Several factors are thought to be driving poor retention, including concerns over pay, workload and accountability. A new paper published today proposes another factor – one schools have greater control over.
Over the past two years, The Engagement Platform (TEP) has worked with a group of around 100 schools to better understand the impact of employee engagement. The central premise is that how staff think and feel about their role in the workplace drives their behaviours.
For instance, if an employee feels their workload is manageable, that there are effective mechanisms that allow them to manage pupil behaviour and that they have strong, positive relationships with their colleagues, they will flourish in their jobs. If not, they will be more likely to leave their role, and possibly the sector.
While previous research has provided some evidence to support these hypothesised engagement-behaviour links, much of this has come from the United States. Equivalent data and insights for England have been hard to come by.
The link between school leadership, staff job satisfaction and retention, a new report published today, takes a first step towards resolving this issue. This uses data TEP has gathered from several thousand members of school staff over the course of the past academic year to explore predictors of job satisfaction and retention.
Our particular interest has been whether markers of staff engagement taken towards the start of the academic year are able to predict satisfaction and retention eight months later.
We have found markers of emotional engagement to be particularly important. These largely focus on inter-personal relationships with colleagues. This includes whether they meaningfully collaborate with others in school, how supported by their line manager they fell and their feelings towards the school leadership team (SLT).
Some of the results are quite striking. For instance, in November 2023 staff were asked about their views on their SLT (e.g. whether they communicate effectively) using TEP’s 0-10 reporting scale. Then, in June 2024, they were asked questions related to their job satisfaction.
Staff disengaged with leaders were twice as likely to leave
We have found that staff reporting high levels of engagement with SLT in November were much more likely to be satisfied in their jobs in June. This was over and above a range of other factors, including their views on pay, workload and how satisfied they were in their job.
Importantly, we also found evidence that staff’s emotional engagement with SLT is related to movement of boots on the ground. Staff who were disengaged with SLT were twice as likely to leave their job over the following eight months than staff with the highest levels of engagement.
In other words, there is now “hard” evidence of the employee engagement–behaviour link we thought likely to emerge when TEP was developed.
In a further paper, which we will be publishing soon, we have also explored how teachers feel about the relationship with their colleagues and their line manager. We have then explored how these indicators of their emotional engagement are linked to future improvement (or decline) in job satisfaction.
Our findings show that when teachers become more emotionally engaged with their colleagues over the course of an academic year their commitment to continue working for the school meaningfully improves.
For instance, if a member of staff rates their relationship with their colleagues as 8 out of 10 rather than 5, their commitment to working in their current school increases by around one point (from a 6 to a 7) on TEP’s 0-10 response scale.
During this academic year, we are looking to develop the evidence base around school engagement further, including expanding it to pupils.
Our hypothesis is that we are likely to see similar cognitive and emotional engagement links to the actions pupils take, as we have observed for employees.
For instance, pupils who see the value in what they are learning, believe they can influence their outcomes and have positive relationships with other members of the school community will be more likely to attend school, focus during lessons and work hard towards their goals.
In the meantime, leadership teams have strong evidence – if they needed it – to back up investing in relationship-building with their staff.
ImpactEd Group are offering subsidised participation in employee data collection through TEP. Contact [email protected]
