Competencies Proven to Prevent and Reduce Staff Stress

There is a competitive, moral and financial imperative for MATs and schools to build a culture where staff really matter. 

At the centre of this are everyday behaviours that will affect the experience of every staff member. While it is likely that you will have a vision and values, are the behaviours that underpin these clearly articulated and shared across the school, so they can be more easily lived?

A good place to start is with the behaviours of leaders. Understanding how to lead others can sometimes be lacking in line managers, who often have to continue with much of their previous role, particularly those in the teaching profession. They therefore lack capacity and many are also not given the right development or training. 

To help leaders understand these behaviours, you can share 12 competencies proven to prevent and reduce staff stress.

Moments of truth

If you look back at your own experiences, you may remember key moments that stand out - moments of truth. For example when looking for a new job, role or promotion, those things that influenced how you thought about a Trust or school’s reputation - what people were saying, the job advert, the recruitment process, your first day, the training and development you received, and how you were treated and felt valued.

Each of these include specific ‘moments of truth’ that add to your view of an organisation, meaning you might think “I can’t wait to be a part of it”, or “I wouldn’t want to work there". It’s a highly competitive labour market, and workload, budget, and mental health issues are known by the public. MATs and schools are fighting to recruit and retain the best staff from a shrinking pool.

Get these ‘moments of truth’ right and you build staff engagement, improve loyalty, increase retention, reduce stress and raise student outcomes. Get them wrong…and I don’t need to spell out what happens!

Where do these ‘moments of truth’ show up?

There are many opportunities of showing staff the benefits of working with you and creating a great employee experience. These cover the full staff lifecycle and I am sure you will have built many of them into your Trusts people strategy.

• Everyday school leadership behaviours – how staff are treated.
• Attraction – how prospective staff and other stakeholders view your MAT and schools.
• Recruitment – the process prospective staff go through in being considered for a job with you and how this stands out from other.
• Onboarding – how welcome staff feel when they join you (this covers much more than the first day or your initial induction process and should start as soon as they are appointed).
• Performance – how this is supported and managed.
• Development – the time and focus given to staff CPD, career conversations and progression.
• Retention – how you proactively retain good staff and identify those at risk (all the other bullet points support this).
• Farewell – how staff feel when they leave and how well this is managed, irrespective of the reason they leave.

All of these are linked and come together to form your employer brand and determine how people think, feel and act when coming into contact with you.

Here I am going to focus on the first of these areas – everyday leadership behaviours. Getting this right means you don't waste effort on the others because too many of your staff choose to move on.

Begin with the everyday behaviour of school leaders

Your staff face moments of truth every day. They include; 

• How workload is distributed and managed
• The degree to which staff feel involved in decisions affecting them
• Whether they feel listened to and supported (or not)
• The behaviours they experience from leaders and colleagues

These are just a few of them and one common factor across many of these are interactions with their line manager and other leaders. Do those leading in your MAT and schools have a high enough awareness and understanding of the direct impact they have? Too often the answer is no.

Working with Headteachers, Principles and CEOs to create Welbee, they shared how they are often driven by the heavy demands placed on them. School leaders are always racing against the clock.

In too many cases line managers haven’t had the required training and development. One day they were a teacher, the next asked to lead a year group, key stage or department (depending on your phase). They remain subject or specialism experts when they need to become people experts.

The good news is that extensive research from Goldsmiths, University of London, identified twelve specific leadership competencies that will help. They are different from those used in National Qualifications.

For those reading this from the HR profession, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development were one of the three funders of the research and these competencies are on their website. The other funders were Investors in People and the Health and Safety Executive.

Self-assessing against these competencies is the easy bit. Supporting leaders to choose to adapt and change behaviour is much harder. People have deep and long-held beliefs and need to understand why they should change, as well as regular and deliberate reflection and practice to develop new habits.

Senior leaders must be role models, so others copy, and as line managers they have to coach their middle leaders. Without this people will very quickly return to their default position.

Introducing the above behaviours to senior and middle leaders across your school is a great first step, the cornerstone on which to build your people strategy. It will mean many more positive moments of truth and it is the fastest way to improve the experience of your staff

Discuss how well they are modelled within your MAT and schools and agree actions so they become part of your culture.

Below are some of the behaviours covered. If you would like to know more, have questions or would like a sample of the leadership competency cards (you can see some below) sending to you, then email support@welbee.co.uk with the subject line 'Competency Cards' and we will put some in the post for you.

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