Happy Staff Thrive
The people strategy that took retention from 40% to 17%
Recruitment is painful. Retention is where you win or lose. Sharon shares the practical people strategy behind a major shift in staff retention, built in a small but high-performing trust operating on the edge of London weighting pressure. This session is for school and trust leaders who want to move beyond “wellbeing posters” and build a credible, measurable approach to becoming a great employer, without losing grip on standards or budgets.
In this session we explore
• Why retention is the real workforce lever, and how to stop endlessly refilling the same roles
• Building a people strategy that staff actually feel, not a document that sits in a folder
• What a wellbeing charter looks like in practice, boundaries, workload, support, and consistency
• Using data properly, what to track (turnover, absence, exit themes) and how to turn it into action
• Competing when you cannot compete on pay, culture, flexibility, clarity, and leadership behaviours that keep good people
Take home points
• A simple retention dashboard and what to measure first
• The building blocks of a practical wellbeing charter
• Quick wins that improve staff experience without new money
• How to link people work to operational stability and budget confidence
This session is for
SBMs, SBLs, trust COOs and CFOs, HR and people leads, heads and deputies, and anyone responsible for workforce stability across maintained schools or trusts."
