IGNITE A SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR S GUIDE TO DESIGNING DISTRICTS THAT MOTIVATE TEACHERS Chett Daniel, M.S. Founder k12hrsolutions 2014 k12hrsolutions All rights reserved. No portion of these materials may be copied, reproduced in any media, or distributed for any reason without written permission of the author, Chett M. Daniel, M.S. or k12hrsolutions. Both can be reached at info@k12hrsolutions.com For more information about how k12hrsolutions can assist your district visit www.k12hrsolutions.com
Making Your School District an Engagement Incubator So what is an ideal environment that promotes engagement? A 2006 Dutch study found levels of engagement were highest among employees who work in complex professional jobs with high levels of job control as compared to less skilled workers in the service industry. Teaching would seem to meet the criteria of being a professional job that is complex in nature so we have already won half the battle of having a career that lends itself to an engaged workforce. Potentially meaningful work? Check. Complex work environment? Check. Now that was the easy part. Creating an engaged school district does not happen by accident. Sure, there are pockets of engaged teachers scattered throughout schools in every district, but it is far more common when engaged teachers, who work in a disengaged; distant; and cold school buildings, are either changed by their environment (for the worse), or leave the profession due to frustration. Work psychologists have identified six common factors that can help predict an engaged workplace. i 1. Job demands 2. Job control 3. Rewards and recognition 4. Community of support 5. Fairness 6. Compatibility between job requirements personal principles Several other work factors, such as task variety, challenge, autonomy, personality, and leadership have shown relationships to motivation and an engaged workforce.
In all, eleven factors that can affect engagement have been cited in the last few paragraphs. Ten of those factors are dependent upon the job environment, or school district. The only engagement factor dependent upon the employee is personality. Earlier, when you read the onus of creating meaningful and engaging work environments is the responsibility of the district, this is what was being alluded to. When teachers have challenging work, ample resources, and task variety they are more likely to be engaged. Clear expectations, fair treatment from leaders, autonomy in decisions, and recognition for superior performance are additional job environment factors school districts should establish to promote an engaged corps of teachers. Ignite Engagement through Onboarding Getting teachers engaged starts with the first day of employment. School districts should establish effective onboarding programs to help ensure new teachers are being developed in an environment that fosters engaged educators. Researchers have found that dispositions related to engagement are more malleable earlier, rather than later an employment life cycle. ii Further research contends that individuals with a stronger understanding of expectations, organizational goals and values, and organizational history indicated strong and significant relationships with outcomes such as career involvement and job satisfaction. Don t hope you hire effective teachers who become engaged in your district s goals. Rather, create an environment that is likely to produce motivated teachers and engaged teachers and they will surpass the goals set before them. Onboarding can also help provide meaning to tasks. Turnover among new teachers is a challenge for nearly all school districts. If districts don t have a system to support new teachers, track their job satisfaction, engagement, intentions to stay (or leave), and factors related to these issues, they will find themselves offloading as fast as they are onboarding. Engagement and onboarding strategies have been linked to turnover, customer satisfaction, safety, and productivity. New employees often ask themselves three basic questions that influence initial feelings of engagement: 1. How meaningful is it to bring myself into this performance?
2. How safe is it (physically and psychologically) for me to do so? 3. How available am I (due to demands) to do so? Onboarding and new staff member development programs should attach meaning to frequent tasks, outline organizational norms, policies, and methods of communication. The school district should also have a climate of honesty and openness. Ignite Engagement through Open Communication I recently became aware of a school district that strives for a climate that promotes honest communication. Twice a year the superintendent asks staff members to share what they believe to be the most effective efforts and initiatives coming from the central office as well as the dumbest initiatives they ve been asked to work on. The superintendent says this exercise helps him understand potential problems, bad decisions, or issues that were communicated poorly to the staff. If the leadership team in the school district asks to be made aware of their dumbest decisions and then is willing to speak about and potentially change those that are brought up most frequently, they don t just preach about an open door, they hold it open for their staff. Districts can also create an environment of openness through relating to feelings availability. The district should try to ensure that the workload and demands for new staff members is relative to their current ability. While more information about demands will come later, it is important to remember that demands can help encourage engagement, but demands should not exceed available resources and feelings of efficacy to successfully complete tasks.
i Eean Crawford, Jeffery LePine, & Bruce Rich, Linking job demands and resources to employee engagement and burnout: A theoretical extension and meta-analytic test, Journal of Applied Psychology 95 (October, 2010): 834-848. ii William Macey & Benjamin Schneider, The meaning of employee engagement, Industrial and Organizational Psychology 1 (2008): 3-30.