Restructuring in colleges

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE SERIES

Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

By Mark Wright

AMiE is ATL’s section for leaders in education

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AMiE is ATL’s section for leaders in education. We champion our members, influence education policy and provide bespoke expertise. We help members achieve their potential with our career development programme, while our information resources help them to understand how the latest issues impact on their working lives. Our team of legal experts is available to provide confidential advice, guidance and support for members in times of need.

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There are plenty of good reasons to join. As well as the support, advice and wide selection of publications and CPD – all free or at a reduced rate to members – AMiE also provides up-to-date news and views, discounts and offers on an array of products and services, and a first class website for instant access to a range of advice on workplace issues.

About the author Mark Wright is assistant director of AMiE (leadership and management).

Acknowledgments Many thanks to: • Andy Gannon (director of policy, research and media, 157 Group) • Dan Taubman (associate researcher, UCL Institute of Education) • All the school and college leaders who have discussed their experience of restructuring and provided quotes and advice in the process.

And thanks to the 157 Group for its contribution to the costs of this publication.

Contents

Foreword

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Introduction

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1 Thinking about change

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Drivers of change

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What does good restructuring look like?

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2 Doing change effectively

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Seven key elements of effective restructuring

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Case study: Positive change

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Conclusion

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Appendix

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Resources

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Foreword Changing how an organisation operates so it can stay ahead of the times, or turning around a struggling school or college, can be incredibly challenging.

The difference between getting it right and getting is wrong can be the difference between a successful or unsuccessful school or college. Either way, it can provide a career-defining moment for leaders.

As a professional, 21st century union, AMiE/ATL recognises that it has an important role to play in capturing learning through its casework support of members, or where systems are not working as well as they might. With finances constrained and budgets squeezed, in education and in other parts of the public sector, it is important that this learning is shared and acted upon in order to promote efficiency, safeguard jobs and ensure the education learners receive is as effective as possible.

Restructuring is one of the man triggers for casework support and AMiE has wide experience of helping school and college leaders through the restructuring process. We see some good practice, but we also see practice that could be so much better. This publication aims to report this mixed picture back to the sector and to promote the sort of performance improvement that will benefit everyone involved.

The work is underpinned by primary research as well as frontline experience.

It is aimed at senior school and college leaders and HR teams engaged in leading and managing significant change in their organisations. Managers involved in maintaining morale through the turbulence sometimes associated with restructuring, as well as those who aspire to senior leadership positions and wish to learn how they might one day lead an effective restructure, should also find it useful. The insights offered here will not only benefit leaders and managers, however. Teachers and lecturers may want to use the publication to more effectively support or challenge the process, particularly in the preliminary stages when they are consulted by their senior leaders.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

The publication builds on other work by AMiE on ethical leadership and the importance of developing a culture which values reflection not only on what you do when it comes to organisational change but how you do it. The need for a humane, ethical dimension to staffing changes should be obvious – but under the cumulative pressure of policy turbulence and accountability this can sometimes get overlooked.

Restructuring tests the mettle of all leaders. We hope this publication will galvanise leaders and managers to adopt the sort of approach that will help them more effectively lead their staff on a journey of change. Getting it wrong can not only impede a leader’s career, it can also have a disastrous impact on staff and students. Getting it right, on the other hand, not only develops leaders but can also help organisations prepare for the waves of change coming thick and fast in the world of education. AMiE/ATL would like to help you achieve the latter!

Peter Pendle, AMiE chief executive

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Introduction This publication sets out to explain, in an evidence-based way, how change can be managed successfully. It is primarily aimed at those with leadership or management responsibilities, although frontline staff may also find it useful in developing their understanding of the process and learning how better to contribute to it. Principals, heads and others with pressing time pressures may wish to go directly to Part 2, which begins with seven key elements of effective restructuring. Part 1 offers some relevant context to effective restructuring in the form of a think piece designed to orientate thinking prior to the action of restructuring, the main preoccupation of Part 2.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

1. Thinking about change Whichever part of the education system you work in, change is a constant.

Managing that change in the right way is one of the toughest challenges school and college leaders face.

The ongoing squeeze on public funding means tough choices are an inevitable feature of the environment in which education leaders will operate for the foreseeable future. Severe funding pressures are giving many school leaders their first experience of downsizing their institution. And while many further education colleges have been through tough restructuring processes already, many of the ‘old hands’ have gone and there is a danger that younger managers will have to reinvent the wheel.

This publication examines the factors critical to an effective and successful restructure process. By taking a thoughtful, human-centred approach to change, leaders can win hearts and minds, cultivating a healthy, cooperative workplace in which staff react with resilience and creativity to the challenges they face, whether they complete the journey or move on to seek opportunities outside the organisation.

Changes to institutional structure, roles, reporting lines, responsibilities, locations, and so on, are the most obvious outcomes of organisational change. It is important that school and college leaders adapt the physical make-up of their organisations quickly and intelligently to changing conditions in order to continue offering learners what they need. However, successful management of organisational change is not just about clear priorities, revised structures and redesigned job roles. The kind of communication that drives these changes, and the level of sensitivity leaders bring to them, can be just as important, if not more so. This is not to underplay the importance of intelligent and timely structural change. But it is obvious that the best-designed structure can be undermined by problems caused by the way leaders and managers approach change. Poor communication and insensitivity to the challenges facing staff can create organisational inertia and resistance to change that can have a lasting impact on the health of an organisation.

Thinking about change

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Restructuring is a costly and time-consuming business. It is increasingly important that leaders get it right first time. Research from McKinsey shows that 70 per cent of change programmes fail because of staff resistance and management behaviour. In education, as in other sectors, there are examples of good and bad practice. Clearly, there is considerable scope for improvement. In the light of the sector’s mixed experience of restructure and the high stakes involved, this publication outlines a good-practice approach to each of the elements essential to a successful restructure process.

Taking a staged approach helps. However, the key thing is not to see the process simply as a series of boxes to tick. Strong, compassionate and inclusive leadership, alongside good communication, remains the critical factor in creating an organisation able to face the demands made upon it in a sustainable way. Organisational change is a fact of life, but it can be done well, provided we keep our common humanity to the fore. The journey of change is a journey of hearts and minds, and it is important that staff are appropriately led and managed through the process. If we do not recognise this central point, we set ourselves up to fail.

1.1 Drivers of change The prompt for change can be either external or internal to your organisation.

We look first at external drivers of change before focusing on their internal counterparts. The latter are often more within the scope of leadership and management to influence and can be a means of forging a more connected and resilient organisation able to respond better when external change comes.

External drivers of change Many commentators have pointed out that while education is an inherently slow process, the pace of policy change is, by comparison, fast and furious.

This problem has become particularly acute in recent years, with leaders increasingly highlighting the negative impact policy overload has on the core business of teaching and learning. In such an environment, the main drivers of change have, unsurprisingly, been external ones.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Few leaders relish the prospect of major change, particularly when they are under continuous pressure to deliver against exacting performance goals.

Unfortunately, in some cases, a reluctance to engage with change persists long past the point at which action is required. Developing the appetite to face external challenges often requires change within the leader. While the external drivers of change may be a given, the response is not. That said, all leaders have the opportunity to develop the insight skills necessary to lead a successful restructuring process. It is worth stressing that this is about the need for particular leadership skills and not simply a matter of leadership style. Effective leaders skillfully integrate the human element into their overall planning processes.

For many years, the main driver of change was the rising tide of funding which led to the expansion of existing provision and the introduction of new institutions, such as school sixth forms. However, this tide has, more recently, been receding for many further education and sixth-form colleges and, increasingly, for schools and academies. All the indications are that this trend will persist for the foreseeable future. With funding and policy under continuing review, we are likely to see institutions merging and federating at a rate unseen before.

The need to review structures and staffing will, therefore, be ever present and, at times, erratic, given the need to reshape in the face of rapid external change.

For example, good primary schools expanding from two- to three-form entry to cater for increased pupil numbers may, soon after, need to go back to two-form entry if a free school opens nearby.

Initial reactions to the funding squeeze included a search for efficiency, which, of course, impacts on staffing. However, many leaders now report that efficiency measures have been exhausted and organisational remodelling is required – on a grand scale in some instances.

The upheaval of funding in the education sector was accompanied by significant reform of qualifications and curriculum, constant change to the funding regime and new requirements resulting from the policy to raise the participation age. This has prompted institutions to redefine their roles.

At the same time, increasing pupil numbers have caused a headache in terms of planning, and having to do more for less. The stark reality is that unless leaders can find innovative and creative solutions, they face the prospect of doing less with less as the squeeze on budgets continues.

Thinking about change

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In some instances, there has been a strong moral argument for reforming staffing – for example, in further education, when study programmes were introduced with a stronger focus on student outcomes and individual progress. It is also true that many colleges have reviewed their mission as a result of the difficult financial circumstances in which they have found themselves – an exercise which was, in a number of cases, long overdue.

But alongside the the pressures there have also been opportunities.

For example, as employers have become more and more central to the skills system, whole departments have arisen to deal with them and make the system navigable for them. There have also been opportunities for career development, as leaders and managers have had the chance to take on higher or wider roles.

Changes in behaviour have sometimes mirrored more political concerns.

For example, the creation of new institutions has increased competition, and the desire to be leaner while at the same time offering something different increases in a heightened atmosphere of competition. Becoming leaner is a whole-organisation responsibility and is an area in which many schools and colleges have the potential to improve through the manifestation of internally driven change.

Internal drivers of change Leaders in academies, schools and colleges of all shapes and sizes welcome real autonomy. Seen from this perspective, the only real driver of restructuring should be the strategic priorities of the organisation itself, even if these are simply a mirror of national or local economic drivers. For the foreseeable future, the main national political driver will be the dual emphasis on efficiency and ensuring the education system produces a workforce capable of improving productivity and responding to changing skills needs. Given this background, the coming years may offer an opportunity for genuinely long-term thinking about staffing structures that can mitigate the need for future restructuring.

While the focus of this publication is on organisational restructuring many of the underlying principles discussed apply equally well to a whole range of areas where change needs to be carefully navigated in a school or college.

Reading between the lines for wider application will prove beneficial. The essential message is that getting your own internal approach to change right helps you deal more effectively with whatever external changes come your way.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

The impact of difficult change can be minimised by attention to strategic and long-term planning, which can reduce the regularity with which organisations must adapt to change. While education is itself inherently concerned with managed change, too much change can impact on the learning process and, ultimately, destabilise it. It is important to get organisational change right in order to prevent harm to the essential process of teaching and learning.

We know how important the learning environment is and its potential impact on learning. The costs associated with repairing the damage caused by a restructure process that is not fit for purpose further underline the importance of getting this right first time.

