Staff benefits
An analysis of the perks successful schools offer to recruit and retain staff.
Unless student outcomes aren’t important to you, you want your school to find and keep the very best staff.
As a leader you want your staff to feel valued and thrive. As an employee you want to be made to feel the same.
As recruiting season ramps up, this week’s highlight from the We Are In Beta Community will give you some ideas about how to attract and keep colleagues.
Researcher - Louise Turtle - has spent 5 days researching how successful schools go about attracting and holding onto staff via their employee benefits offer.
We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we find and keep the best staff).
💼 Employee benefits: examples from 30 successful schools
What are the different forms employee benefits successful schools offer?
Here’s a breakdown of the 7 different types of benefits schools offer.
Read the full article to learn how common each benefit is and which schools offer them.
1. Financial benefits:
Money matters, and schools that offer financial perks can make a big difference to staff well-being and retention. Examples include: financial incentives, a salary that was above average, pension schemes, childcare vouchers, enhanced parental leave, loans for season tickets or items, reward or bonus, occupational sick pay.
2. Health benefits:
A happy, healthy workforce is more productive. So schools supporting staff well-being can create a better working environment: health benefits such as health cash plans or private health, employee assistance programmes, offer eye tests, flu vaccines.
3. Programmatic benefits:
Extra perks can make a job more rewarding and can help with staff motivation and work-life balance: discount programmes, membership scheme, discounted or free gym membership, offered discounts on restaurants, online purchases and entertainment purchases.
4. Transport benefits:
Commuting can be expensive and stressful, so transport perks make getting to work easier. Schools offered or conveyed there were transport benefits to going to their school. These were mainly the Car Benefit Scheme and Cycle to Work Scheme. But these also included good public transport links and good location. Schools also offered free onsite parking.
5. Training benefits:
A school that invests in staff development attracts and holds on to effective staff. They talked up: training or CPD as a benefit, career advancement opportunities, comprehensive induction for new staff and ITT/ICT support.
6. School cultural norms benefits:
A positive school culture makes a huge impact on staff happiness and retention. Schools suggested the cultural norms of their school were a benefit of teaching at their school. This included descriptions of how their leadership is supportive, why their students are great to work with and how their colleagues in the school are diverse, talented and/or collaborative.
7. In-school offerings benefits:
Perks within the school itself can improve work-life balance and job satisfaction. This refers to the widest range of offerings. They relate to offers in-school such as free breakfast or subsidised lunch. It also includes the school building, such as state-of-the art facilities. Thirdly it refers to schedules and timetabling, for example flexible working options, generous holidays, and extra training days.
If you want to learn how common each benefit is and which schools offer them…
🔎 5 employee benefit observations
The full project shares 27+ observations from the 30 schools looked at.
Here are four that might get you thinking about what your school does:
💰 4/30 schools mentioned offering a higher than average salary
🏥 10/30 offered health benefits
🏋️♂️ 10/30 offered discounted or free gym membership
🚲 8/30 offered the Cycle to Work Scheme
❤️ 13/30 pointed to the working culture as a benefit
To read about the other 22 observations and learn about the specifics how these schools support flexible working….
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🗒️ 7 employee benefits case studies.
You don’t have the time to read all the resources, so we’ve done it for you.
We’ve found the most practical bits and organised them into case studies about areas such as:
Professional development
Cultural norms
Financial benefits
Health benefits
Programmes perks and discounts
Travel benefits
If you want to read more about how they codify these strategies, and you are a paying member of the community, you can read them here.
Case studies are a paying members only resource.
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On a personal note.
“How can we give back to the community?”
This question is music to my ears as a community builder,
The We Are In Beta community would not exist with the generous contributions of our members (and my family).
So I want to say a massive thank you to a number of people who have been extra generous and supportive lately.
Pastoral leaders who have nominated colleagues and submitted talks for Pastoral Champions Week
Senior leaders who have contributed to master classes on behaviour: training staff and teaching students
Colleagues who helped us design the questions for our AI strategies and resources survey - take part here if you want read what others are doing and to access the shared drive of AI resources.
Attendance, safeguarding, behaviour and SEND leaders who’ve been helping each out at our network meetings.
All speakers who’ll be sharing their wisdom and delegates who’ll be giving their time at the Trust Education Leaders Conference at Bright Future Educational Trust in Manchester on 27th and 28th February
Directors of Education who’ve been running online sessions for our Trust Education leaders Community
To my family who have been incredibly generous and supportive during a very difficult time for me personally, while my wife has been in hospital.
Thank you, everyone.
Thanks for reading.
@NiallAlcock and the We Are In Beta team
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