As Australia’s schools continue to struggle with staff shortages, soaring workloads and a profession under pressure, one thing is becoming clear: the old ways of managing school workforces aren’t cutting it anymore.
In 2024, research from a workforce research and analytics company PeopleBench revealed a noticeable divide between middle leaders and senior executives on how well change and job redesign are being handled, raising questions about whether schools have the tools they need to keep pace with shifting demands.
When asked if there has been any progress in this area over the past year or so, PeopleBench Chief Research and Insights Officer Mike Hennessy said there has been a noticeable uptick in schools actively looking for better data and professional learning to help their leaders design and manage change more effectively.
“While it’s still too soon to see major improvements across the board in our national data, we can see anecdotally that schools are paying more attention to this issue and investing more resources into it,” Hennessy told The Educator. “These are positive signs.”
Hennessy said PeopleBench is keen to see what the 2025 State of the Sector survey – launched on 14 November – will reveal about this possible perception gap moving forward.
“Research consistently shows that school staff want more flexible work options. The problem is that teaching used to be the flexible career choice, but other industries now offer better flexibility through hybrid and remote work,” he said.
“In order to complete, we’re seeing schools experiment with different models: four-day work weeks, compressed hours, extended school days, and adjusting four key factors—time, location, delivery channel [face-to-face or online], and delivery mode [direct teaching or through partners].”
A key factor in making these new operating models work is rethinking job design, said Hennessy.
“This means looking at how roles are structured and how work is organised to allow real flexibility while still ensuring students’ needs are at the centre of our design thinking,” he said. “It’s not simple, but it’s necessary to keep good teachers in the profession.”
Hennessy said the next step is moving beyond good intentions to hard evidence, so schools can see which staffing approaches are genuinely making a difference.
“Our work with schools is specifically helping them to measure whether their chosen models are actually improving staff retention and student outcomes in their specific contexts,” he said.
“It’s all about providing schools with the benchmarks and tools they need to make good staffing decisions over time – rather than leaving leaders guessing.”