The chances of getting change right are enhanced where leadership is distributed across the organisation and includes the frontline. Through a culture of trust and empowerment, all staff can be engaged in continuous improvement, helping align operations with learner need. Change in hightrust organisations tends to be incremental, as small adaptations are constantly being made to work processes. These are often at the behest of frontline staff tasked with being key players in the quest for efficiency and effectiveness in order to safeguard the prospects of the organisation and their positions within it. A good organisation is like a healthy organism, in constant touch with changes in its environment, its cells working together to respond in a way that capitalises on those changes.

Continuous improvement is another important approach to improving systems, processes and behaviours that can complement or offset the need for significant restructuring. Tuning processes happens all the time and is a natural part of managing work in the context of new developments. It is, however, possible to formalise this process, and consciously and actively seek to identify changes that can be made.

One approach to continuous, incremental improvement is called kaizen.

It originated in Japan and translates as change (kai) for the good (zen). It is rooted in the belief that everything can be improved. However well an organisation may be functioning, continuous efforts to improve it produce many small adaptations, which, in aggregate, can counteract the need for an organisation to go through a significant restructure.

A Kaizen approach can be a much gentler and employee-friendly way to enact the changes that must occur as a school or college adapts to changing circumstances. All staff are responsible for identifying gaps and developing responses to address them.

Thinking about change

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If leaders give this approach sufficient weight, Kaizen can add real value to change management processes. Its application can take the form of regular team meetings, email rounds, staff challenges, and so on. The main thing is for senior leaders to get behind the intitiative and trust staff to come up with and successfully enact changes that help keep the school or college connected to efficient and effective practice.

In a climate of fiscal constraint, Kaizen can help offset the challenges posed by external drivers of change. Its benefits include: • Improved commitment: Giving staff more of a stake boosts motivation to commit to delivering the objectives of the school or college. A recent Gallup poll revealed that organisations with the most engaged workforces were 56 per cent more likely to have higher-than-average loyalty.

• Improved retention: Engaged staff who feel part of an ‘in it together’ supportive culture are more likely to stay. The above poll also revealed that organisations with the most engaged workforces were 50 per cent more likely to have lower staff turnover.

• Improved job satisfaction: Ownership instils a sense of accomplishment and boosts well-being.

• Improved competitiveness: Increased efficiency contributes to reducing costs that can be focused on core teaching and learning, a useful hedge in an increasingly competitive education landscape. The Gallup poll revealed that organisations with the most engaged workforces were 38 per cent more likely to have higher-than-average productivity.

• Improved satisfaction: Through more effective delivery and good ratings from learners and parents.

• Improved problem-solving: A “can do” solutions culture enables staff to solve problems as they arise. Through being on or near the frontline, staff often see change coming much sooner than the senior leadership team.

• Improved teams: Joint work to solve common problems helps develop teams and the individuals within them.

• Reduced waste: Resources used more efficiently and staff deployed more effectively as workload is streamlined.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Strong leadership is needed to create the space for this to happen and to protect staff from the pressure of delivering on every single government policy intitiative. Leaders need to decide which external drivers can wait! Strong and ongoing senior support is required to get a continuous improvement culture off the ground. A great deal of energy is required at the outset but, if the approach is supported and rewarded by leaders and managers, momentum gradually builds until the improvement culture has a life of its own, driven by staff.

1.2 What does good restructuring look like?

While there is no legal definition of restructuring, reorganising how the work gets done can result in dismissals, and cause disruption, stress and uncertainty.

It can become a source of lasting resentment and discontent within an organisation. And it can add significantly to the workload pressures on staff.

When designing a restructure it helps to have a process map in mind, with manageable stages. It should begin with a focus on real values, derived from a clear strategic purpose. An organisation’s values can carry staff through challenging times, provided they are real and reflected in the personal behaviour of its leaders. The key to a successful change process is for those that lead it to remain open, sensitive to others and to display the best aspects of common humanity. Getting the culture right at the start goes a long way to ensuring a soft landing on the other side of change.

It is useful to think about a soft-landing restructure in terms of effective computer software. Organisational restructuring has a “hardware” and a “software” component to it, just as in computing. The hardware is the physical change made to the structure, roles, reporting lines, responsibilities, locations and so on. But just as important is the software side, the communication and other processes that drive the change and draw on a range of “soft” skills all too often lacking in restructure processes.

While the hardware of change is important we will not be focusing our attention here – there is a plethora of resources providing a useful steer on this. Furthermore, those leaders with the skills required to operate the software of change well also tend to adopt a capable approach to the hardware aspect of change. Unfortunately, the opposite does not always apply, hence the focus of this work.

Thinking about change

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Focusing on the software of change does not mean you are soft It means that you understand the importance of this aspect of the change process to success. The need to build capacity in this area is becoming more pronounced. Increasingly, schools and colleges do not have the financial flexibility to afford to get it wrong, pushing through ill-considered restructures only to go through the same process again a year or so down the line.

And it is not just schools and colleges that must wrestle with “soft skills”.

A failure to plan for human responses accounts for a significant proportion of private-sector merger failures (see leadership.org article in references). Focusing on the people is as much a necessity in the hard-nosed world of business.

Good leaders who take into account the human factor tend to begin by considering the language used to describe the restructuring process: Because “restructuring” is not the most popular sounding name, it’s a bit of a time bomb – we called it our “transformation project”.

Vice principal, FE college

However, choosing an alternate name for the change should not be used to conceal the fact that a restructuring is taking place. A lot of unhelpful jargon has been used over the years, including “realigning”, “refocusing” and “downsizing”.

The key to successful transformation is taking people with you on the journey.

Although this ought to be self-evident, being, after all, the essence of good leadership, poor practice in this area persists. Examples include announcing a new structure without prior warning of the need to do so, inaccessibility of senior managers, and a failure to assess the impact on certain groups compared to others. In some cases, all of the responsibility for restructuring is passed to the HR department. In others, rather than putting in place a robust performance management and support system, managers use the process as an excuse to get rid of staff perceived to be performing poorly. These approaches often cause problems further down the line. Such problems are the inevitable consequence of leaders’ failure to take staff with them on the journey, an issue we will look at later.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Top tips A human-centred approach to restructuring involves the following: • Senior leadership explain the strategic position at an early stage, indicating clearly if there are likely to be implications for jobs.

• Senior leaders and middle managers go out of their way to be available to those who are losing their jobs and those who remain.

• Leaders share genuine concern for well-being – great empathy is required without losing focus.

A more effective approach involves senior leaders and managers explaining the strategic position at an early stage, making clear to all the implications for jobs, and going out of their way to be available to staff, whether they are to lose their jobs or remain within the organisation. Such an approach is underpinned by the sharing of genuine concern for people’s well-being, and the positive and negative impacts that may be experienced through the processes of change. It means treating staff as human beings, with leaders exhibiting sympathetic understanding. This builds and maintains trust and lays the foundation for commitment to the new structure. It also tempers staff turnover rates, makes claims for unfair dismissal less likely and supports staff in migrating to the new structure more quickly.

Reflect on...

• How effectively have soft skills been used by leaders in restructures you have previously experienced?

• What is your approach when leading or managing through a restructure – are you more focused on end goals and making sure the finances balance than taking staff with you?

Thinking about change

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Fair process Leaders cultivate a sense of fairness by approaching a restructure in an inclusive style. Staff tend to assess this by the extent to which they are involved in decision-making, the even-handedness of decisions (ie does everyone have the same chance or are there “favourites” who benefit disproportionately, even if this is merely the perception due to a lack of transparency?), and the behaviour of managers during the process (do they explain and listen actively? Is their concern genuine?). Achieving this is a challenge. It takes time, energy and commitment. But the cost of failing to behave inclusively is much higher.

The leadership got it right because although the restructure was not a pleasant experience they were transparent and fair with people.

For example, before, there had been a proliferation of contracts with little sense of parity, which prompted a sense of unfairness. They standardised the contracts and you could see the process was both fair and designed to work. So, although painful, it was a healthy process and people bought into it.

FE manager

When a restructure is deemed by staff to have been handled in a poor or unjust way it generates organisational inertia, friction or even outright opposition, with negative feelings about the change process infecting the new working culture. Common practices to avoid include: • Announcing a new structure without having first given prior warning of the need to do so.

• Announcing the news late on a Friday afternoon.

• Senior leaders suddenly vanishing, hiding in their office and generally becoming less visible.

• Ignoring displaced staff once a new structure begins to take shape.

• Not assessing the impact that it might have on specific groups of staff.

• Simply delegating all responsibility to an HR department, if there is one.

• Failing to undertake meaningful consultation with trade unions (see “Communicating with the unions”).

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

• Trying to make changes too quickly.

• Not celebrating the achievements of those who are made redundant and helping them to move on.

• Using restructuring as an excuse to get rid of poor-performing staff rather than using a robust performance management and support system.

• A lack of transparency in the overall process.

Organisations adopting a more human-centred approach tend to reduce the chances of staff filing a claim for unfair dismissal. They also tend to move to a sustainable new structure more quickly. Process fairness means treating staff as humans with feelings and viewpoints that need to be acknowledged and, if possible, taken into account. Where they can’t be taken into account the reasons for this need to be given.

This maintains and builds trust and lays the foundation for support and innovation within the new structure. It also tempers staff turnover rates (Griffith, 2004), which is an important consideration, given the high cost of recruitment and squeezed budgets. It is far better to get things right first time using an emotionally sensitive approach which costs little to implement yet can save a fortune.

Top tips Staff judge whether the process feels fair by giving consideration to: 1. The extent to which they are given information and feel included in the decision-making process.

2. How they believe decisions are taken and implemented. Are there favourites, such as leaders and managers, who seem to have unfairly benefited?

3. Are the processes for reappointment or redundancy seen as legal and fair?

4. How managers behave. Do they explain and actively listen?

Do they genuinely care?

Thinking about change

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Reflect on...

• To what extent do you feel the last restructure you were involved in was handled fairly?

• To what extent do you think staff perceived the previous restructure to be fair?

• What can you do to ensure that staff feel the next restructure is handled in a fair and open manner?

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

2. Doing change effectively 2.1 Seven key elements to effective restructuring Restructuring is essentially about designing or redesigning work processes to deliver organisational value. It can be defined succinctly as follows: Organisational design is about enabling a group of people to combine, coordinate, and control resources and activities in order to produce value, all in a way appropriate to the environment in which the business competes.

Blanchard and Hersey, 1993.

While relatively easy to define, we have seen that it is harder to do in practice.

While the immediate impact of organisational re-design is on leaders, managers and staff, if it is not handled effectively it can all too often have a negative impact on the learners – another key reason to focus on the real needs of an effective restructure.

