Is Your Talent Staying or Going? The State of Talent Management in K-12 Today

Transcription

1 Is Your Talent Staying or Going? The State of Talent Management in K-12 Today

2 Contents Your Teachers, Staff, and Administrators Are in Jeopardy...03 The Survey: Districts Share Their Talent Management Secrets...04 The Results: The State of Talent Management in K-12 Today...05 Are districts taking advantage of technology to simplify, streamline, and improve their talent management processes?...05 Are districts satisfied with their current talent management process?...06 How many technology systems are districts using to manage the employee lifecycle?...06 What are districts biggest concerns in talent management?...07 What are the biggest challenges districts face in managing their talent?...08 What talent management areas are highest priority for districts in the next three years?...09 How are districts managing specific talent management processes?...09 In the next months, will districts increase, maintain, or decrease talent management funding and resources?...10 K-12 Districts Are at a Talent Management Crossroads...11 Cornerstone OnDemand: Smart, Unified Talent Management for K-12 Districts...12

3 Your Teachers, Staff, and Administrators Are in Jeopardy What is the most important factor in student achievement? Your education team teachers, staff, and administrators. This isn t news for any district, yet finding, engaging, and retaining great talent in education is getting even more difficult. Just as enrollments are predicted to rise dramatically through 2019, 50% of current teachers will retire or leave teaching altogether in five to seven years. Twenty-percent of new hires leave within three years. 1 Considering the national teacher turnover rate is now almost 17% 2, and exponential numbers of Baby Boomer staff and administrators are approaching retirement age, K-12 districts are facing a growing talent crisis. Districts can t control enrollment rates or budget shortages, yet they can control how they manage their talent. With so many challenges on the horizon, how districts recruit, train, manage, and promote their teachers and staff will affect retention, professional development, and of course, student achievement. In the coming decade, treating talent management as a comprehensive whole known as strategic talent management will be crucial to finding and keeping the best educators and administrators. Strategic talent management begins with the premise that teachers and staff are a district s most valuable resource. It manages the employee lifecycle holistically, nurturing and identifying great talent from recruiting through retirement by providing guidance, support, opportunities, and training. In the private sector, strategic talent management has already proven its worth: companies practicing intermediate or mature talent management strategies see 17% lower voluntary turnover rates, 41% lower turnover rates among high performers, and 26% higher median revenue per employee. 3 Yet as recently as 2008, the field of education still lagged behind the corporate arena in talent management, lacking any system for attracting, training, and supporting the best people for the job. 4 This begs the question: how then are K-12 districts nationwide managing their talent? Are any districts practicing strategic talent management? And if not, what are districts doing to manage the coming talent crisis? 3

4 The Survey: Districts Share Their Talent Management Secrets In October 2014, District Administration (DA) Magazine, in tandem with Cornerstone OnDemand, researched the state of strategic talent management in K-12 districts across the nation. A 10-question, multiple choice survey was ed to the entire DA readership and reached nearly every district in the country. Responses from 316 administrators delivered key insight into how districts across the nation are managing their biggest personnel challenges and how they expect to meet them in the coming decade. <1,000 STUDENTS 1,000-5,000 STUDENTS >10,000 STUDENTS 5,000-10,000 STUDENTS The Demographics Respondents were primarily principals (25%) or in administrative positions (26%). Nineteen percent identified as superintendents, 10% curriculum and instruction, and the balance as business/finance, HR, IT, and professional development. District enrollment was equally well represented: 29%: under 1,000 students 34%: 1,000-5,000 19%: 5,000 to 10,000 18%: 10,000+ 4

5 The Results: The State of Talent Management in K-12 Today Are districts taking advantage of technology to simplify, streamline, and improve their talent management processes? Most districts surveyed are still managing their talent via paper-based processes think file folders filled with spreadsheets (4%) or repurposing productivity software, such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, or Google Docs (86%). Translation? A whopping 90% are spending more time than necessary on data entry, management, and aggregation. They re also simply unable to view their talent holistically teachers, aides, staff, administrators which is crucial to making truly strategic recruiting, training, and succession decisions. However, 10% of districts have made the leap into using dedicated talent management software. These vanguard districts are using a single system to manage the entire employee lifecycle: recruiting, onboarding, learning and development, performance management, compensation, and succession planning. Overall, they re spending less time entering and aggregating data and thus have more time to identify and engage their high performers, recruit more effectively, and develop leadership pipelines. 5

