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A Benchmarking for Good survey of over 800 faculty members at fourteen geographically dispersed Jewish day schools provides important insights about what school leaders need to do to become employers of choice in a challenging labor market.
One might automatically think that offering competitive salaries as the key factor, but salaries turn out to be an important, but middle tier importance factor. Ensuring faculty members feel respected is the top criterion for determining whether a school is an employer of choice. There was a fair amount of uniformity across the surveyed schools about the relative importance of the various factors.
In a subsequent report we will shed light on how well the surveyed faculty members felt their needs were being met relative to these factors.
Tier 1 Importance Factors
The top 3 “employer of choice” factors are:
Feeling Respected and Supported by Their Supervisor
Having a Positive and Collegial Work Environment
Working in An Environment Where Parents Treat Faculty with Respect
In the median surveyed school, eighty-four percent of faculty members indicated these factors were “Very Important” in defining a school as an employer of choice.
Tier 2 Importance Factors
Two additional environmental factors represented the second tier of importance. They were
Working in an Environment Where Students Treat Other Students with Respect and Caring, and
Working in an Environment Where Students Treat Faculty with Respect.
These two factors were indicated to be Very Important by 71% of faculty members in the median surveyed school.
Tier 3 Importance Factors
Three factors represented the third tier of desired school characteristics.
Being Able to Freely Communicate Ideas, Concerns and Suggestions
Receiving a Competitive Salary
Having Appropriate Tools (Space, Technology, Curriculum, etc.)
These 3 factors were indicated to be Very Important by ~60% of responding faculty members. To be clear, this does not mean that schools can deprioritize salary considerations, it simply indicates that salary alone will not ensure they are employers of choice if the other highly important factors are not in place. Of note, the importance ratings were relatively constant among faculty members of varying years of employment at the surveyed schools.
Tiers 4 and 5 Importance Factors
Factors that were Very Important to from 25-40% of survey respondents were:
Receiving a Competitive Benefits Package
Having Access to Career Growth Opportunities
Having Access to Professional Development that Enhances Skills
Having Access to Expert Mentoring
In Summary
There are many factors that contribute to a school becoming an employer of choice to faculty members, but climate factors centered around making faculty members feel respected by key stakeholder groups–supervisors, parents, fellow faculty members and students– are very important for a strong majority of faculty members. School leaders need to conduct periodic survey research in order to be knowledgeable about how well they are perceived to be performing on these factors. Additionally, when shortcomings in perceived performance are revealed, they need to conduct in depth qualitative research to learn about where they are falling short and need to make improvements.
Benchmarking for Good is making a concerted effort to help elevate the field in this important arena by offering a second round of no cost grants to a number of qualified schools interested in perfecting their practice in this area. Interested school leaders should contact Dr. Harry Bloom at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org to explore whether this grant program is a good fit for their schools.
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