One obvious feature of a restructure is that jobs are likely to change, disappear, or be out-placed or outsourced. There is a wider impact too, however, as staff jockey for position and look to form new alliances, while the mental challenge of change slows down almost everyone in the organisation. Even where the restructure does not involve redundancies, it is worth considering how to plan to reduce angst among and between staff and management. If this is done properly and thoughtfully enough it can reduce the need for future restructuring.

Restructures can cause a great deal of disruption, are often viewed as a waste of time and can become a source of discontent within an organisation.

This is one reason why some schools and colleges put them off until long after the strategic need for restructure has become evident. Policy announcements, the funding picture, trends, performance data and local factors are all dashboard lights that could point to a need for a change in direction. Change is less of a shock for staff when you’ve involved them directly in understanding the policy pressures, perhaps through a weekly bulletin about the changes happening both nationally and locally.

Doing change effectively

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Restructuring can be horribly stressful. Not only does it involve more work on top of already heavy workloads in schools and colleges, but it can also ignite a natural fear of change among staff concerned about their futures and those of their students. The education system does not stop while the new structure takes shape. It can seem like redesigning a racing car while it competes in a race. For that reason, it is important for leaders and managers to maintain a sense of teamwork and well-being throughout the process.

Element 1 – Reflect on real values Values should inform your vision and planning.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great (2002), articulated a useful process for defining a value proposition. The value proposition is the result of the answers to three critical questions: • What are we passionate about?

• What are we “best” at?

• What drives our engine?

What are the three key drivers for your school or college? Limiting yourself to three essential questions can help maintain focus during the subsequent restructuring. It is important that these represent “real” values and are not just soundbites to impress others. Real values can carry your staff through very challenging times if they are the same as the values you demonstrate.

There has, unfortunately, been a noticeable drift away from moral purpose as a driver of education but this does not diminish the fact that education is essentially a moral activity. Morality is a crucial factor in educating the next generation. Schools and colleges, given the nature of their professional and social responsibilities, need to be moral communities.

Therefore, well before you launch into the hardware design side of the restructure process, you should, ideally, first assess the initial software side – what values will you use to drive your own personal behaviour? How are you going to continue valuing yourself and your staff through this change and deal with the turbulence it can create? Is there a disjunction between the values you espouse and your behaviour? What does the moral purpose of education mean in relation to the restructure process? And is this not part of the wider education process – why not engage the learners where appropriate for the sake of both transparency and their own wider learning?

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Ideally, staff should feel part of the future of the organisation from the outset.

This can be achieved by engaging them in deliberations about the sort of future the restructure is intended to bring about. This helps build joint ownership and is likely to inspire staff to work toward realising this shared vision; something that is made all the easier if founded on strong living values.

Imposing a top-down vision with limited scope for staff input is usually a shortsighted approach.

The biblical adage that “without vision the people perish” could be rendered today as “without a clear idea of where the organisation is headed and without the full support of staff, there is a good chance of job losses down the line in this increasingly competitive world”. And there is an even better chance that the organisation’s performance goals will not be met. The journey begins with vision and sufficient leadership credibility to encourage people to follow.

Community values – school or college as an exemplar of good community If we live in well-functioning communities we tend to live longer, and be happier, healthier and more productive. Injecting strong community values as part of a restructure can help support learners whose education suffers because of a lack of community elsewhere. It can foster higher levels of academic success and significantly improved life chances and is worth factoring in when considering what is to underpin a restructure. If there is going to be significant change it may as well tackle the real issues for learners rather than be driven simply by a knee-jerk need to save money!

Too often, the impact of a restructure on the school or college community has not been given sufficient consideration beforehand, with some potential benefits lost along the way. This is not just the case with institutions reducing in size, but also with those experiencing a growth-based restructure.

Due to increasing pupil numbers we went from a two-form entry to a four-form entry but along the way we lost the sense of community among the staff that we used to have. Now there are teachers who don’t know each other and don’t get much chance to speak with each other, which hasn’t helped us in the way that it might if we’d been able to build on the culture we had before.

Primary school teacher

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Before considering the community within and beyond your school or college and what might need to change to improve it, it is worth reflecting on the success factors that apply in all situations, not just in educational settings.

The quality of community life is often expressed in terms of social capital.

A successful community will have high levels of social capital to the extent that it meets most of the following criteria: • It operates through consent and consensus around explicit shared values and clear norms.

• It works through highly sophisticated communication with a shared vocabulary and rules of grammar, using modern technologies and traditional social and relational skills.

• There is a high degree of mutual trust, regard and friendship.

• It is self-managing and self-organising and develops strategies and protocols to support its working processes.

• People are involved in the politics of the community; they stand for office, vote in elections and contribute to public debate.

• There are signs, symbols and rituals to express and reinforce a sense of community identity; the community comes together to celebrate its shared identity.

• Relationships are characterised in terms of interdependence and reciprocity; people care for each other and accept mutual responsibility.

• Much of the life of the community is expressed through volunteering and working for the common good through collaborative projects.

• The overall sense of the community is one of hope and aspiration; there is a strong sense of a positive collective future.

• The community values learning and seeks out those who represent the accumulated wisdom of the community.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Reflect on...

• How does your own school or college compare with this model of a successful community?

• What can you, as a leader or manager, do to strengthen community through the restructure process, building social capital along the way?

• What is the values-based proposition of your organisation? Does this need reviewing before you begin restructuring?

• How will you share reflections across different levels of the organisation? Senior leaders will often answer these questions very differently to middle managers and even more differently to staff – is there some kind of forum through which all levels of the organisation can share views in order to develop a common understanding?

Element 2 – Planning approach Planning from the outset is a good reality check, supports scrutiny and helps make the restructuring process as robust as possible. It also helps avoid the “fail to prepare, prepare to fail” trap.

Any restructure should align with the school or college vision, strategy and direction over the medium- to long-term. For example, if your curriculum structure is changing, a restructure should support that process and enhance the outcomes.

Culture is important here and should be considered at the outset. Leaders who start with a strategy design without referring first to the prevailing culture of the school or college can fall foul of Peter Drucker’s maxim that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

Addressing culture at the outset of the restructure process goes a long way to ensuring a soft landing on the other side of change.

Dividing the restructure process into manageable stages makes good sense and there are many models out there to help lead the way, such as Kotter’s eight-stage model of change.

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Kotter’s eight stages of change Implementing and sustaining the change Engaging and enabling the organisation Creating a climate for change

8 Make it stick 7 Don’t let up 6 Create short-term wins

5 Enable action 4 Communication for buy-in

3 Get the vision right 2 Build guiding teams

1 Increase urgency

Whether you select a particular model or draw on several to devise a bespoke approach to fit your organisation’s needs, the key thing is not to see it as a tick-list of things to do. Having a stage process route map should not diminish the importance of strong leadership – the mistake is to focus on process rather than people (the staff and learners).

It is important to make an early assessment of current capacity to lead a successful restructure. Honesty is crucial. If there are concerns in specific areas, the need for support to address these should be factored into planning early on. For example, an excellent headteacher may not necessarily have the specific experience to approach the restructure: NPQH [National Professional Qualification for Headship] didn’t prepare me for this level of radical restructuring of the way we deliver, and the local authority just doesn’t have the capacity to help in the way that they were once able to.

Primary school headteacher

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Being a good leader, which is to say, a leader who does the right things, starts at the outset, which means taking an honest approach to horizon-scanning, maintaining an acute awareness of the opportunities and threats that might indicate a need for significant change. It is important for leaders to avoid the tendency towards “change myopia”, ignoring the change prompts long after the evidence for change is clear. This can be difficult as few leaders want to make decisions that could threaten their own career.

Ideally, the school’s or college’s strategic plan will be a living document that is reviewed on a regular basis. An effective early warning system needs to be incorporated into the process so that significant change can be seen coming down the pipeline and to ensure there is sufficient time to respond.

But how many governing bodies or senior leadership teams spend time horizon-scanning or asking frontline staff what the latest trends are in learners’ perspectives that may indicate a shift is occurring? A SWOT or PESTEL analysis should, ideally, be conducted regularly and opened up to staff for input, reflection and challenge.

Top tips • Don’t be afraid to draw on external help but, likewise, don’t ignore internal sources with experience of restructuring – they could save you a lot, which is ideal if you are having to downsize.

• Avoid the “dead weight of the plan” – focusing on the plan at the expense of the people currently working in your school or college who need to be supported on their personal change journey as part of the restructure.

• View the restructure as a political campaign to win a vote rather than simply as a facilities or HR project, and plan accordingly.

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Element 3 – Identify the roles required: who is needed to make the processes work and deliver the desired outcomes?

Defining the types of role required is critical. It is important not to be overly concerned with the current roles and their duties. You need to know what kinds of roles should exist in order to achieve the desired output and consequences. Current jobs can be kept in mind but their presence should not drive your thinking as you seek to define the core processes required to deliver your desired outcomes. That means that you must be concerned, from the outset, with the future rather than the past. A good leader ideally has something of Mr Spock’s rational mind as well as the heart of Mother Theresa. But it is the inner Spock who needs to rationally assess what needs to exist in order to ensure the school or college is successful going forward.

Defining core processes “Business process engineering” is business-speak referring to a wholly sensible approach to mapping the inputs, through-puts, outputs and intended outcomes of the restructured organisation. This is a helpful test to ensure there is sufficient logic behind “form following function”. For example: Processes

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Inputs

What resources are available, eg funding, staff, buildings, IT equipment, quality-assurance systems, parent support, etc.

Through-puts

How much teaching can be accomplished with these resources and at what quality threshold?

How might the learning process be optimised?

Outputs

Realistically, what SATs/GCSE/A-level/BTEC etc attainment levels can be delivered? How well rounded will the students be after their learning experience and how can this be measured?

Outcomes

Ideally, for example, strong evidence of student progression, increasing rolls, high staff retention, strong community support, positive inspection.

Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

This is a useful ongoing reflection tool to enable leaders and managers to reduce “noise” (inefficiency in processes) and enhance core processes prior to restructuring roles. This also helps monitor what is currently happening, which, in turn, helps inform decisions about where changes need to be made and, consequently, the shape of the restructured organisation.

Having a line of sight from inputs to intended outcomes helps ensure that high-value activities are less likely to be lost when removing roles from the structure. Similarly, duplication and redundant activity can be removed at the time of the restructure.

A focus on this stage can save a huge amount of money and heartache later on in the restructuring process.

Reflect on...

• Are your resources (inputs) sufficient to provide the through-puts required (eg teacher roles and expectations) to generate the outputs you are aiming for? What can you do about it, if not?

• Are you comfortable that you are being realistic in your assessment and have you been open to challenge in this respect? Is restructuring always the answer to reduced funding?

• What monitoring processes can you use to determine the impact of the restructure? It is best to consider this at the planning stage.

