective.
Staff know that they’ve got a voice because they see their school take action. It takes a year to embed the Complete Human Strategy because you’ve got to go through the six pillars. I’ve found that when staff start to see that what they’re suggesting helps, their ideas become more solution-driven.
Sarah Casemore: We didn’t have an HR system before I started. Instead, we had loads of spreadsheets. Eventually, we implemented SAMpeople, now our trust-wide HR system
SAMpeople has allowed me to leverage our people data, giving us the ability o hold powerful and impactful conversations with teachers, trustees and the Executive Principal. We can finally track the impact our strategies are having. In the past, it has been tricky to show the direct correlation of HR data to the work we are doing. Over time, our HR system has allowed us to show direct correlation, like reporting on absence and turnover every quarter to see trends.
But it always has to be backed up with staff experience. One of the challenges of leadership is that the more senior you get, the more people are reluctant to tell you how they really feel. It’s important to understand how staff are feeling on the ground as well as what you’re seeing in the hard metrics.
How do you measure success?
Sarah Orves: That’s always going to be a bit of a stickler, because how do you actually prove it’s based on what we’ve done with the Complete Human Strategy?
Unlike data in classrooms, you can’t pinpoint it precisely. But what we’ve done is looked at attendance, motivation and belonging. We’ve noticed that as the schools have gone through the journey of embedding the Complete Human Strategy, their scores in those areas have improved.
There have also been improvements in the levels of anxiety and stress in staff and a sense of belonging and value within the school for everybody. Motivation in roles has improved. Attendance figures, staff retention and turnover have improved.
How can MATs move from talking about to doing when it comes to staff wellbeing and retention?
Sarah Orves: When you go on a journey like this, be prepared to take action. You’ve got to do more than just pay lip service to the idea of wellbeing. Staff want to see feedback and ideas coming into play.
As leaders, speak to staff. Stop presuming that you can make things better because you have an idea. Ask them what would help, what would ease their stress points. This was a game-changer for us because it meant that we were actually making changes that made a difference. Your staff know where their stress points are more than you.
Looking at all six areas of the Complete Human Strategy was really important for us. One might seem more important than the other, but by understanding all six areas in depth, you can really pinpoint where the problems are.
Finally, I would encourage people to stop and think about how you are progressing in those areas every now and again. Sometimes, we can keep our heads down until we reach a crisis, things have escalated, and now it’s a nightmare. Taking time to reflect along the way means that you can deal with problems at a much lower level, being more proactive.
How do you ensure consistency in the approach to staff wellbeing across schools and trusts? Do systems play a part in helping with consistency?
Sarah Casemore: We have a set annual cycle. Normally, at this time of year, we meet as an HR committee, bringing HR leads, headteachers and trustees together. We’ll have general themes for the year, driven by the HR data. Considering staff feedback and HR data, we decide what’s going to make the biggest difference to wellbeing this year. Although our three schools are very different, the themes coming out of the data are very similar and often reflect what’s going on nationally.
Once we’ve confirmed our goals for the year, we’ll set success criteria. This is often a mix of staff experience and feedback, and hard metrics that we can track on our HR system. We might track absence data, turnover, or demographic data.
Even with the overarching theme, not every school will then approach it in the same way. They all have different cultures, with different contexts. We give our schools space to find the right solutions for them, and I’ll work closely with each school to set action plans.
Having a group of shared policies also helps consistency. We introduced a Staff Wellbeing Policy last year and a Menopause Policy following staff feedback. The policies help us to be explicit with our staff about what they can expect of us and hold us to account if that’s not their experience.
What features in your MIS or HR systems couldn’t you live without when it comes to delivering your people strategy?
Sarah Casemore: For me, it’s the reporting function in SAMpeople. In my central role, I have instant access to all of our schools to know what the HR data is saying. It can often flag trends or information that may not have been picked up on the ground.
The data is great, but it’s only really great when you start to use it to inform what you’re doing in practice.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give a trust struggling to tackle their wellbeing and retention challenges?
Sarah Orves: I would encourage people to be brave. Get out there, listen to what your staff are thinking and feeling, and acknowledge that there are struggles in this.
You’re not going to be able to solve everything all at once. You’re not going to be able to make the world a brilliant place for everybody. However, opening up conversations, sharing concerns, and acknowledging them does help – even before you take action. It’s the sharing, listening, talking, and understanding that really does help. Maybe you’ll get those problems a little bit earlier, which means your actions will be a lot easier.
