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• Consider the engagement of your staff in your big plans.
• Engagement = quality learning opportunities.
• Leadership is about effective learning relationships.
• Learning cultures only exist when engagement is self-directed.
• Develop focus about staff engagement levels in your school.

Teachers are extraordinary. Despite ever-increasing accountabilities, demands on time, unreasonable expectations, media and societal scrutiny and rather average pay – they back up day-in and day-out to live out a deeply held passion for empowering, enhancing and improving the lives of young people. It’s quite noble stuff when you think about it that way.

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
– Albert Einstein

If teachers are viewed statistically as part of the national workforce, where they comprise 3.7%, it is interesting to compare what other employees consider to be positive and impactful practices, and apply these to teaching.Just occasionally, it’s worth checking on whether the principles that other Australian professionals are saying are important to their engagement and wellbeing are just as pertinent to us.

Here are some interesting facts to ponder about employee ENGAGEMENT and why it matters:

• Organisations with ENGAGED employees outperform those who don’t by 202% (Gallup)
• Employees rate the following items in relation to positive impact on their ENGAGEMENT (Association for Talent Development, 2008)
• Frequency of Training and/or Learning Opportunities – 36%
• Breadth of Training and/or Learning Opportunities – 39%
• Quality of Training and/or Learning Opportunities – 65%
• Problems with direct supervisors as a reason for employee DISENGAGEMENT – 49% (Custom Insight, 2012)
• Organisations using cooperative learning platforms to improve staff ENGAGEMENT gain in this area by 18% year after year. (ThoughtFarmer)
• DISENGAGEMENT and a feeling of going nowhere is now globally the fastest growing reason for resignation. (Bureau of National Affairs)
• Staff turnover costs the average organisation around $1 376 per week, per employee. (Australian Bureau of Statistics)

In schools impact is not measured in dollars – but formally in terms of outcomes, and informally in terms of influence and student life trajectory. However, an average company of 500 employees with an average Australian turnover of 10% is losing around $3.6 million per year. What then, are the potential impacts of DISENGAGED employees in schools?

Learning must be viewed as not only the product but also the process in our schools. This applies to students, but most critically to our teachers. Examine this model for staff ENGAGEMENT:

Learning activity	Where staff meetings and gatherings are structured opportunities for those present to synthesise information and learn from each other.
Learning relationships	Where team and school leaders view their core business as the work they do leveraging personal  relationships for professional and differentiated growth and improvement.
Learning teams	Where Teams are mobilised in their work to enact large strategic objectives through self-direction and engage in practice improvement as the vehicle for achievement.
Learning cultures	Where creative collaboration, convention challenging and whole school achievement are norms and evident in all opportunities to practice and to discuss practice.

At which stage in this model would you place your staff?

What might be the cost of not moving into the next phase of staff ENGAGEMENT in your school?