According to the government’s School Workforce Census, in 2023, the state-funded education sector in England employed nearly a million teachers, teaching assistants, and support staff. That’s a large number of people to recruit, onboard, pay, develop professionally, and support in their personal lives. While smaller schools with fewer employees may spend less time on human resources (HR) matters, the work involved in providing HR services for their employees can be substantial for larger educational establishments such as multi-academy trusts.
Looking after the HR aspects of a school can be the role of a school business manager, the head teacher alongside support staff, or even a dedicated HR role, usually working closely with the local authority. Whoever it is, fulfilling all the different functions takes time. HR software that automates some of the administration can allow more focus on the strategic aspects of the HR function in schools.
Here, we look at HR’s role in schools and some of its challenges.
Functions of HR in Schools
The function of HR in schools is the same as in any workplace. HR aims to attract and retain high-quality teachers and support staff through recruitment practices and by creating safe and inclusive environments where individuals can do their roles to the best of their ability.
The HR function in schools centres on the safety and well-being of children. Recruitment practices must involve careful vetting of candidates, and performance development focuses on individuals providing a high standard of education to their pupils. Employee relations concentrate on creating environments that allow staff and students to thrive alongside each other.
HR in school can include the following:
- Documentation management: looking after employment contracts and personal details for staff.
- Recruitment: finding, assessing and onboarding qualified staff using safer recruitment practices.
- Performance management: ensuring a system is in place, including keeping records, providing timely feedback, and setting appropriate goals.
- Continuous professional development: coordinating training plans for individuals and the whole school.
- Employee relations: ensuring processes are in place to enhance employee relations, such as listening to feedback, working with leadership on their emotional intelligence skills and negotiating with the unions as necessary.
- Salary and benefits: manage the different compensation packages of various school employees and liaise with payroll to ensure that all staff are paid accurately and on time.
- Legal compliance: ensuring staff have complied with any requirements linked to keeping children safe is an essential part of HR work within a school. Professional HR advice on legal obligations, occupational health matters, and so on often supports this work.
Challenges for HR in Educational Institutions
There are often stories in the British media about the challenges the education sector faces. Many of these challenges link to areas where HR has an impact:
Recruitment
Attracting high-quality, qualified teachers and teaching assistants is an ongoing challenge for schools. The number of people training to be teachers and remaining in the sector has not kept pace with the number of vacancies. Finding candidates to interview for new roles can involve considerable work and creativity.
The recruitment process for people working in schools is also more complex due to the practices involved in ensuring children are kept safe. Safer recruitment is the term given to practices that ensure that staff and volunteers are suitable to work with children and young people. These practices include a criminal record check, called a DBS check because the Disclosure and Barring Services run it. Safer recruitment practices also involve detailed application forms, a robust interview process that covers questions on safeguarding, equality and inclusivity, a thorough induction process and ongoing support and feedback in the role.
Retention
As mentioned earlier, there is a retention problem in the education sector. Teachers often feel overworked and underpaid and choose to leave to work in an industry that offers a better work-life balance and better pay.
HR directly ensures employees feel valued, supported and motivated to do high-quality work. When retention is an ongoing problem, it challenges the whole HR support function to work out what is happening and put processes in place to change things. While changing the pay structure or the workload can be challenging, introducing systems where leadership listen to staff feedback can be a small but essential step to help people feel more appreciated and, therefore, more likely to stay in their roles.
Performance Management and Professional Development
In a school environment, so much is going on each day, and the focus is naturally on the students and achieving the goals for the academic year. Finding time and the headspace for performance management meetings, preparing for them, and writing up the records can be difficult for staff. The HR function in schools has a challenge to ensure quality time is spent on performance reviews to ensure that they are helpful and constructive and not just a ‘tick box’ exercise.
Similarly, many schools already have a culture where continuous professional development is embedded, so staff attend regular workshops and training sessions. However, the challenge is to ensure that the training has an impact on their daily roles.
Culture
Creating a positive and inclusive environment in schools starts with having motivated and engaged staff. When employees in the school system do not feel supported or valued, this can lead to a culture of absenteeism, negativity and disengagement. A challenge for HR roles in schools is to help senior leaders create a culture that supports individuals to do their best. High-quality advice and guidance as part of HR support can help schools change their institutional culture.
How Software Can Streamline HR Processes in Schools
Here are Factorial, we have software that automates the administrative processes involved in HR. Whether your school uses qualified HR experts or it’s the role of your school business manager, our software helps to streamline the administrative work involved in people management and frees up time for more strategic matters such as recruitment, retention and performance management.
There are different ways software can help:
- Document management: centralise employee information and documentation so that you can find contracts, payment details and other records in a few clicks.
- Time Off Management: for support staff not working on an academic timetable, you can manage absences for annual leave using our software.
- Applicant Tracking Software: our secure ATS allows you to keep track of all applicants, reducing time spent on handling documentation.
