FEATURE FOCUS: RECRUITMENT
Rethinking your estate’s recruitment and retention strategy
caretakers, site managers, and maintenance staff, schools are regularly facing a shortage of high calibre candidates and the increasingly competitive jobs market presents further issues for maintaining a reliable workforce. Recruitment campaigns often result in low quality and quantities of applications whilst draining time, resources, and valuable school funds from an already overstretched budget.
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t is widely recognised that schools are facing a unique set of challenges when recruiting and retaining skilled estates staff. In our first feature this month looking at school recruitment, Nick Orde-Powlett, Managing Director at TIB Services, explains how rethinking your estates recruitment strategy, particularly with regards to understanding the value of mature workers and re-evaluating essential versus desirable application criteria, might be the solution to many of these challenges.
The recruitment and retention of skilled estates staff continues to present problems for many schools across the country. In the search for
It is not unusual to hear that headteachers, business managers, and teaching staff are having to take on caretaking and maintenance duties due to the absence of site staff. The importance of completing regular health and safety checks, promptly repairing breakages, and ensuring that daily security checks and keyholding duties are carried out is, understandably, causing great concern and stress for many school teams, and is consequently having an impact on pupils’ education.
A next-day solution to many of these problems is not necessarily achievable but it is essential to re-evaluate your recruitment strategies in order to promptly assist school teams, and to ensure that young people can continue to attend safe and well-maintained schools. Here are a few ways that we are re-thinking estates recruitment strategy at TIB Services.
Age as an asset: embracing the over 50’s workforce
One approach to address these recruitment challenges is to consider the untapped potential of older workers. Contrary to common misconceptions, age can be a tremendous
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www.education-today.co.uk March 2024
asset in the workplace, particularly in roles that demand experience, reliability, and a well- rounded skill set. One common misconception is that estates roles tend to be too physically demanding for many mature workers compared to their younger counterparts, and we often make incorrect assumptions about the abilities of this demographic. Workers aged 50 and above bring a wealth of transferable skills from previous professions that can be applied effectively in a school estates environment.
With many mature workers looking to become part of the growing ‘unretired’, we have found
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