6 Are districts satisfied with their current talent management process? The good news? Districts are aware they need a better talent management solution. When asked Which statement best describes the status of your talent management process? more than one-third of respondents (38%) said they were transitioning to a new, more efficient technology solution. The not-sogood news? 15% still aren t satisfied with their current talent management process, and worse, they re unsure of the alternatives, e.g., a unified talent management system. Curiously, 16% of respondents stated that their homegrown or paper-based process is still working for them, a key indicator that many organizations are still not ready for new, more effective talent management solutions. Thirty-one percent also stated they were satisfied with their current talent management technology. However, this statistic also belies the true story: when we note that only 10% are using unified talent management systems, this means that a good proportion of those who are satisfied are still relying inefficiently on multiple systems. They re losing time and money on aggregating data from siloed systems and are still not gaining the holistic view of their entire workforce. The big picture? More than 62% of districts still aren t doing their talent management work in the most strategic, efficient, and cost-effective way. How many technology systems are districts using to manage the employee lifecycle? For districts using technology to manage their talent, most (83%) rely on between two to six or more discrete systems to manage recruiting, onboarding, professional development, succession planning, compensation, and employee evaluations. As a result, most districts in the nation are spending more time than necessary entering data into multiple databases, updating systems with multiple vendors, and working to aggregate disparate sources of employee information. More than 28% of districts stated they used four or more separate systems to perform talent management functions. This is a cumbersome experience for employees and administrators who must log in to multiple systems to add and access information. Many districts not only have a human resource information system (HRIS), but separate recruiting, learning, and performance management/evaluation systems, as well. 6

7 The survey results highlight the critical need to reduce the complexity of talent management work and the effort to do that work. When it takes six different processes and software systems to manage one employee, not only can data be easily misinterpreted or lost, but districts miss out on the opportunity to identify, nurture, and retain the very people who can contribute most to student achievement: engaged, committed, talented teachers, staff, and administrators. What are districts biggest concerns in talent management? The majority of respondents (80%) were either concerned or highly concerned about teacher quality impacting student outcomes. In a close second, districts were also concerned/highly concerned with professional growth and development (72%) and recruiting for critical positions (71%). Concerns regarding succession planning and employee retention tallied at 54% each. Most interestingly, these numbers demonstrate that districts are aware that strategic improvements in talent management play a corresponding role in improving teacher quality. Improving teacher quality and retention are a natural outcome when districts use strategic talent management to: recruit great people; develop those people to improve and continue their effectiveness; and create career paths and plans for them, thus improving retention and engagement. 7

8 What are the biggest challenges districts face in managing their talent? Aware that competition for quality employees teachers, staff, and administrators has intensified, the majority of districts (64%) said finding qualified candidates is their biggest challenge. The ability to provide ongoing growth and development for teachers a key to retention and engagement came in second at 52%. Other challenges included: 70% 64% 60% 50% 52% 48% 45% PERCENTAGE OF DISTRICTS 40% 30% 20% 29% 21% 20% 17% 10% 0% Finding Qualified Candidates Provide Growth & Development Support For New Teachers Teacher Evaluations Employee Retention Onboarding New Employees Compliance/ Litigation Issues Inefficient/ Outdated Paper Processes Districts are right to worry about finding great talent. As the Silver Tsunami hits the public workforce, districts are set to lose almost half their teachers in the next 10 years. 5 In addition, districts are recruiting aggressively across state and district lines throughout the summer, with newly recruited teachers leaving their existing districts less than a week before or even the day of the first day of school. 6 In addition, to effectively recruit Millennials who will compose half the workforce by 2020 districts will need a talent acquisition process that is more agile, technology enabled, and social. Consider this: Millennials have never lived without the Internet. As such, they expect technology to make previously paper-heavy processes simple, streamlined, and capable of being done online. They expect and will only gravitate toward push-of-a-button application methods (e.g., the ability to simply reference a LinkedIn profile instead of filling out a long, involved application), better matching and outreach, and referral, networking, and learning opportunities. 8