You need to ask staff what they think will work Many funding-driven restructure processes end before naming and defining the new roles, as current roles are simply stripped out. Stopping here is not ideal for two reasons. First, developing the best organisational structure requires specific information about the kinds of jobs that are needed and detailed knowledge of these jobs (ie designing backwards from your desired outcomes). Second, implementation of the new organisational structure and effective change management require knowledge of the specific expectations of each job by those who will be filling the job positions. Asking staff their opinion, drawing on their rich frontline experience, is often invaluable.

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I was never asked to input on what I actually do now. They went on what the job description says I do. It strikes me that the role is being changed to solve problems that are not the main ones I face. I’m now looking to get out but whoever takes it on will find it’s a poisoned chalice. At least they [the senior management team] might finally realise it’s not me that’s the problem.

FE support manager

Knowing the specifics of job performance will be essential in selecting or re-assigning staff or in improving the performance of current staff. If there is anything that can subvert a restructure it is the uncertainty individual staff members can feel about their future roles. In addition, to reflect the best practice in involving staff, incumbents ideally need to create models of the roles they perform. This role-modelling process uses the same logical flow followed in the above core process modelling.

Job modelling is needed to align work with the values agreed at the outset and, specifically, with the core processes – in other words, the “what” of the values statement should be aligned with the “how” of core processes, which should, in turn, be aligned with the “who” of the role models.

Furthermore, role design must take into account realistic groupings of skills.

Loading a role with too many distinct skill sets reduces the pool of potential candidates. There needs to be a balance between what you ideally want and who is out here, potentially, to fill those roles. There is also sometimes a tendency to resist prioritisation – a key duty for those in leadership and management positions. Often, a smaller structure is designed with the expectation that previous levels of organisational performance will be maintained. This prompts managers to design roles that are far beyond the capacity of a normal full-time equivalent post, which can lead to decreased staff well-being, increased staff turnover and, ultimately, a further restructure.

Responsibility means precisely that: the ability to respond. Roles need to be modelled on the basis of a member of staff being able to perform the role successfully. Simply combining two roles together and expecting a remaining member of staff to deliver is quite often a stored disaster for the organisation, as well as for the role holder. Joining roles can work well provided sufficient consideration is given to job weight and efforts are made to decide what can be sensibly accomplished in the role.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Assessing job weight involves determining how many staff will be required for each job as well as the role load. Managers and existing staff should be quite capable of making these projections provided they have an accurate picture of the inputs, the process steps needed to accomplish the outputs and the consequences of the core process and role modelling. If a staff reduction is needed, it can be accommodated by building a realistic picture of how much work can be expected given the reduced staffing level. Some form of job evaluation may be appropriate at the end of the procces, as an indication of fairness.

Generally, it is important not to cut resources (inputs) too fine, although in the current climate this isn’t always possible. If restructure encompasses the whole organisation, there should, ideally, be some resource flexibility in the first few months to help adjust for any hiccups along the way and to fund any additional training required. Even if the goal is to operate as efficiently as possible there is usually a need for some wriggle room in staffing. Flexibility applies not only to staff numbers, but also to staff capability. The leadership team may well need some flexibility to respond to capability gaps in the new structure and offer the support required to address these. Common ways to do this include a staged restructure process, so there are fewer capability gaps to manage at a given point in time, and a temporary use of contract resources until in-house staff become familiar with their roles. The fact that some schools and colleges have to cut deeply means they face the challenge of a lack of flexibility and the problems that can all too easily arise as a result of this.

Don’t neglect consultation over leader and manager roles Role-modelling needs to include leaders and managers as these roles can often become overloaded through poor restructure design. An inability of managers to focus on leadership tasks due to increased output requirements can create significant problems for colleges and schools. For example, time devoted to mentoring and coaching staff disappears, staff become disengaged, more issues arise due to staff errors and managers end up spending more time resolving them. To ensure management is appropriately loaded, it is important to balance three elements: 1. The number of staff directly managed or supervised.

2. Staff ability to perform work without supervision.

3. The amount of “own work” managers have to do on top of their leadership activity.

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Avoid sowing seeds of resentment Some leaders, wittingly or otherwise, plant seeds of deep resentment from the outset. One tactic some adopt is to announce a restructure and redundancy programme together with a proposal for new roles. These are sometimes simply slimmed down versions of the main grade teacher/lecturer role. Sometimes they are similar or almost identical to the teacher/lecturer role albeit with a different title attached, and with different pay and conditions.

This kind of behaviour can leave a lasting wound which can have a negative impact on the culture of the newly structured organisation.

Top tips • Avoid making staff and leadership roles too complex.

• Minimise the use of matrix management (staff reporting to more than one manager). They introduce a measurement overhead and a lack of clear direction for staff.

• Make sure you review or redraft the competency framework as part of the review of roles and what will be expected of them, and consult with the unions as part of the process.

• The selection process needs to be as fair, transparent and painless as possible. Despite the practice in some organisations, it is not necessary to make everyone apply for their own jobs again. Indeed, doing so adds stress and increases the possibility of mistakes and an employment tribunal claim.

Element 4 – Evaluate At each stage of the restructure design process you should ask, “Does this make logical sense?”, “Does this feel right?”, and “Could we do this better?”

A negative response to any of these warrants further investigation.

For example, the process map created at the early planning stages is worth significant attention as it can facilitate a useful thought experiment before actual change begins. Both frontline staff and managers are asked, as the core processes and jobs are being defined, “What gets in the way of doing the required work?” and “What needs to be changed to help get the work done better?”

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

This stage needs to be iterative as frontline staff, at the sharp end of delivery, will often be the first to recognise that things are not working according to the stated plan. It is crucial that feedback mechanisms are in place to identify the need for any planning tweaks or, should evidence clearly suggest it, an entirely revised strategy.

When the SLT [senior leadership team] was slimmed down I was given a behaviour brief on top of my teaching load and other responsibilities but I really didn’t see how I could do what was expected. I shared my concerns with colleagues and we came up with a different approach that shared the behaviour responsibility and SLT was amenable to the change. It just wouldn’t have worked out before.

Primary school assistant headteacher

One aspect of “evaluate” needs to be a focus on equality and fair process.

For example: • Does it seem to be both a fair process and a fair outcome?

• Is the approach to redeployment and redundancy favouring particular groups of people?

• Is bias creeping in so that selection appears to be based on age, sex, race, disability, trade union membership or pregnancy or childcare consequences?

It is sensible to maintain a clear audit trail detailing your approach and ensuring compliance. An analysis of the assessment decisions made may reveal trends that you haven’t considered, for example, indirect discrimination against older workers through weighting experience too heavily on technology when this is not necessarily pertinent to a role’s success.

It can be useful to review decisions just above and below the cut-off point to ensure the process is as fair and equitable as possible. Look at the people just below the cut-off line to understand the reasons why they have fallen below it.

Then look at the people just above the line and consider if there is a significant enough difference between these two groups to warrant the cut-off line. If there is a need to make corrections to the criteria then this should be implemented at group level and not to ensure a specific individual gets through the process.

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The rationale for the amendments should be documented and applied consistently throughout the process both for the sake of fairness and for evidence, should the process be challenged at some later date.

It is worth considering actions that could mitigate the impact for those people just below the cut-off line. For example, can displaced staff in a larger academy, school or college be placed into a redeployment pool in another part of your organisation? It is also advisable to create a group of reserves as it is possible that during the process, some of the people above the cut-off point will leave voluntarily.

The voluntaries are always a bit of a mixed blessing. We did lose some people although we reserved the right to say no. But if somebody actually wants to go and we say no, they are going to be so disenchanted. We actually lost one or two people we didn’t want to.

Vice-principal, FE college

CPD programmes can be a useful way of helping retain some staff who would otherwise be made redundant by restructuring. This is something to consider beforehand, where practical.

Reviewing your decisions and interrogating them in terms of operational practicality and selection discrimination will ensure that the final decisions are both fair and fit for purpose. This checking process can be a quick one but should not be overlooked. Mistakes at this stage can be costly and difficult to reverse.

Many restructuring processes are rendered ineffective by a lack of planning, communication and foresight. It is incumbent upon those who aspire to good leadership to give plenty of time for clear reflection at each stage in the process rather than make mistakes and risk alienating staff through unseemly haste.

Finally, it is important to carefully evaluate the relative success of the restructure between six months and a year after it has taken effect. What is working well? What part of the change is not sticking? Has there been an appropriate change in culture? If something isn’t working and is unlikely to correct itself, action needs to be taken sooner rather than later.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Reflect on...

• Have you set sufficient time aside for an analytical review? Be prepared to make amendments to your selection criteria to ensure your decisions are fit for purpose.

• Are you clear about the equal opportunities legislation that needs to be followed?

• Will the changes improve teaching and learning?

• Is the proposed restructure best for the learners (ie consider outcomes)?

• Can this opportunity be used to re-think some traditional educational roles? Could roles such as heads of house and year be retained with amended job description and remits, or can you develop some creative ideas?

• Have you looked outside to review information on similar roles in other organisations, even other sectors?

• Is the proposed restructure as future-proof as possible, ie does it take into account all the known factors and reduce the likelihood of future restructuring?

• Does the new structure enhance succession planning? Will it provide opportunities for talented staff and future leaders?

• Is the restructure process itself fair and transparent? What might need to change to ensure this is the case? Is the applicant assessment process fair in the circumstances?

• Who are the winners and losers in the restructuring? How is this to be managed?

• Do staff feel “done to” or are they onside, despite the unsettling experience?

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Element 5 – Determine the organisational structure Realising what the new structure looks like should, ideally, be the natural outcome of the previous stages. A significant contributory factor in many failed restructures is leaders’ haste in using, primarily, financial data as the basis for a quickly assembled revised structure chart at too early a stage in the process. Attempts are then made to “fit” the work into this structure, come what may.

Waiting until the work is defined requires discipline. During process and role modelling, the value of waiting is typically revealed: key learning about the work, as well as a structure that makes sense, emerge. Hard evidence is gleaned on how much work can be accomplished in a role, how many roles are needed and how the roles need to relate to other roles and the wider organisation, for example. It also ensures the new structure has a robust foundation.

Organisational design may have to be prompted by the key criteria the leadership team needs to prioritise, and by drafts of possible options.

However, the clarity of the information identified and the definition work carried out in the preceding stages should form a clear enough picture of the best way to get the work done. It should not be too surprising if the new structure is rather different from the current structure – especially if a rootand-branch review has been conducted along the lines suggested here.

This likely to appear radical because existing structures tend to grow like ramblers’ paths (as opposed to strategically engineered and planned trafficbearing roads), from management’s best guesses and historical experience.

