Support staff personal and professional development

Most staff will not have received training in wellbeing and mental health but it’s very clear that if a member of staff is not in a good place mentally, then they will be unable to promote and protect the mental health of their pupils. Organisations are also gradually recognising that employee mental health is not solely the responsibility of the individual: under the Health and Safety Act (201) employers (including schools) are responsible for their employees’ mental health. Headteachers, leadership teams and governors too will often need training and support to implement a mental health policy.

First Aid for Mental Health training might be appropriate for your school. Ofqual-regulated and non-certificated options are available. The focus of training is how to recognise that someone is suffering from mental ill-health and to offer assistance until further help can be sought.

The training should produce discussion on how your school develops as a caring community. Irrespective of their role, the aim is to develop a culture where any member of staff should feel able to seek help from another staff member. In one school, for example, the headteacher often asks for staff help in briefings if they feel under pressure.

Strategies for self-care should also be provided on the basis that the aim is to achieve a balance between looking after your own mental health and the school taking care of you.

Further resources

• We recommend you read chapters 7–38 of Cultures of Staff Wellbeing and Mental Health in Schools, edited by Waters, S. (2022).
• Learn more about how to support your workplace with Mental Health First Aid England.

Schools who want to retain their talented teachers need to consider how well their staff are supported and coached as individuals. Coaching is a form of development targeting high performance and improvement. On an individual basis, coaching enables the recipient to take ownership of their own CPD and increases personal wellbeing and confidence. In an organisation, coaching promotes a reflective and collaborative culture, increasing positive attitude and energy. Where staff are happy and fulfilled in their role, making progress and heading in their chosen direction of development, they are more likely to stay and so the school reaps the benefits.

Coaching is for anyone and everyone. If someone has the benefit of a coach they become more aware of their strengths and how to adapt to different situations. They also become more aware of the areas they need to develop, making them more thoughtful about the direction of their professional development. Coaching helps inspire and motivate employees to improve knowledge, increase skills and change behaviours to drive greater performance.

The three elements of a successful coaching session are:

1. a clear structure
2. open questioning that helps coachees make their own decisions
3. a commitment to action with a date for review/evaluation.

Having a clear structure is the most important aspect to achieving a lot in a short time. There is a variety of models for you to follow but all have an essentially similar structure:

• the STRIDE model (Strengths/Target/Reality check/Ideas/Decision/Evaluation)
• the GROW model (Goals/Reality/Options/What next?)
• the CIGAR model (Current situation/Ideal situation/Gap between the two/Action required/Review).

Top tips

• It’s important to create a coaching culture from the top down, starting with a commitment from the governors and the SLT.
• Download Coach and keep: Improve retention with a coaching culture.

Further resources

• Access this this practical guide for schools – Coaching for teaching and learning.
• Learn about four proven coaching models.

Opportunities for professional development and career progression, both internally and externally, are important for staff wellbeing and mental health. Staff who are ‘stuck’ because they have not been supported in developing themselves and/or defining their career path can become demoralised, disengaged and negative.

Offer regular opportunities for staff to discuss and review their professional development and career options through the line management structure. In schools where internal promotion is unlikely – for instance, in small schools where there are fewer openings and less flexibility, staff should be offered support to seek external posts if their ambition is to gain promotion. While this may seem counterintuitive, supporting staff to achieve external promotion if internal promotion is not available prevents demoralisation because the staff member is unable to develop themselves professionally.

Top tips

• Offer staff a combination of training that is whole-school focused, for example, the wellbeing of staff and skills-based, according to the needs of the individual.
• Ask staff to identify training they would like to attend, both from a whole-school perspective and from an individual context. Often, taking an audit will reveal skills and talents that the school was previously unaware of.
• Try to achieve a balance of both opportunities for professional development for each member of staff.

Including staff wellbeing and mental health in your formal staff appraisal processes can really embed wellbeing into your school culture, showing more sceptical staff that you are serious about mental health. Appraisals should provide an opportunity for staff to discuss their mental health in confidence. The appraiser and appraisee must have a clear understanding of the staff mental health support process which should be common across the school.

You should also:

• Provide line managers with training on their role and the school process of support in relation to staff who disclose mental ill-health. Include external sources of support in addition to their GP.
• Ensure that appraisal documentation includes a section for the appraiser to write a comment on the appraisee’s mental health, the action that will be taken and a date for review.
• Provide a section on the documentation for the appraisee to suggest improvements and developments in staff mental health. Feed the strategies into the school’s strategy for whole-school staff mental health.

The disclosure of mental ill-health should not be used to downgrade a member of staff’s appraisal judgement. It should be completely separate from it and only be used as a means to identify an opportunity for support.

Top tips
Ideas to integrate wellbeing into staff performance management:

• Introduce a ‘how are you feeling?’ question at the start of the appraisal so the process doesn’t solely focus on targets.
• Stop formal observations as a form of performance management.
• Include a space on lesson plans about the type of ‘weather’ the teacher has brought into the room – a formal acknowledgement of how the teacher makes the pupils feel.

Promoting personal development can be as important as supporting professional development. It is acknowledging the whole person rather than just focusing on what they can contribute to the school's vision or targets. This raises morale and makes the staff member feel valued.

Identifying the personal skills of your staff opens up the possibility that they might be willing to contribute to the school community in ways that are outside their formal job description. When pupils see staff contributing in this way, they view their teachers and support staff differently, as a rounded person with a range of accomplishments. This modelling encourages children and young people to value their own skills outside the formal curriculum and to gain prestige when sharing them with their peers.

Top tips

• Take an audit of personal skills separate from teaching skills when a new member of staff joins the school.
• Ensure that line managers familiarise themselves with each member of staff’s personal and professional skills profile and discuss this in professional development meetings.
• Include a statement about the school’s commitment to personal and professional development in the induction pack or induction booklet and the staff handbook.
• Ask staff to update their profiles online regularly, at least termly.
• Use line management professional development/appraisal meetings to also ask if there is something that the member of staff would like to develop that they are not currently involved with.
• Seek ways in which your school could support staff to develop personal skills and interests. Perhaps someone would like to run a group or make a short description of outside interests part of a weekly briefing/staff meeting.

Staff wellbeing and mental health, as well as professional development, can be adversely affected if staff feel that the process of internal appointments is unfair. For instance, if staff often make comments like, ‘There’s no point in me applying, it has X’s name all over it’, the process of internal appointments needs to be revised. A lack of fairness is a factor in staff burnout (Leiter and Maslach, 2005).

The external appointment process should be equally transparent and fair. Applicants should be informed of the way in which appointments are made. If applicants who have not been appointed feel that the process is unfair, word of mouth can do the school harm, especially in the local area and may even affect teachers applying for posts in the future.

Top tips

• While leadership – and perhaps governors – will be key in revising internal appointments, consider involving all staff in providing suggestions for how internal appointments could be made fairer. This will give a clear signal that you are serious about amending the current process and policy.
• Ensure that the process of both internal and external appointments is clear and transparent. This should include:
  • the weight placed upon the interview, compared to the observation of teaching
  • the part students will play if they are asked to interview the candidate
  • whether the tour of the school is part of the interview process
  • any scoring process and how the scores are totalled
  • if an informal discussion is involved, whether this is also counted in the scoring total
  • finally, the time that the successful candidate is allowed to make the decision whether to accept the position.
• If you have a governor who is experienced in appointing staff, draw on their expertise.

Further resources

• Discover more strategies for improving staff relationships with work in Banishing Burnout by Leiter, M.P. and Maslach, C. (2005).