FEATURE FOCUS: RECRUITMENT
deal if you have to pay for commercial recruitment services. If you are using this approach, consider your third- party supplier relationships. Ask the questions any commercial buyer should be asking: How have your relationships with recruitment service providers changed during the past year? How do I ensure that the service and resources I receive are good value for money? How will I measure the performance of this supplier? If your chosen approach is to
could help you to address these very personal challenges. In the longer term, some of these may also provide new channels through which to attract, recruit and resource. For example, Teach First’s Academic Mentors programme is training thousands of support workers, many of whom may be available to work in schools for the foreseeable future. By actively engaging with these sorts of initiatives, and by nurturing the people you connect with through them, for example by retaining them long-term in your extended workforce, you can start to build a pool of extended staff to cover workforce gaps without a separate recruitment drive or having to rely on supply agencies down the road.
Plan The first step in your planning is to separate out your known, possible, and unknown future staffing requirements. Ideally each can be further divided into ‘recruitment’, ‘resourcing/cover’; ‘extra/targeted support’ and, where relevant, ‘SEN/specialist provision’. The key here is to focus on the possible
scenarios, which will in all likelihood make up the bulk of your forward staffing requirements. Assign weighted scores to your possible
staffing shortage scenarios. A dedicated staff management/workforce planning/HR tool is best but if you don’t have one, a spreadsheet is fine. As a first port of call, it is definitely worth
communicating with your Academy group or Local Authority for support on mapping out and making these connections. They will have a broad view of local pinch points, and knowledge of the internal and third-party services (and any deals) available to you at their fingertips. Try not to plan alone. List out your existing local connections and
known part-time/cover staff. Can you approach that network for staff sharing, or similar, at the pinch points you’ve identified as being likely? Even those on social platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn, a quick post about your requirements can yield multiple offers of support very quickly. Sometimes you just need to ask the question! If you are based in an area which struggles
with teacher attraction, shortlist the third-party resourcing and recruitment services you might consider engaging, even if you haven’t been involved with them before. Reaching out for support in good time will help you secure a better
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build a talent pipeline, how will you manage this pipeline and keep candidates engaged, especially if it turns out you don’t have an immediate need? You don’t want to waste your talent attraction efforts!
Prepare Now you have information and a multi-channel recruitment and resourcing plan, timely action is key. First, the negative: unfortunately, last minute
dropouts do happen, and you need to be ready for this. Try to have a couple of reserves for every possible vacancy - if they are good but are just pipped to the post for the permanent vacancy, these people can still be used for short term supply, for example, until another vacancy arises. Ensure you have a robust way of managing and maintaining engagement with these candidates. Prepare evocative marketing collateral. This
should include, as a minimum, a mobile optimised careers page on your website. Ensure these materials are differentiating and articulate your values clearly (and explain why you prioritise these). As part of your long-term strategy, consider
how in practice you will attract, engage, deploy, hire and retain teachers and support staff. Consider building a talent pipeline and ecosystem, to maximise your access to great staff throughout the whole employee life cycle. Try not
to become fixated on just the immediate need. Finally, be open and prepare your
departmental staff for the potential pinch points you’ve identified. Doing so will build trust and goodwill. Empower your team (budgetarily and consultatively) to plan their own departments with your support. You don’t have to do everything yourself - good delegation is a hallmark of good leadership.
In a nutshell Let’s make no bones about it, the coming weeks and months will continue to be tough. But by adopting some of these approaches you can mitigate the risk of staffing constrictions. Try these six steps to ensure your short and long-term recruitment needs don’t give you an everlasting headache:
• Survey your staff and community to better understand their outlook and concerns. Sentiment information is invaluable to good workforce planning
• Review your absence and vacancy data from the past year. Use this to help predict where and when to expect pinch points in recruitment and resourcing going forward
• Identify third party services you trust and adopt a collaborative approach to talent attraction and retention. This will help you achieve long-term workforce stability
• Map out your possible staffing scenarios and assign each a probability. This will help you prioritise your talent attraction efforts and make the most of your time
• Start building a pipeline of talent. Keep these candidates warm through engagement and temporary/supply work, even if it turns out there is no immediate matching vacancy
• Include your colleagues in the execution of your plan. Share the workload and empower your team to actively contribute to your talent attraction efforts.
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