As new goals are added, talented staff emerge, or management makes small changes, so new reporting structures are developed. Eventually, an unwieldy mish-mash grows, inefficiencies creep in and strategic drift occurs. What is required is a structure built on getting the work done to achieve the value proposition: knowing “what” is to be achieved, “how” it will be achieved, and by “whom” the work will be done, within a sufficiently healthy cultural context.

Leaders need to maintain a thorough grasp of this process to ensure that the above alignment occurs. Distributing leadership to managers is fine as the restructure is rolled out, as long as they are clear about the overall strategy and ethos. There are inherent dangers to avoid if this is not the case:

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

I was disappointed in one department where it [the restructure] didn’t seem to work. They had a fairly open brief, and they knew what was required, but they couldn’t manage it. They didn’t seem able to formulate the proposals sufficiently. All the milestones that were there were missed. As a result, the staff became very discontented.

That was the only disappointment. It was better managed from senior leadership.

Assistant head, secondary school

Danger arises where leaders fail to take a sufficiently strategic view of the restructure process. It can be a mistake to be overly wedded to tweaking the current structure in the face of clear evidence that a more robust review is required to ensure the organisation remains viable going forward. These organisations find themselves offering what they are designed to offer rather than what learners really need. Delaying contact with external realities only stores up potential for the school or college to be forced into swift and drastic change later on.

Reflect on...

• Does the restructure chart look logical and feel right in the circumstances?

• Do staff see the rationale behind the new structure?

• Do staff have a sense of being involved in the development of the new structure?

• To what extent have you stress-tested the plan though consultation with all those with a stake in the expected outcomes of the restructure process?

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Element 6 – The roll-out plan Once the structure has revealed itself, a plan for roll-out can be developed, dates set and responsibilities assigned. Information for the roll-out plan arises naturally from the previous investigatory work, so there is enough understanding of what it takes, for example, to select appropriate individuals to fulfil clear value-adding jobs roles and what cultural issues need to be addressed.

Decisions need to have previously been made as to whether the restructure is staged over a period of time or completed in one go – depending on the organisation’s capacity to continue meeting learners’ needs. If the restructure process is not too time-sensitive then, ideally, it should be rolled out in stages, which makes piloting possible, as well as learning that can then be applied in the ensuing stages.

The roll-out stage signals the start of the implementation phase, when the changes become apparent and the best-laid plans can fail if the leadership has not secured sufficient buy-in. If there is a critical mass of resisters, staff who prefer an alternative to “the plan”, then a dissonance is likely to impact on both performance and the pervading culture. Successful organisations invariably modify their designs during roll-out in response to feedback from staff, so prepare to be flexible.

Putting this another way, don’t just rush in. The way to manage anxiety among your staff is to engage with them, not try to get a new structure in place inside a few weeks.

Indeed, your timescale must be sufficiently long to allow time for the following: • Meaningful consultation, enabling staff to fully consider their options.

• Full consideration and response to feedback and alternative proposals.

• Holidays, closures and exams periods to be taken into account.

• Unforeseen problems to be ironed out.

• Meeting your legal duties.

Given the anxiety, loss of identity and uncertainty associated with restructuring, it also helps if you have a well-being policy in place to help mitigate some of the added pressures (see, for example, AMiE’s publication Well-being: leading and managing a well workplace).

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

This stage benefits hugely from having a range of change champions or change agents, call them what you will. These are the people who support the change and can encourage others. Having identified the right people and engaged a cross-departmental team at the planning stage, it is now that they can make the greatest impact, explaining the need for change, the saving needed and why, along with the benefits the new structure is meant to bring.

It is also important to link roll-out with other complementary strategies within the organisation, such as the staff well-being strategy, if there is one. In addition, it is also important to maintain a listening ear during roll-out and be ready to make adjustments in the face of staff presenting good evidence of the need to alter the plans to make them more workable.

If it is too rigid then people think this is a sham of a consultation.

People might have thought that anyway. If people can believe there is some purpose to this restructure then that is a good thing. So planning to some extent, but not to the nth degree. If it is too top-down it generates resentment.

FE principal

Visibility and commitment This is a time for “management by walking about”. Be visible and receptive to what staff are saying. Leaders need to be seen to take a share of the pain rather than give the impression that they are safe at all costs. Be in the process together as a whole organisation rather than allowing it to impact unfairly on some more than others.

Top tip Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, in attempting to lead his team to safety, made sure he wasn’t seen to be gaining any favours at the expense of his team. This extended to him giving up the opportunity to use one of the limited number of sleeping bags so that one of his crew could have a warmer night instead. He set an example of being truly “in it together”, which engendered a team spirit that helped them achieve their aim.

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Element 7 – Commune and communicate Getting the communication right is absolutely critical. It is important that staff trust and align with the process. Yet the focus should also be on the ongoing performance viability of the organisation and not just the change process itself. Communicating effectively with staff and unions enables this to happen.

Effective leadership is as much a state of mind as it is a set of characteristics.

It starts with understanding who you are and where you are at, and the impact this has on the people around you. This is an important awareness to heighten prior to embarking on a restructure. Ignoring this basic step can wash back and rock your own foundation if you are not careful.

I cringe now when I think of the first restructure I did. I just hadn’t got myself in the right frame of mind – I was so focused on the new building and getting the results up I didn’t tune into the staff enough, about how they were responding to the change. That took a lot of ironing out afterwards. I learned the hard way, I guess.

Headteacher, secondary academy

Effective communication starts with a thorough assessment of how you yourself feel about the planned change. Trepidation? Excitement? Fear?

Exhilaration? Whatever the feelings, they need to be acknowledged and owned or you run the risk of ignoring them in an attempt to tough it out and “get the job done”. This can easily diminish your ability to communicate effectively (ie remain open) throughout what may well be a difficult journey and stymy from the outset the potential to get the job done well. Leaders must continue actively listening across the organisation during a restructure, and this can be difficult when their own emotions have been denied.

Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

George Bernard Shaw

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

It is important to assess how the change process is impacting on leader and manager colleagues as well as on teaching and support staff. You should try to see change from their point of view. A good leader of change is able to assess how staff are reacting to the change process and to each other. They understand that not everyone will, necessarily, be in the same place as the leadership team, maintaining a clear “line of sight” to the front line. This, after all, is a quintessential part of all good leadership and management.

Indeed, successful leaders generally see management and leadership skills as two sides of the same coin, according to recent research conducted for UKCES (see Resources). This dual role is seen to consist of two key elements: • A hard-edged skills set, including strategic management, financial acumen, and the ability to identify more broadly what their organisation must do to be effective and grow.

• Softer, people management and interpersonal skills, such as influencing, motivating, team leadership and communication.

It is the second element that commonly marks out the effective leader during a restructure process. They appreciate that the way the message is delivered is at least as important as the message itself. Their work is underpinned by a number of values and behaviours: • They treat colleagues as though they are human beings first and professionals second.

• They communicate with students as though they are human beings first and students second.

• They deliver difficult messages in a way that leaves people feeling intact, even though things may need to change.

• They never miss an opportunity to praise.

• They notice small things and comment on them.

• They make sure they talk with people, both informally and formally.

• They talk about the values of the organisation.

• They talk about why they love their work.

• They acknowledge their mistakes and are able to show personal vulnerability.

• They are open to new ideas and challenge.

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Don’t monkey around A useful metaphor in this respect is provided by Steve Peters, in The Chimp Paradox, which has been taken to heart by many in the school sector and can prove equally useful within further education.

Managing a restructure effectively requires the ability to manage minds – your own as well as those around you. To do this effectively, a leader needs to stay present, calm and human rather than let fear prompt “the chimp” to take control. The chimp represents the parts of the self concerned with personal survival at all costs. Whereas the human self operates on logic, facts, truth and care for others, the chimp tends to be wildly emotional, illogical, selffocused and destructive if measures are not put in place to ensure calm.

Peters shows that without sufficient awareness our brains are hardwired to view change as potential danger, just like the chimp in the jungle. Despite our 21st century veneer, if the triggers are present a leader can respond as if in a jungle rather than leading fellow humans to a new state of harmony!

A restructure is, by definition, significant change which can easily trigger the inner chimp and thus present problems that could otherwise be managed out.

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Fear triggers the inner chimp to:

How this can manifest during a restructure

Fight

Conflict about the need for change and fierce challenge against the proposals. Fight against other chimps (colleagues in same position) over remaining roles.

Flight

Seeking to escape discomfort, staff, increasingly, leave, including those occupying key roles you didn’t wish to lose.

Flock

Formation of cliques, resistance movements, and groups of staff mutually reinforcing their fears about what is happening.

Freeze

The inertia that can set in as minds are preoccupied by the impact of change on their jobs, leading to a dip in their performance.

Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

It is not uncommon for leaders to go into chimp mode by becoming defensive when members of staff react to the restructure from their own sense of chimp.

A good leader is able to stay human and open to whatever drives those they lead.

A leader has an opportunity to assess whether the disenchantment is evidence of the need to clarify the reasons for change and to offer greater support through the process. Leadership is about leading minds so there is a responsibility to reach out to staff, to offer relevant support, and to understand that their stress is a function of how they perceive the situation and their beliefs about it – both of which leaders can acknowledge and seek to work with in order to support staff through the change journey.

As noted above, deciding on appropriate language should be an early consideration as this can have a significant impact on how staff respond to the changes.

I was able to say particularly to the curriculum end we are not restructuring, we are retuning. It is a little tweak.

Senior academy leader

If at all possible, it is worth briefing all staff about the restructure on the same day to ensure that some staff members do not discover the news through second-hand sources. Leaders must keep their initial planning in confidence until the time is right to announce the intention to restructure. Failure to do so triggers distress and risks throwing staff into chimp mode from the get go:

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I would appreciate if you could contact me as soon as possible regarding a possible grievance I may need to raise against my employer.

In short, rumours have circulated for nearly a week, including staff lower than management, about the curriculum managers of the department I work in losing their line management responsibilities. Until yesterday this was thought to be just rumours as my line management was not notified. Yesterday afternoon, after hearing the rumours, he spoke with me about the decision that had been made. This was then addressed in a meeting with all college managers. I took the opportunity to raise this with the head of HR who was in attendance – she stated that the decision was only made yesterday. I have raised this formally as to my concern over whether my position will actually exist and how did other staff know before myself. No consultation has occurred.

FE college middle manager

Significant change tends to generate an emotional charge in those affected.

When this is aggregated it isn’t long before a cloud envelopes the organisation upon news or, worse, hearsay about a possible restructure. Staff can immediately feel unnerved as they are thrown down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to concerns over food, shelter and self-esteem, for example – in other words, a fear-based chimp mind state. With leaders having responsibility for the overarching culture and mood of the school or college, they have a duty to communicate in a way which is sensitive to where staff are coming from and aims to keep the culture as buoyant as possible in the circumstances.

