WELLBEING
Stakeholder engagement: practical tips for MAT and school leaders
MARK SOLOMONS, creator of Welbee, the online evaluation and staff wellbeing improvement tool, and six times winner in the ERA Awards, shares his advice about building resilience in schools.
Encourage a learning culture and share best practice - if one academy or team pioneers a brilliant approach, adapt and replicate it. 6. Ask for honest, constructive dialogue Cultivate psychological safety - staff, students, and parents need to be able to speak freely. This can be done through anonymous platforms or dedicated listening sessions led by neutral facilitators. Model openness and acknowledge where improvements are needed. Fostering shared responsibility keeps the lines of communication active.
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s a CEO, senior leader or headteacher within a multi-academy trust or school, how well do you use stakeholder feedback to understand how your staff, students, and parents feel about the environment and education you offer?
Stakeholder engagement isn’t just another compliance step — it can be a powerful tool for crafting a successful people strategy, boosting retention, improving performance, and building a culture that truly reflects your mission. Effective engagement goes far beyond a simple annual survey. It’s an ongoing conversation, a continuous cycle of listening to feedback and action. How this be achieved?
Below are eight of my top tips drawn from working with successful leaders:
1. Map engagement to key metrics Clearly define objectives — staff retention, absences, attendance, behaviour, SEND, financial sustainability, student outcomes — and pinpoint where stakeholder insights will help, and align surveys and feedback.
Ask targeted questions so there is a direct correlation between responses, actions and goals. Track changes over time, measuring and monitoring progress toward the outcomes set out.
2. Take an integrated approach to data Disconnected spreadsheets, Microsoft or Google forms, or standalone feedback platforms delivering individual surveys, just create data silos. Capturing and housing feedback in one system, alongside other data, means current situations and trends can be analysed more easily. Take advantage of new and emerging technologies, like agentic and predictive AI to help identify key insights and actions.
Cross-reference stakeholder feedback with performance metrics, for example, compare staff wellbeing alongside retention and absence rates, to see the bigger picture.
March 2025 3. Turn insights into action
Execution is a key differentiator. After receiving feedback, share results with those who participated and involve them in actions agreed — let them know exactly how their input is making a difference. This transparency builds trust and encourages ongoing engagement. Focus in on those issues that have the biggest impact and build from there - revisit and refine, and measure the impact of any changes made. If a goal was to reduce workload stress, track how it affects staff through future surveys. 4. Link engagement to goals Evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of feedback and consider the cost of your current approach. Manual and DIY surveys might be ‘free’, but if your HR or school improvement teams are bogged down analysing data or spreadsheets, there’s a hidden cost. Specialist tools provide advanced analytics and suggest actions, saving time and improving outcomes. A robust engagement system highlights early warning signs - like declining morale in a particular group of staff - so you can be proactive. Whenever a staff member leaves, you face recruiting and training costs, alongside potential disruption to student learning.
Match feedback and actions against results, for example, does better staff wellbeing correlate with higher student attainment? Are financial choices backed by evidence? Ongoing stakeholder engagement helps spot the trade-offs and make better, more balanced decisions. 5. Empower collaboration across teams Clarify responsibilities and have a team or named individual, responsible for stakeholder engagement to feed results up to the executive team and through them to the board. Foster cross-functional insight: HR, finance, and curriculum leads should work together to interpret feedback in context. If parents mention the high cost of trips, for instance, that’s not just a budget concern - it’s an equity and curriculum issue too.
Thank respondents and show gratitude for their input and candour. Celebrating positive changes that emerge from feedback, reinforces the value of engagement, making participants more likely to contribute in the future. 7. Create a culture of engagement Integrate with CPD and encourage staff to deepen their understanding of data usage and feedback interpretation, so they see engagement as part of their professional growth. Involve governance, with trustees and governors apprised of engagement findings, ensuring strategic decisions reflect on-the-ground realities. This alignment closes the feedback loop from classroom to boardroom. 8. Celebrate wins
Involve staff in reviewing stakeholder engagement. When stakeholders input information which leads to positive outcomes - like improved attendance or a more efficient budget - share the story.
Ultimately, effective stakeholder engagement is more than a survey tactic. It’s a strategic approach that resonates through every layer of a trust or school. When leaders genuinely listen to staff, students, and parents, they gain real-time insights that guide policy, improve morale, and raise student achievement. It’s a model that fosters collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement shaped by the collective wisdom of your community.
Ask yourself, ‘Do you really know how your stakeholders feel?’ If the answer isn’t a resounding yes, then think about how you can effectively tap into their experiences, ideas, and concerns. Align feedback with your strategic objectives - like retention, wellbeing, financial sustainability, and academic outcomes. A dynamic, data-driven approach to stakeholder engagement can reshape how you lead, how you allocate resources, and how you support every individual in your care. In doing so, you’ll not only see a stronger, healthier environment for staff, students and parents, but also a more resilient, adaptable, and successful, future-facing trust or school
For further information and practical advice, visit:
https://welbee.co.uk
www.education-today.co.uk 13
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