9 What talent management areas are the highest priority for districts in the next three years? 47% of districts surveyed stated that hiring the right employees is a top priority for the next three years. This means half of districts do have a tangential awareness of the need to improve their recruiting process, namely broadening searches, developing better ways to match candidates existing competencies and skills to current positions, creating a vetted talent pool, and using technology to weed out poor candidates, thus allowing HR to spend more time on the right candidates. Districts are also aware of a crucial second component of ensuring quality performance in the classroom: keeping great teachers. Seventy-two percent of respondents said that retaining talented employees was a critical or high priority. Retention will become especially important in the next decade, as Millennials and GenXers begin to replace the Baby Boomers in leadership positions. With an eye toward building a succession pool and meeting future leadership needs, developing employee skills and competencies and building a strong leadership pipeline were also identified as critical (30% and 27%, respectively). How are districts managing specific talent management processes? Most districts still rely on separate systems for each phase in the talent management lifecycle. Sixty-one percent of respondents are using homegrown or Word/Excel process to onboard and induct employees. Fifty percent are doing the same with their professional development and compliance training, thus missing out on tremendous opportunities to offer targeted, on-demand training and tie learning to performance. Fifty-three percent still employ homegrown, manual processes to manage succession planning. The tragedy? Each talent management function is interrelated and interdependent. No phase of the employee lifecycle exists independently. Consider: effective onboarding relies on learning and development, and effective succession planning is the result of both a powerful onboarding process and the efficacy of training opportunities afforded leadership candidates. Performance management also plays a crucial role: without an efficient way to track and manage reviews, districts can t identify which candidates are actually ready for leadership development training. 9

10 Districts are a little better off when it comes to managing performance and talent acquisition, for which many are using a software solution (48% and 46%, respectively). Yet crucial employee information still remains siloed in separate databases. When performance management is in one system and professional development in another, districts can t effectively address performance improvement through targeted learning opportunities. And when recruiting data is separate from onboarding activities, districts can t effectively engage, develop, and connect new hires, which in turn is detrimental to retention, time to productivity, and in the long term, succession planning. In the next months, will districts increase, maintain, or decrease talent management funding and resources? The majority of districts surveyed (72%) said their budgets for talent management will stay the same over the next months. Only 14% expect to increase funding for recruiting, onboarding, learning, performance, and succession management, and 14% expect to decrease funding. Yet this isn t necessarily bad news. On the contrary, strategic talent management systems provide multiple opportunities to do better with the same and even do more with less with minor reallocations of funds. Strategic talent management and the technology to support it reduces the administrative burden, increases talent visibility and transparency, improves engagement, reduces skills gaps, and shortens time to hire and time to productivity, all of which help reduce attrition and the costly loss of key talent. Strategic talent management provides multiple opportunities to do better with the same and even do more with less with minor reallocation of funds. The significant cost savings associated with improved talent management have already been demonstrated in the private sector. According to Bersin by Deloitte, a talent management research and advisory services firm, organizations with intermediate or advanced talent management processes: see 17% lower voluntary turnover rates; see 41% lower turnover rates among high performers; are 109% more capable of retaining high performers; and are 87% more capable of hiring the best people. 7 Districts can do the same by employing similar talent management strategies and technology. Platforms that unify every stage of the employee lifecycle not only improve engagement and performance but reduce the costs associated with talent management overall. This in turn allows districts to allocate more of their funding in direct service of achieving positive student outcomes. 10