This requires you to work with a high level of emotional intelligence, developed through a focus on reducing stress, remaining aware and staying connected to yourself and others.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Reflect on...

Develop your emotional intelligence skills by flexing your ability to: • Quickly reduce stress in the moment by owning emotions and taking steps to calm yourself, eg mindfulness exercises.

• Neutralize strained relationship stress by emotional awareness, ie where are the emotions felt in your body?

• Connect emotionally with others by using nonverbal communication, eg good eye contact, reading non-verbal cues.

• Use humour (sensitively) to stay connected in challenging situations.

• Resolve conflicts positively and with confidence, eg forgive emotional outbursts, don’t take anything personally.

Effective leaders use these skills and make a special effort to engage staff in the change message as soon as possible after the initial planning has been undertaken. It can be useful to adopt the AIDA marketing principle when sensitively delivering the change message: A Attention. Grab it. Highlight how it affects everyone.

I

Interest. Increase it by outlining compelling reasons for the restructuring. The change narrative must have depth and colour so staff can clearly understand what is happening and why.

D Desire. Demonstrate how action will satisfy stakeholders’ needs, including that of staff in the longer term. Acknowledge the emotional aspect of the change and the support available, ie seek to settle people’s inner chimp.

A Action. Give a clear and powerful call to action and the first steps to take.

Aim to have staff leave the meeting in human rather than chimp mode.

Leaders often make the mistake of underestimating the scale of communication required. It is better to multiply your initial assessment by 10, later returning to the issue to assess how much of the communication has actually been heard.

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Leaders who are able to understand and cultivate good emotional rapport with employees on this change journey can mitigate the intensity of their feelings, boosting the chances that they will maintain a human rather than a chimp mind-set across the cycle of change. This journey is typically mapped by the change curve. The example in the following diagram is particularly apt as it captures the “false dawns” aspect of the journey – leaders may assume that acceptance of the new structure has been achieved only to be plunged back into the more turbulent phase of the process, as staff come to terms with the change.

The change curve “Normal” functioning

Returning to meaningful life

• Empowerment • Security • Self-esteem • Meaning

Shock and denial • Avoidance • Confusion • Fear • Numbness • Blame Anger • Frustration • Anxiety • Irritation • Embarrassment • Shame

Acceptance • Exploring options • A new plan in place

Depression and detachment • Overwhelmed • Blahs • Lack of energy • Helplessness

Dialogue and bargaining • Reaching out to others • Desire to tell one’s story • Struggle to find meaning for what has happened

Helping staff achieve acceptance supports them in recharging and recovering from the emotional stress the restructure process may have caused and reduces the likelihood of ongoing resistance to the changes made.

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People should be treated well (whether they resist change or not) because what can often kill a culture is people watching how people who dissent are treated. People generally like to be led by other human beings.

You have got to be human, which is hard to do sometimes because the more power you have the more it can weaken your humanity.

Lord Adebowale, Institute for Turnaround

The restructure process, whether based on growth or reduction, must have as its focus the ongoing performance capability of the organisation. It is not uncommon for organisations to become too inwardly focused on the change process itself, getting from A to B, while losing sight of immediate performance needs. It is little use reaching point B if the restructured organisation mirrors the design goal but has, in practice, lost momentum because of the way in which the process has unfolded.

Although there may be a need to downsize, in some cases drastically, an effective restructure is not achieved simply by cutting swathes of staff from the organisation until it reaches a point where income and expenditure meet.

Leaders who have taken this to be a measure of success have often found it to be a pyrrhic victory as their lack of strategic thinking and corporate empathy leads to further restructuring. The real challenge lies in ensuring an appropriate level of aftercare, for those who remain and for those who leave as a result of the process. It is important to demonstrate compassion not only because it is the right thing to do but also to help ensure that the restructured organisation performs effectively going forward.

Get this wrong and you tend to see: • absenteeism • resignations (from those you want to keep) • risk aversion • sickness absence • low performance • gossip and rumour • resentment.

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It is only by ensuring that those who remain are comfortable in their new roles and motivated to work toward the value proposition of the restructured school or college that the benefits of the restructure will be realised. It is not unknown for leaders, keen to get back to the demands of the day job, to lose focus on the needs of the restructure before they reach this stage. This is a where a vacuum of uncertainty can take hold. Who is supposed to be responsible for what? The answer is to have clarified roles and responsibilities from the outset, identified the functions (activities, tasks and decisions) necessary for effective operation, clarified who should be involved and been specific about accountability. These are important considerations that sometimes get lost amid the big-picture focus of a restructure process.

Top tips It is also important to avoid the common mistake of focusing only on: 1. Staff who are made redundant – their plight being more visible and tangible. However, it is likely that some are happy to leave, relieved to be moving on and excited by the potential of new challenges.

2. Staff who are remaining – in an effort to maintain current performance while ignoring those who will shortly be displaced by the process.

It is equally important to beware of the potential for reputation damage arising as a result of rancour from a troubled restructure process.

Communicating effectively and getting staff engaged can avoid the wider damage caused by unhappy staff and students.

When a tough decision is called for, this doesn’t mean the leader necessarily needs to take a tough stance throughout its implementation. A tough decision means that there’s a lot at stake, which can easily trigger emotional vulnerability, prompting some leaders to hide from the ensuing responsibility.

I heard about the restructure from a colleague in another department before it was officially announced and it was marked how less often we saw most of SLT after that. It was just so obvious and morale fell through the floor.

Head of department, secondary academy

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Many staff will find the change hard but leadership has a responsibility to maintain contact and visibility as it seeks to ensure that the right people are in the right place after the restructure. This can only be achieved if leaders and managers know their staff well, help them to adapt to the change and encourage them to develop their roles.

Leaders should be alert to the CPD needs generated by the restructure and try to make staff feel as valued and as positive as possible during the change.

Even the smallest restructure needs to consider these points. The CPD strategy can be designed to enable the change process and get the right people ready to take their right place in the structure.

What I hadn’t appreciated was the sort of long-lasting effect it had on the rest of college who were really quite uncertain.

FE senior leader

All staff should be offered an appropriate level of aftercare, whether they remain or leave. There are various perspectives to consider and it is useful to look at the impact on staff from all angles.

Different staff perspectives in a restructure process Would like To stay

To stay

To go

Survivor relief

Survivor angst Employee reaction

Gets To go

Leaver grief

Leaver happiness

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Leaders and managers need to take a personalised approach to staff, where possible, treating them as they would wish to be treated in the same circumstances. SHL Talent Management employs a useful model to profile staff (see previous page), placing individuals into categories and encouraging organisations to have an approach in place for each category, such as change resisters (survivor angst) or staff who will need to be helped with a transition out of the organisation (leaver grief).

Leaver grief For staff unexpectedly made redundant, the obvious loss of earnings can cause real stress and cast them into the chimp mind state. This is exacerbated by the loss of other benefits, such as pension and sick pay, combined with the loss of daily routine and an enforced shift in life pattern. Leaders need to consider how to effectively manage unhappy and demotivated members of staff during the time before their contract is terminated and help prepare them for a life beyond the school or college.

Good leaders and managers will show emotional intelligence toward this group by helping them deal with feelings, such as rejection, and take steps to help them rebuild their damaged self-esteem. This is a group that leaders have traditionally tended either to see as a low priority or, worse, to ignore. This is a mistake. Not supporting this group risks putting a break on performance, both theirs and, through contagion, that of others across the organisation who may be unsettled by the restructure. There is also the reputation of the school or college to consider, especially given the increased competition within education. It is not ideal to have disgruntled ex-employees undermining your efforts to promote the organisation going forward. The goal ought to be to keep these people as informal ambassadors, which is entirely possible if the restructure has a clear logic and staff have been included along the way. If leaders have gone out of their way to help these staff resist any tendency to think of themselves as victims and, instead, help them take the next steps in their career, this possibility becomes all the more likely.

My ideal would be for everyone who left, to have left feeling that they had been treated fairly and humanly; that we had done the right thing by them and they could accept the outcome.

FE senior manager

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Successful change management is as much about heart as it is about head; it is about compassionately taking staff with you on the change journey, doing “the right thing” and moving the school or college on. Compassion is required for those disappointed not be completing the journey with their current employer.

Survivor relief Likewise, considering those who remain on the payroll even if their role has changed, you can perhaps assume they are relieved – particularly if the prevailing underlying culture is still positive. Avoiding having to compete in a challenging job market may be viewed as a distinct benefit by some. If redeployment has been a competitive process then remaining in employment can itself be empowering. The vindication of being selected into the position on the basis of past performance and potential to succeed can feel rewarding.

A competitive assessment process provides legitimacy to the decision and, depending on the nature of the restructure, some members of staff may find they secure a better role than before. There may be winners as well as losers from the process. The winners may require some coaching or specific CPD support to perform confidently in the new role, and they also need to be sensitive to those who may have been displaced and are poised to leave.

Survivor angst It is important not to assume that everyone wants to stay or that those who remain will automatically be motivated to perform. There are many reasons why those who remain should not just be expected to “get on with it” in their new role. For example: • Some not selected for redundancy may rue the lack of opportunity to leave and receive a financial pay-out.

• Working hours may have been changed and some terms and conditions of employment may be worse than they were previously.

• The restructure may now mean that their opportunities and timescales for career advancement are limited.

• Redeployment into a new role, by its nature, means learning new skills, and working in a new environment with new colleagues. This enforced change along with its learning requirements may be viewed as an unwanted challenge by some, particularly when the new role is not one that aligns well with their longer-term career goals.

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• If the roles have not been profiled and weighted accurately, there can be at least a perception that those staying behind are having to fulfil more than one job.

• Some staff members may not agree with the decision made about their friends’ redundancies and this can provoke ill-feeling towards leaders.

• The concern that, while they may have survived the first round of job cuts, a second cut may not be that far away can be very real and this continued job insecurity is not a foundation for a happy and motivated worker.

Assuming that those who remain in the organisation are automatically relieved and happy to be there is unlikely to be a sensible perspective to adopt.

Being aware of these motivational drivers, addressing them with remaining staff and being honest and open about the challenges ahead are good ways to rebuild momentum lost through the inertia which can creep in through restructuring. Importantly, this approach also nullifies the potential for change resisters to arise and form an “awkward squad” of staff who, feeling bruised, both resist further change and chip away at the leadership’s attempts to instil a positive working culture.

Now if I was to think how I could deal with that I would probably do more communications towards the end of the process. It seemed most difficult at the outset. We didn’t pay quite enough attention to the people who were left and the ripple effect.

Vice-principal, further education college

Leaver happiness Not everyone who has to leave will be disappointed at this prospect.

Thus, in a competitive selection scenario some staff members may not be motivated to perform to their best. They may game their performances in order to get the result they are seeking.

