Best Practice

Talent management and staff development

School Workforce
Teachers and school leaders are in the business of developing talent, but this isn’t limited to their work with students. Sean Harris examines the need for talent management in schools and how leaders can approach this successfully
Image: Adobe Stock

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, “talent consists of those individuals who can make a difference to organisational performance, either through their immediate contribution or in the longer term by demonstrating the highest levels of potential” (CIPD, 2021).

Talent-mapping can be defined as an organisation’s recruitment, retention, and talent development strategy and is a vitally important task for leaders in schools.

 

Talent-mapping matters

Schools are facing unprecedented challenges regarding the recruitment and retention. Workforce data from the Department for Education (DfE, 2023) shows that almost 40,000 teachers left the profession last year for pastures new.

On top of this, the annual teacher labour market report (Mclean et al, 2023) states: “Historically low recruitment into initial teacher training and falling retention rates point towards a deteriorating attractiveness of teaching compared to other occupations and affirms that urgent policy action is needed across the sector to address the teacher supply challenge.”

Ultimately, despite being in the business of talent development, schools are haemorrhaging talent from their workforces. Therefore, a focus on mapping, growing, and retaining talent is vital.

 

Professional learning pathways

In recent years, the profession has witnessed a CPD revolution. There is a plethora of CPD opportunities and some of these are now more widely available as a result of remote or asynchronous learning (EEF, 2020).

While many of these CPD opportunities will be well facilitated, research dictates that colleagues in schools are unlikely to translate learning into schools effectively unless sufficient time and resource is provided within an effective learning culture in school (Cordingley et al, 2018; Mccrea, 2018; Papay & Kraft, 2015).

A challenge for school leaders is to be able to carefully curate which CPD opportunities are effective and which might be best avoided.

An approach I have adopted is to map strategic or key roles across different teams. Identify the common or persistent objectives that underpin these roles and map the organisations out there that offer CPD specific to these objectives. For example:

  • A pastoral head of year might currently need to understand more about addressing persistent absence.
  • A curriculum leader might need to understand more about how to evaluate the impact of their curriculum sequencing.
  • A new assistant head might need support with holding others to account.

Core questions that we have found helpful as an organisation when considering and disseminating CPD opportunities include:

  • Which of our organisation’s strategic priorities does this CPD most address?
  • What is the reputation of the provider? What are we basing this on?
  • What evidence or research does the organisation use to help inform the design of the learning that the individual or colleagues will undertake?
  • To what extent will this CPD support the individual or colleagues to grow expertise in their current role(s)?
  • How might the CPD support the individual or colleagues to access future roles?
  • To what extent is the learning flexible around the personal and professional commitments of the individual so as to support their cognitive load?

 

Addressing appraisal

Day et al (2010) researched the common habits of effective leaders in schools. They note that effective leaders define their values and the vision, they build trust by providing clear direction and ensure that collaboration is built internally as a way of strengthening teacher development. Appraisal processes in schools are a vital way to develop and embed some of these habits and a vital part of talent management.

An appraisal process is more than a process. Too often I have been subject to sitting behind a desk and watching an appraiser type in targets that had been already defined before the meeting.

An appraisal, if used effectively, can provide a rich opportunity for reflecting on talent and considering how an organisation and the individual want to further develop for the benefit of the pupils served. Approaches might include:

  • Giving appraiser and appraisee some key questions to consider in advance of the appraisal meeting to help ensure reflection can take place before the meeting.
  • Asking appraiser and appraisee to consider the talent currently needed in the role(s) being appraised and how this might be further developed. This also means that the appraisee can focus on growing expertise in their current role rather than simply considering the next step.
  • Inviting appraiser and appraisee to adopt a “no screen” approach to appraisal and making sure that a dialogue is facilitated. Outputs can be captured digitally after the meeting.
  • Challenging appraiser and appraisee to take a longer term review of impact and development, rather than simply limiting this to the scope of one academic year or three termly milestones – talent development and growth takes time.

 

Investing in strengths

As an organisation, we have invested time and resource into understanding and applying strengths-based talent development using Gallup tools and research to help shape our thinking.

StrengthsFinder is a personality assessment model developed by Gallup. In 2000, Gallup conducted research involving around two million professionals and measuring a set of 34 signature psychological strengths that influence workforce performance. Gallup recognise these traits as “strengths”.

According to Gallup (2023), the StrengthsFinder assessment is a “developmental tool that makes talking about and developing people's strengths more accurate and easier”.

At Tees Valley Education Trust, we have used this tool to understand each of the signature strengths of our core and strategic leadership tiers. This has also included mapping strengths to specific leadership competencies and working with individual leaders to consider how to further invest in their strengths.

In our commitment to growing a strengths-based leadership culture, we have worked with an external coach to support leaders' understanding of their own strengths and how to harness the strengths of other leaders in their teams around key priorities in each of our schools.

For some leaders, we have found that this has helped them to be more responsive – as opposed to reactive – across their roles. It has helped to move dialogue with colleagues from a focus on career progression to one of strength and talent development.

Rath (2008) claims that our ability in organisations to progress in our career is often determined by our effectiveness in responding to short-term needs. Instead, Rath argues that adopting a strengths-based culture challenges leaders to think in terms of longer-term and more proactive goals.

He writes: “One of the greatest challenges for leaders is to initiate new efforts that will create subsequent organisational growth. If as a leader, you are not creating hope and helping people see the way forward, chances are no one else is either.”

Developing a strengths-based approach to talent deployment and development is more than simply taking the StrengthsFinder assessment but this is a useful starting point for leadership teams early in their strengths-seeking journey.

 

Matrix-mapping

When your school is running smoothly and student outcomes are good, it can be easy to take for granted the strengths and talents that make up the school workforce.

However, physically mapping the talent of the workforce and deploying it accordingly can help leaders in realising, attracting, and developing talent.

There are a range of tools that leaders can use to map talent for leadership or workforce tiers. Developed in the 1970s by McKinsey, the nine-box talent matrix is one such tool which leaders can use to map the workforce according to performance and potential.

As a leader, I have found it helpful to use the matrix (McKinsey, 2008) alongside other tools such as the strengths-based approach.

 

Sustaining a ‘sticky’ workplace

Retaining the best of talent and strengths in our schools will likely be even more complex in the years ahead as our profession continues to face new and hitherto unknown challenges. It is therefore important that leaders continue to develop the dialogue about talent management and development in our sector.

Some other actionable ideas that school leaders could adopt to help sustain this dialogue include:

  • Make a magnetic school offer: Challenge leaders and governance to consider the USPs of your school and why somebody might choose to work there instead of other organisations. Make this offer visible and understood by all stakeholders.
  • Invest in the top talent: Significant amount of time and resource is spent in schools investing in underperforming colleagues. This is important, but it is equally vital to invest in the top 10% of your employees to retain them too. Focus effort on looking at who these individuals are and how to further invest in them.
  • Persistent problems: Rather than simply looking at roles that need to be filled, consider the persistent problems or “pain points” of your organisation. Once these are understood, leaders are in a better position to then understand the skillset, talent and expertise that might be needed to tackle these. This then helps leadership teams understand which people internally or externally might be needed to help address these priorities.
  • Digital workforce: The intelligent use of technology as part of developing and understanding talent in our schools is important. Data and analytics are used by companies across the globe to support with hiring and recruiting. We can no longer simply expect to recruit the best talent with one measly job advert. Consider how technology could be used to help promote the school and the offer for the workforce. Consider how digital platforms can be used to help colleagues access, understand, and apply CPD within the organisation.
  • Beyond the NPQ: National Professional Qualifications have been subject to a number of useful updates in recent years and funding is readily available to access these (DfE, 2020). But a talent and workforce development strategy in our schools should also look beyond the scope of NPQs. Consider colleagues who might benefit from time, resource, or support in accessing doctoral research opportunities, writing, and speaking opportunities, further degrees or secondments with other teams in your organisation. Expertise can be grown through many sources.

Sean Harris is a doctoral researcher with Teesside University investigating the ways in which teachers and leaders can help to address educational inequality in schools. He is a trust improvement leader at Tees Valley Education, an all-through multi-academy trust serving communities in the North East of England. You can follow him on X (Twitter) @SeanHarris_NE. Find his previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/sean-harris

 

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