11 K-12 Districts Are at a Talent Management Crossroads K-12 districts are at a significant crossroads, where decisions made about talent today will determine success in the classroom tomorrow. Our research shows that the majority of districts surveyed have not employed a complete talent management strategy. On one hand, this means that most aren t yet able to make strategic decisions around the entire employee lifecycle. They re also spending more time than necessary managing their talent. On the other hand, this is also good news. The nature of strategic talent management is such that large gains can be made with even very small steps. Simply by beginning to unify the employee lifecycle and using technology designed specifically for talent management districts can find, engage, and keep great teachers and staff faster, and at significantly less cost. With a unified talent management system, districts use one system to engage, develop, and retain their best candidates and employees. These systems allows districts to easily: widen their talent pool to find and attract better candidates; move new hires into an onboarding process customized to their skill and talent needs; address performance gaps with differentiated learning opportunities; allow leadership candidates to choose development opportunities specific to their leadership goals and in alignment with district goals; tie performance records to succession planning; and gain true visibility into every employee s history and possible future with the district, crucial to succession planning in the face of Baby Boomer retirements and increasing enrollments. Truly unified technology solutions create an ongoing cycle of talent management from recruiting through retirement to help districts not only to find great employees from the outset but retain them for the long term. Retention is important in any industry, but especially critical in education, where research proves the longer people stay, the more effective they are. 11

12 What can a unified talent management system do for your district? Recruiting Management Attract more highly-qualified teachers and support staff, with less effort Use employee referrals from top performers to find birds of a feather Build competency profiles for new hires based on existing high performing talent Onboarding Efficiently induct new hires to meet district standards through blendedlearning programs Increase retention by engaging new hires through learning, networking opportunities, and goal setting Learning Management Develop engaged teachers Create a culture of learning Reduce skill gaps Allow learners to access training on their own schedules and at their own pace Save significant resources by reducing in-service days and offering more targeted courses Performance Management Identify top performers Provide more frequent and meaningful feedback Increase transparency around performance expectations Align employee and district goals Develop meaningful competencies based on top performers Succession Management Match employees, candidates, and even members of the substitute pool to current and future opportunities Develop multiple succession scenarios based on estimated enrollment increases and workforce retirement rates Improve employee engagement by providing long-term career planning Tie learning and training opportunities to leadership development planning 12

13 Cornerstone OnDemand: Smart, Unified Talent Management for K-12 Districts Cornerstone for K-12 Education delivers unified talent management technology, services, and content for education organizations. With Cornerstone s cloud-based system, districts can powerfully and cost-effectively invest in their teachers and staff to increase engagement, close skill gaps, improve retention, and ensure positive student outcomes for years to come. Automating crucial processes for recruitment, professional development, and performance management reduces administrative burden, while giving stakeholders the holistic view of their talent critical to making truly strategic recruiting, compensation, and succession decisions. Find out more at 1 Research Spotlight on Recruiting & Retaining Highly Qualified Teachers. NEA. Accessed at 2 Erik Kain. High Teacher Turnover Rates Are a Big Problem for America s Public Schools. Forbes. May 8, Accessed at erikkain/2011/03/08/high-teacher-turnover-rates-are-a-big-problem-for-americaspublic-schools/. 3 Josh Bersin. The Amazing Business Impact of Superior Talent Management. Bersin by Deloitte. July 8, Accessed at post/2009/07/the-amazing-business-impact-of-superior-talent-management. aspx. 4 Ellen Behrstock, PhD. Talent Management in the Private and Educator Sectors: A Literature Review. Learning Point Associates. January Page 4. Accessed at 5 Nation s Schools Facing Largest Teacher Retirement Wave in History. National Commission on Teaching and America s Future. June 24, Accessed at 6 The Wild World of Teacher Recruiting. Education World. Accessed at Josh Bersin. The Amazing Business Impact of Superior Talent Management. Bersin by Deloitte. July 8, Accessed at post/2009/07/the-amazing-business-impact-of-superior-talent-management. aspx. Cornerstone OnDemand is the global talent management software provider that is pioneering solutions to help organizations realize the potential of the modern workforce. csod.com 2017 Cornerstone OnDemand moreinfo@csod.com CSOD Stay connected: