HR Strategy

Employee engagement identifies how emotionally invested people are in 
their work and how aligned they are to the organisational culture. Employee 
engagement shouldn’t be confused with employee happiness, which is often 
a relatively short term response to an isolated incident. Likewise employee 
satisfaction and even employee wellbeing which although important are not 
necessarily indicators of employee engagement. 

We can work with you to identify where on the scale from engaged to actively 
disengaged your employees are and develop your employee engagement 
strategy to drive employee engagement.

HR Connect is committed to supporting employee wellbeing in whatever way 
we can. This isn’t just something we say, it is something we do every single day in 
partnership with our colleagues at Staff Care Services.

Our wellbeing services include:
• Mental wellbeing
• Physical wellbeing
• Social wellbeing
• Financial wellbeing.

It is important that Schools and Academies not only ensure compliance to the requirements of the Equality Act 2010, but also advocate their commitment to 
a diverse and inclusive culture. Having a safe learning environment for staff and 
students that celebrates diversity and raises aspirations is a key priority for all 
school leaders.

HR Connect is able to provide our customers with template policy documents as part of our Enhanced and Premium HR packages, and ongoing strategy and policy implementation support on an ad hoc chargeable basis.

A flexible first approach has been implemented in many Schools and Multi-Academy trusts with great success. To maximise the success of your approach it is 
important to understand what benefits you are seeking and how you will measure 
the impact of flexible working both for an individual and an organisational 
perspective.

All organisations, including Schools and Academies with 250 or more employees, 
must report their gender pay gap data. 

You are required to:
• Publish your gender pay gap data on your school / trust website
• Report your data using the online gender pay gap reporting service
• Retain this information online for a minimum of 3 years

If you would like advice or support with your gender pay gap reporting, or would 
like to learn more about ways in which School’s and Academies can implement 
action plans to reduce their gender pay gap, or benchmark (compare) your data 
with similar organisations, please contact us.

Our extensive HR Audit service can be focused on one particular area of HR, or 
include all of your HR practices and procedures. 

We will discuss with you any areas of concern and create a bespoke audit plan, 
with associated timescales and costings.

Many Schools and Academies can benefit from regular reviews of their employee 
data to support the ongoing success of their organisation and support employee 
engagement and motivation.

The top 7 key employee metrics (in alphabetical order) we can support Schools and Academies with are:
1. Absence / Attendance 
2. Diversity monitoring
3. Employee engagement
4. Employee performance
5. Headcount, turnover and retention
6. Pay and benefits
7. Recruitment costs

Whilst the majority of Schools and Academies follow the STPCD as well as local and national pay structures, there is still benefit in reviewing and analysing pay and benefits, both internally and externally. In addition ensuring that all Support roles are accurately benchmarked is important to provide pay equity and minimise the risk of equal pay claims.

Analysing your pay and reward, alongside employee engagement surveys can 
support you to develop a reward strategy aligned to your School or Academy’s 
core values and beliefs

The cost of recruitment, or cost per hire (CPH) is the total amount of money spent 
to hire a new employee. The calculation is relatively simple, and can be done on 
a case by case basis or over a defined period to determine an average cost per 
hire.

It is important to understand how much each hire has cost you especially if you 
have concerns over retention, or a high number of failed probations or early 
period leavers as these costs can easily escalate and negatively impact upon 
school budgets