Across the country, many schools are facing a confluence of factors that has led to one of the most challenging staffing shortages in recent memory. Substitute teacher pools are smaller, many teachers have resigned or retired, and the teachers and administrators that are left face mounting challenges along with a smaller pool of resources and coworkers to deal with them.
These changes come at a time of great need for students, as well. With all of the changes in society, students are in greater need than ever before of effective, diverse new teachers that can adequately prepare them for the challenges they will face upon graduating. School administrators must focus on maintaining a strong and cohesive workforce for their school to succeed, using school staffing agencies and other strategies to promote, hire, and retain workers in the long term.
Staffing Strategies That Work
Filling teaching positions is one of the hardest jobs of a principal or administrator. Without enough school staff, it’s difficult to support workers, ensure student success, and oversee a successful school year. Luckily, there are some proven strategies that will work for principals or administrators of any school to fill and develop open positions.
Let’s look at some of the top ways that a school or recruiter can attract and retain top talent and ensure the success of their school and students year after year.
Strategy #1: Teacher Preparation Programs
One way that some districts have begun to mitigate a potential staff shortage is by recruiting and hiring straight from their pool of students or a pool of students training to become teachers. This is sometimes called a “teacher residency” program, and it usually involves compensating a student teacher for helping out in the classroom while still in school, and some type of incentive to encourage student teachers to build their career at your school.
This opens up a wider pool of candidates to hire from, increases the reach of your school, and helps bring people on board your team that are already familiar with your school, its procedures, students, principal, and culture. Finding teachers this way is one of the best ways that schools can improve their staffing.
Strategy #2: Streamlining the Hiring Process
Other than building a school-to-teacher pipeline, the most profitable way to recruit and hire new staff is to examine, fix, and streamline your current hiring and HR practices. An example of one way a person can make a difference in this type of assignment is to try and modernize and digitalize your hiring process.
A paperless and efficient onboarding process will help you access, connect, and serve your potential applicants and make your school more attractive to a younger and more diverse workforce. When beginning this process, have your hiring staff or principal look into what types of advertising you have created. If you’re not reaching out on social media and other online methods, you’re missing out on a potential major aspect of your recruiting strategy.
Strategy #3: School Staffing Agencies
School staffing programs use a variety of means to recruit teachers, retain educators, and improve student outcomes. There are a lot of benefits to using this method, and it offers some important advantages and certainties over the other methods. When you use a staffing agency, they can guarantee that the staff you need for your school year will show up, be ready to teach, and be there when you need them every time.
Finding the right educator for the children and families that depend on your school is a difficult job, one that doesn’t always happen naturally. Principals must fill open positions, keep their teams running, and use every resource at their disposal to hire educators that parents, other teachers, and children are all happy with.
One of the best ways to find this staffing support is by using a school staffing agency to find substitute teachers, school nurses, principals, or any other school staff you need. No matter how low your staffing is or how many teachers you need, a staffing agency can provide your schools and teachers with concrete support in a way that none of the other strategies can offer.
When you go through a staffing agency, they do the hard work of interviewing, recruiting, and vetting candidates so you don’t have to. While all other staffing strategies involve increasing your use of time and resources to find staff, only a staffing agency can guarantee schools, teachers, and principals that they will have substitute teachers and other workers on their teams that are professional, trained, and know what they are doing.
Staffing agencies also offer a much wider pool of potential workers for your school than the other options. Let’s look at some of the major benefits of using a school staffing agency to find workers for your teams and schools that principals, parents, and other teachers alike will be happy with:
- Less training time
- Fewer risks
- Reduced costs
- Stronger applicants
- Easier to fill specialized roles
- The staffing agency handles onboarding and payroll issues
There are many more benefits besides these, which is why so many schools and other workplaces are utilizing the services of a staffing agency. Administrators typically report that the unparalleled ease of finding specialized staff on demand is the biggest benefit, while the costs typically balance out around the same as the district isn’t usually covering the agency teacher’s retirement or benefits.
Don’t Let Your School Suffer
Principals can all agree that many of the biggest issues facing schools today have to do with staffing: certain jobs with high overturn, specialized spots that are difficult to hire for, or a job listing that stays up year after year with no applicants. If you want to improve student outcomes, increase teacher satisfaction and retention, and overall improve your school year, the only way to do so is to make sure that your staffing levels are adequate and that you aren’t lacking any of the most important roles.
However, there are only a few ways that a school district or principal can achieve this. Especially in rural areas, finding the right principal, teacher, or other worker can be extremely difficult, and recruiting for school districts can be expensive, tedious, or simply impossible. The best way to take charge of your school year is to practice these hiring strategies and be proactive about how you attract and retain talent.
Don’t leave your school up to chance. Contact a staffing agency today and begin building your pipeline of teachers to make sure that your school succeeds!
