WELLBEING Data-driven leadership: protecting your
team before the resignation window In his regular column this month for Education Today MARK SOLOMONS, founder of triple ERA Award-winning Welbee, and Edu Intelligence – the first AI tool that connects stakeholder feedback, documents and wider school data, and most importantly, makes sense of it for schools, groups and trusts – discusses what schools can do to build a culture that makes staff want to stay.
I
n late December and early May, school leaders brace themselves for resignations. The Tes Teacher Wellbeing Report 2026 draws on more than 2,800 educators across 196 countries. It does not rewrite this story. What it does is give us further information about why it persists and points clearly to where leaders can make a difference. he traditional response to staff retention and wellbeing has long been reactive. We wait for a valued colleague to hand in their notice, and only then do we attempt a stay interview, offer a slight shift in responsibilities, or scramble to match an external salary offer. But by the time they have put pen to paper, the emotional decision to leave was likely made weeks, if not months, before.
If we want to solve education’s ongoing retention and wellbeing crisis, we must change our timeline. Retention does not start in the spring when resignations are submitted; it is built through the daily choices, cultural norms, and leadership habits established from the first day of the autumn term, and every day after.
Beyond the September honeymoon
September is filled with optimism, but as the demands of the term accumulate through assessments, parents’ and darker evenings, and relentless operational pressures, morale can erode quickly. Without deliberate intervention, the goodwill generated over the summer can dissipate before half-term. When staff feel overwhelmed, isolated, or unheard during these high-pressure weeks, they can begin searching for an exit long before the official resignation window opens. To retain our best people, we need to treat workplace culture not as a vague sentiment, but as an operational priority that requires structured and continuous attention.
Moving from intentions to data-driven leadership Most senior leaders genuinely care about their staff. They list ‘wellbeing’ among their strategic priorities and implement initiatives intended to show support. Yet, there remains a disconnect between leadership intentions and the daily experience of many staff members.
Often, this is because school leaders do not track culture or wellbeing, in the way they do financial budgets, student attendance, and academic progress, with rigorous data. Instead, they rely on a once a year survey, anecdotal evidence or gut instinct to measure staff satisfaction. If you want to protect your team before they decide to leave, you need a clear, data-driven picture of your school’s working environment, starting early in the academic year: • Establish an early baseline: running a targeted and anonymous staff survey in the autumn term provides a check on workload, leadership support, and
14
www.education-today.co.uk psychological safety.
• Identify hidden stressors: ensure feedback is broken down to allow you to spot department-specific pressures, and that you can cross reference this with HR and other staff data you collect, to identify any systemic issues.
• Track morale like any key metric: treating staff feedback with the same strategic focus as student performance transforms staff support from a passive idea into an accountable operational process.
Building psychological safety
While data signposts actions, it is daily leadership behaviours that create the working environment. A critical factor in staff retention is psychological safety; the shared belief that a workplace is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. When staff feel secure, they speak up about challenges such as workload, ask for help when struggling, and contribute ideas to fix operational problems.
Creating this environment requires intentional leadership habits from the first day of the new year: • Normalise open dialogue: leaders should actively invite feedback and listen without defensiveness when staff highlight friction points in their daily routines.
• Acknowledge mistakes: when senior teams own their operational missteps and adjust course openly, it signals to staff that perfection is not demanded, but continuous improvement is welcomed.
• Recognise effort meaningfully: brief, specific, and face-to-face appreciation during planned daily walks or drop-ins reminds staff that their work is noticed and valued.
Operational action: turning feedback into change Collecting staff feedback (and reviewing data), without taking visible action is worse than not asking at all. If staff raise concerns, whether about workload, operational friction, or something else, leaders should demonstrate prompt, visible follow-through.
This does not mean resolving every issue. It is about taking targeted steps that make a tangible difference to their working day and communicating effectively where changes are not possible and explaining why. When staff see that sharing honest feedback leads to practical improvements, such as trimmed meeting schedules or simplified reporting templates, trust grows. That trust is what anchors them to an organisation, when external recruitment offers arrive.
Imperfect action beats perfect inaction
School leadership is challenging. It can be tempting to postpone addressing culture and wellbeing until the calendar ‘clears up’ or until a major strategic review takes place.
Yet, workplace culture is built through small, continuous actions taken every day. Imperfect action taken today to support your staff always beats waiting for a perfect plan tomorrow.
By measuring staff wellbeing early, equipping senior and middle leaders, fostering psychological safety, and making practical adjustments where possible, you build a workplace where staff feel valued, supported, and motivated to remain, irrespective of the workload and other challenges that are always likely to be part of the sector’s challenges.
Do not wait for the winter resignation window to find out how your team is feeling. Start the conversation now, look at the data, and build a culture where your best people choose to stay.
For further information and practical advice, visit: u
https://welbee.co.uk
September 2026
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
