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By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good
It is a new year and the right year for taking the steps to make your school a magnet for the best faculty out there. In support of this, Benchmarking for Good’s faculty climate research among more than 1,100 educators working in 23 diverse Jewish day schools with over 8,000 students provides statistically significant guidance for school leaders striving to retain valued faculty and recruit talented staff additions.
We analyzed the factors that correlated with schools scoring the highest on the question: “How likely would you be to recommend working at your school to a friend or family member?” The winning schools exceled at the following factors:
1. Faculty feeling alignment with their school’s Mission. Schools whose faculty felt strongly aligned with their Missions are significantly more likely to be advocates to potential new hires. While no school offers the perfect working environment and conditions, it turns out that feeling Mission aligned really helps compensate for any shortcomings that might exist in other areas and turns employees into advocates.
2. Faculty members’ perception that their supervisors have realistic expectations about workload. Schools whose faculty felt they had clear workload expectations and whose supervisors exhibited empathy about workload limits were significantly stronger advocates for working at their school.
3. Satisfaction with the work environment (collegiality, supervision, support, space, etc.) Perceiving their work environment to be a congenial one in terms of interpersonal and supervisory relationships, available support, and space was the third most important correlating factor relative to being an employer of choice.
4. Satisfaction that they were being provided with the tools needed to perform their work (e.g., in terms of curriculum, technology, etc.) Related to the previous point, faculty members who perceived their school leadership as going the extra mile to ensure they have the tools to effectively do their job are significantly more likely to advocate employment at their schools than faculty who feel unsupported in this regard.
Acting on These Findings
· Regularly conduct faculty climate research to learn how your faculty believes you perform on these four factors. Benchmarking for Good would be happy to discuss partnering with you via our grant programs on such research.
· Where the research indicates you are falling short, speak-- via focus groups on one on one interviews --with trusted staff members to learn how they assess your school’s performance and what they believe it would take to improve it.
· Assess what you have learned and decide on your appropriate action.
· Create an implementation plan and communicate about it to the faculty so they understand and will support your plan.
· Finally, monitor the impact of your plan via short, tactical surveys ("How are we doing?). As appropriate, celebrate the wins with your faculty, and, where necessary, learn from shortfalls, and take corrective action.
You can be confident that you are on a journey of building increased trust with your faculty and learning how to steadily improve on the journey to being an employer of choice in your market.
For support understanding and learning how to strengthen your school’s faculty climate please contact Dr. Harry Bloom, at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org
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