For some, this could be the acceleration of a planned career change.

Combined with some outplacement support, it could provide them with the impetus to push ahead to new challenges in new areas. For those who needed the push, the immediate disappointment may quickly give way to the excitement of a new career challenge.

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Consider also those who had already decided to leave and are now happy to be rewarded financially for doing so. Some in this group could well be “de-mob happy� and not focused on performance in the way they were previously, which could distract others who may be keen to leave but can’t.

One of the things we did was we contracted an outplacement support provider. We had two levels: one was a very basic level for everybody who was put at risk. And then anybody who was actually given a letter of redundancy was given further careers advice. We supplemented that through our Business Unit who have good ESF links and do a lot of training for external employers. So we are used to giving redundancy training. We also got JobCentre Plus to come in and liaise with the Business Unit. So we gave people quite a lot of support.

FE college senior leader

Communicating with governors It is crucial that governors are on board throughout the process. The restructure must cohere with the strategic direction and goals set by the governors, which is why they must be fully engaged, and properly briefed, from the start. Their support for the intended change should be secured prior to the launch of staff consultation on the proposals. It is important that the fundamental principles behind the restructure are clear to governors to ensure that they remain supportive throughout what can be a challenging process.

For example, are you seeking to minimise compulsory redundancies, or the number of staff put at risk? Or perhaps the primary principle is the protection of frontline staff at the expense of staff elsewhere, or even the reputation of the organisation, which can be dented during a bruising restructure process.

The college did lose its Investors in People status at one point following the restructure but has since regained it.

FE college manager

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If possible, it is worth getting governor support for the main decisions in writing and perhaps “manage upwards” in an attempt to keep the governing body on side. It is not unknown for governors to get cold feet once the restructure begins to bite and they feel uncomfortable hearing from staff.

You may get the backing of governors but just check they are with you when it all starts to unwind. I call it “bunnies on the lawn”. “Shoot the bunnies,” say the governors. So you follow orders, then you look around... and who is still there?

Principal, FE college

Communicating with trade unions Getting the trade unions on board at an early stage by sharing the rationale behind the restructure and the steps that have been taken to minimise impact can help temper the potential for staff resistance to the changes. Unions can be a useful communication channel with staff if they accept the need for change and appreciate the way it is being handled. Conversely, it is not helpful when leaders adopt a defensive position with union representatives at the outset and slip into an adversarial approach which the union side could mirror. This helps no one. Stay human and aware, and look for opportunities to work in partnership on some aspects of the change, even if there are differences of opinions on others.

A further complication arises where a pay claim occurs at the same time as the restructure process. Financial transparency is key. While you will naturally want to offer a fair reward for the work it will become clear if an unfunded pay award has a direct impact on staffing levels – a pattern that is currently all too familiar.

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A one per cent award costs my college £250k, which, as all other sources of cost saving have long gone, unfortunately means five members of staff will be leaving. Those left have to step into the breach to ensure we remain a viable organisation, which, of course, generates a workload problem. A four per cent pay rise, which I think they deserve given how hard they work and the increased responsibilities, would mean I’d have to lose 20 staff, and this only compounds the problem.

FE college principal

Being up front in this way can temper the antagonism that might otherwise arise with unions. Ideally, both sides will work together to identify how the impact of the changes can be mitigated. However, this requires both transparency and evidence that senior leadership is not receiving higher pay and exacerbating the financial challenges faced by the school or college.

If the restructure isn’t working, you need to investigate carefully and revise plans accordingly, rather than ploughing on regardless of the evidence.

Riding roughshod over the feelings of staff occupying roles that simply aren’t realistic only generates potential well-being issues down the line and undermines trade union support. It takes a strong leader to say, “Okay, this bit isn’t working; we’ll need to make a further change to ensure it does”. But if the process has been led in an inclusive and engaging way then unions and staff will not automatically question the leadership’s ability.

Lastly, it is worth ensuring the restructure plans meet with employment law before informing the unions. Without this step, they are likely to be exposed as flawed quite early on. For example, collective consultation is a process requiring an employer to engage in meaningful consultation with union representatives of employees affected by redundancy proposals (even where they are affected only indirectly), with a view to reaching an agreement on avoiding the need for redundancies, reducing the number or mitigating the consequence of redundancies. Collective consultation is required where an employer proposes to make 20 or more employees redundant within a period of 90 days or less. It is important for schools and colleges planning to make redundancies to understand the law in this area, as failure to collectively consult where appropriate can result in liability for a protective award of a maximum of 90 days actual gross pay per affected employee.

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Indeed, consultation with trade unions, regardless of whether or not there is a legal duty to do so, should be part of your staff consultation process. It is therefore to be encouraged, even where redundancies are not contemplated.

Issues for discussion are likely to include: • The range of new (or changed) jobs needed.

• The role, design and likely workload of new jobs.

• Pay and grading of new jobs.

• How staff will be appointed to the new jobs.

• The selection criteria to be used.

• Confirmation of pay protection for anyone stepping down to a lowerpaid role.

• A reasonable timescale for the process.

If some staff stand to lose their jobs, you should try to agree on: • How the job losses might be avoided or mitigated.

• Whether voluntary redundancy will be an option.

• The selection process for those at risk of redundancy.

• How contractual redundancy pay will be calculated.

• Whether redundant staff will need to work their notice.

• Whether or not staff who leave will be asked to sign a settlement agreement.

You may also have collective agreements with the trade unions that can help manage the change process itself (eg on well-being, redundancy avoidance, change management, etc).

It is also worth remembering that trade unions in the education sector are experienced in dealing with the restructuring process across a range of institutions. Constructive dialogue with them can help not only to meet your legal obligations, but also the overall outcomes you are seeking.

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Case study

2.2 Positive change This successful general FE college (with a strong technology focus) has constantly reviewed and evolving structures, but when it undertook a specific “transformation” (the term it preferred to “restructure”) it drew up plans well in advance.

There was a strong feeling within the college that, given funding and inspection concerns, “If we don’t do something we are going to be in trouble”.

The college introduced three-year rolling strategic plans: “We weren’t trying to predict. It was an exercise in forecasting what we would like to happen in three years if we have had successful implementation of our strategy, bearing in mind all of the other things we need to make assumptions about. It’s a model rather than a forecast. The ‘transformation’ was quite a big jump in terms of the scale of the thing. We had to take about £1 million out of our expenditure.

“We were right on average (in terms of benchmarks), right on the 50th percentile in terms of overall success rates, but we were below average for retention and above average for student resource.

“Was the transformation successful? Initially, when we carried out the staff survey the following year, the results were low in terms of staff satisfaction.

It was a big jolt for people. It took time to get over it. One year on, we got a good Ofsted and the signs were back up above and we had achieved our targets. So, in many respects, it had been successful. There were some bits could have been better which we’ll learn from.

“One of the things we did do was we commissioned a third-party analytical review of our current data, which looked at all our courses, hours, class sizes, funding they were bringing in. This was really useful for the transformation.

It actually drove a lot of the targeting of areas that were doing very well with good success rates and curriculum efficiency [that] were untouched by transformation. Other areas had some pretty hefty targets. The transformation was being driven by curriculum issues as much as those related to funding.

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Case study continued “The transformation plans were taken to governors and got their backing.

We set up an extensive communication system for the transformation project so even before we announced it there had been the principal at the beginning of the academic year giving pointers that we were going to have to look at things because we were going to have to make changes. But when we actually got to the stage where we thought, ‘Yes, we have made the decision we need to let people know’, we had a special staff meeting when we got everybody together as best we could and made provision to communicate with part-time staff and off-site staff.

“We had a transcript of the meeting and had prepared the statement the principal was going to make, which we then put on the email so that everybody who couldn’t be there could see it. That was a general statement to everybody. We then spoke to all the areas individually. The principal spoke to all the areas that were going to be affected. He called them in according to a schedule over two days, when each of the teams came in and he outlined what was happening. We then made the announcement, ie we thought it was more courteous to let the teachers affected know first before we made the announcement. But it was made to the college virtually straight afterwards because even the people not directly affected needed to know. Then we had individual meetings because not everybody in every team was at risk.

In some teams everybody was at risk but in some they weren’t because we tried to minimise who was actually put at risk formally. We then had team meetings with heads of department giving a bit more detail about what the plans for that individual department were.

“We did the overall plan on the need to do something at management level but then particularly building on the information we got from the external parties.

The heads of department were given targets: ‘These are the targets you are going to have to meet in your department, please come up with plans of how you are going to meet them’. We didn’t know how we were going to achieve the overall plan. Each area came up with their plans, although we had a framework of things you can be looking at. There was a series of dialogues – senior management to heads of department and then within departments. We formed a consultation group and we made a formal announcement.

“We followed the formal procedures with the unions. What we actually ended up doing was we agreed with a regional office that we would hold a ballot 50

Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

for mixed representation, both corporate and curriculum staff. Within that, I would then liaise with regional office. So, we had weekly meetings with that group of elected people. We wanted to keep the staff on board.

“There were examples wherein the initial idea was changed following the consultation: rather than do this, we proposed to do that instead. We knew what we had to achieve but we didn’t necessarily have the right answer of how to achieve it. That’s the point of consultation.

“On the teaching side, it worked well in the end. [As] part of the transformation with learning support staff we were changing all the roles.

So most posts were made redundant and new posts were created for which existing post-holders could apply. We ring-fenced those to existing staff on the whole. The greater changes were in non-teaching staff as far as job descriptions are concerned. Every area was making savings.”

Was the transformation seen as a fair process?

“Looking at it statistically, yes. We only had one appeal. Basically, where it went according to plan, it was a good process. However, in some areas where things weren’t so organised, it wasn’t such a good job and there were people who had more varied experiences of it.”

What made the transformation a success?

“Very clear plans. Associated with this was a rationale that people could understand. So even the people going through the process, even though it isn’t very pleasant actually on the whole, they understood why we were doing it.

“We particularly wanted to try to ensure that students weren’t affected ... It was quite a difficult balance to achieve. We have to see people leaving but we don’t want it affecting day-to-day operations. At the same time, staff were very professional. If you are at risk, eight weeks of uncertainty is horrible.

Given that there were 100 people at risk there was nothing like 100 people who were leaving the college. Although some people were seeing their jobs changed. You don’t want all those people feeling apprehensive for any longer than is necessary.

“It stood us in good stead because we haven’t had to do anything significant since and I see quite a lot of colleges having to do quite a lot now.”

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Conclusion Apart from having a sound argument and evidence for the need to restructure, the key to a successful change process is for those that lead it to remain open, sensitive to others and to generally display the best aspects of common humanity. Effective change is also ethical change. It is about putting the learners first and treating staff humanely through what can be a very unsettling time.

Restructuring is a fact of life, as the school or college must adapt to the forces of external change. It is also a fact that it can be led and managed effectively to deliver a relatively smooth transition. This requires leaders to step up to the plate and work at a level that positively engages emotions and leads minds. It is entirely possible for this approach to help inspire and empower staff to take greater ongoing responsibility for identifying where small changes can be made, which, in aggregate, can make a significant contribution to the effectiveness of the school or college. This internally prompted change can help the organisation stay aligned and leave it on the front rather than the back foot when external drivers of change hit.

If you were one of those drawn to plough straight into Part 2 of this publication, dealing with the practical considerations in undertaking a restructure, please do revisit Part 1 when time permits, to reflect on the important broader context in which effective restructuring takes place. The two parts, taken together, reflect the McKinsey findings (see index) as to what constitutes successful restructuring programmes, namely: • Strong top-down leadership creating focus across the organisation and shaping the culture for future performance. • Broad-based, bottom-up performance improvement to get staff at all levels to take a fresh approach to solving problems and improving performance (ie the Kaizen principles outlined in Part 1). • Cross-departmental core process redesign to link activities, information and people in new ways to achieve effective performance (ie the process mapping and communications focus outlined in Part 2).

McKinsey is clear that poor results from restructuring are invariably due to focusing efforts along only one or two, rather than all three, of the key axes of change.

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However, effective restructuring certainly starts with and requires continuously bold leaders able grasp the nettle and take the strategic decisions the evidence suggests are needed. It means moving away from a desire to play it safe in the short term, not considering what should exist and instead tweaking structures in response to funding issues, which often only leads to more painful restructuring further down the line.

It also means looking to the future rather than being overly rooted in the past.

In times of change, not everything is bad and new opportunities may present themselves if you remain open to new possibilities.

The right spirit in which to face the challenges of restructuring is to view them as opportunities rather than problems to escape or avoid. The process can offer a chance to think creatively and make a shift to a better state, provided problems are seen as “doorways to possibility”. This is all grist to the mill of excellent leadership.

Nick Jankel, author of Switch On, has a deep understanding of fundamental change and a reputation for helping organisations, including blue chip companies, to break through to positive new forms of working. He shows that major change does not have to be hamstrung by concerns over funding and that the essential change needs to be in the mind-sets of those involved in the process. His “breakthrough curve” (see diagram) illustrates that dealing with problems can be productive, if handled properly, and that leaders need to engage proactively with problems to avoid being overwhelmed by them.

The challenge for leaders and managers in schools and colleges is to focus their organisations on where the problems can take them in a positive way and avoid a continuing preoccupation with the problem itself.

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The breakthrough curve ORDER

THRIVING 10

TIME 9

Proactivity Play

8 Power

7 Possibility

1 Problems 2 Patterns

6 Purpose 5 Peace

Pain 3 4 Presence DISORDER

EDGE OF CHAOS

SURVIVING

Either we adapt to the realities of the present or we end up failing. Keeping pace with the present entails breaking through from a limiting past. If an organisation doesn’t achieve this its potential to thrive in future is constrained.

If leaders can effect the breakthrough journey it can can help overcome the inertia driven by external factors such as ill-conceived national policy.

However, as restructuring destroys the old to make way for a new, betterfitting present, we need to acknowledge that such change usually activates the fear-based chimp mind, which can derail the best-laid restructure plans.

This is a crucial area. Leaders and managers can help focus staff on the higher reaches of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – friendship, self-esteem, creativity, problem-solving and innovation – and avoid the natural tendency to slump to the lower, more basic, concerns for food and shelter. The latter are often at the back of the minds of staff at risk of being displaced and can be a key trigger for the chimp mind to resort to survival mode.

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Restructuring in colleges, schools and academies: Handling change with care

Leaders must, therefore, view restructure as an opportunity to hone their leadership skills by walking the talk of leadership. You have the power to breathe life back into an organisation that may have had the wind knocked out of its sails by turbulent change. Leaders can share a bright, evidencebased big picture of where the school or college is going, coach and build confidence, and show support and empathy. Your leadership can overcome resistance and inspire followers through your warmth, communication, engagement and championing of change. Help reframe and shift thinking about change, from an inevitably negative experience to one that is simply the birth pangs of a positive future. You owe this to yourself as well as to your staff and students, for whom you have a duty of care.

Reminder of the top tips to copy and use as an aide memoire • Do not be reticent in drawing on external help but likewise don’t ignore internal sources with experience of restructuring.

• Avoid focusing on the plan at the expense of the people who need support on their personal change journey.

• Play the restructure process like you are entering a political campaign to win a vote rather than simply as a facilities or HR project.

• Are your resources (inputs) sufficient to provide the through-puts required (eg teacher roles and expectations) to generate the outputs you are aiming for? What can you do about it, if not?

• Are you comfortable that you are being sufficiently realistic in your assessment and have you been open to challenge? Is restructuring the only answer to reduced funding in this instance?

• What monitoring processes can you use to determine what outcomes you achieve as a result of the restructure?

• Avoid making staff and leadership roles too complex.

• Minimise the use of matrix management (staff reporting to more than one manager). They introduce a measurement overhead and a lack of clear direction for staff.

• Make sure you review or redraft the competency framework as part of the review of roles needed and what will be expected of them, and consult with the unions as part of the process.

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Reminder of the top tips to copy and use as an aide memoire • Is the selection process as fair, transparent and painless as possible?

• Have you set sufficient time aside for an analytical review?

• Are you clear about the equal opportunities legislation that needs to be followed?

• Will the changes improve teaching and learning?

• Is the proposed restructure best for the learners?

• Can this opportunity be used to re-think some traditional educational roles?

• Have you looked externally to review information on similar roles in other organisations, even other sectors?

• Is the proposed restructure as future-proof as possible?

• Does the new structure enhance succession planning?

• Is the restructure process itself fair and transparent?

• Who are the winners and losers in the restructuring? How is this being managed?

• Do staff feel “done to” or are they onside, despite an unsettling experience?

• Does the restructure chart look logical and feel right in the circumstances?

• Do staff get the rationale behind the new structure?

• Do staff feel a sense of being engaged in the development of the new structure?

• To what extent have you stress-tested the plan though consultation with all stakeholders on the expected outcomes from the restructure process?

• Avoid the common mistake of focusing only on staff who are made redundant and staff who are remaining, ignoring those who will shortly be displaced by the process.

• Remain alert to any reputational damage arising as a result of staff disaffection – they can be strong vocal critics externally if they feel unfairly treated by the process.

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Appendix Abiding by the givens The law on redundancy is quite complex, covering both individual rights and collective consultation rights. For example, individuals have a right to be consulted, not to be unfairly selected for redundancy, to be offered suitable alternative employment if available, to paid time-off to seek work when under notice, and to a redundancy payment if they qualify. There may also be differences between statutory minimums and contractual entitlements.

Any process that involves change to employment contracts or potential job losses will require compliance with employment law. Although following the good practice set out in this publication should reduce any problems, you are advised to seek legal advice on any aspects of the process that are unclear.

It is important, therefore, to understand the process and, in particular, to understand your rights if you are affected by the proposed change: Consultation It is very poor practice to restructure without consulting the trade unions.

Indeed, if more than 20 redundancies are contemplated, it is actually unlawful. This duty to consult union representatives applies even if union members are only indirectly affected by the proposed redundancies, and even if some or all of the proposed redundancies will be from volunteers.

A recent change in the law means that when triggering the duty to consult, an employer does not need to count anyone whose fixed-term contract is ending and not being renewed in the statutory 20 (unless their contracts are ending prematurely for a redundancy-related reason). The individuals themselves may still be entitled to a redundancy payment, but their number no longer counts for collective consultation purposes.

The consultation itself must begin in good time, at least 30 days before the first dismissal takes place (or 45 days if 100 or more redundancies are proposed). European case law has established that collective consultation must have been completed before any redundancy notices are issued.

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The purpose of consultation is to seek ways of avoiding the dismissals, reducing the numbers affected, or mitigating the consequences; and such consultation should be meaningful and carried out with a view to reaching agreement. No new posts should be advertised until the collective consultation is complete.

Individuals at risk of redundancy must be consulted, even where there is no obligation to consult their union. If selection for redundancy occurs without proper consultation, there may be grounds for them to claim unfair dismissal.

Redundancy Who is doing what job is not the issue when deciding if a redundancy situation exists. Indeed, you can still have a redundancy situation if a particular kind of work requires fewer employees but the overall number of employees for other types of work increases. Who is made redundant is relevant only when it comes to their selection for redundancy. It is not relevant in considering whether their area of work is to cease or face reduction.

In schools and colleges, as elsewhere in the public sector, selection for redundancy usually arises as the result of an unsuccessful application for a post in the new management structure. Such reverse selection must be undertaken fairly, otherwise there are grounds for unfair dismissal.

Another method sometimes used is where people are matched to new jobs according to their skills and aptitude. Often referred to as assimilation, it differs from the above method because there is no competitive recruitment process.

A more orthodox method is to select those to be made redundant from a pool of workers who perform the same type of work using what should be objective, fair and verifiable selection criteria.

Whether an individual volunteers to take redundancy, or whether he or she is pushed, makes no legal difference.

Whatever the method used, the selection should not be on the basis of sex, race, trade union activities, religion, sexuality, disability or pregnancy, or for asserting various statutory rights.

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If you are personally at risk of redundancy If your post is at risk, or if you are not successful in securing your preferred post in the new structure, you need to know the options available to you.

Check whether any specific local employer policies apply (eg job security or redundancy policy, voluntary severance scheme etc). Some of this information will become clear once individual consultation has started.

Always use individual consultation to raise questions, express views and make counter suggestions, preferably with the help of your union’s regional officer who will have wide experience of this process. You should be looking for a meaningful dialogue on issues such as: • The criteria used to select you for redundancy.

• Any concerns you may have about the redundancy procedure.

• Any concerns you may have about whether a genuine redundancy situation exists.

• Feedback on why you have not been offered a new post, and an opportunity to challenge the decision.

• Suitable alternative employment or other job vacancies (including protection of your current salary).

• Sufficient notice in line with your contract, or a compensatory payment in lieu of notice.

• The likely impact on your pension, and the available options.

• The proposed redundancy package (including unused holidays, etc).

• Retraining opportunities or financial support for training.

• Reasonable time to consider your options.

• A job reference.

If offered figures for a redundancy payment, always check them. Ideally, an enhanced redundancy pay formula will have been agreed with the trade unions. But if it hasn’t don’t be afraid to seek improvements on what is offered. Also remember to count any previous continuous service at another college, school or in local government service. By law, the entire sector is counted as a single employer for redundancy purposes.

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By law, minimum redundancy compensation is 0.5 week’s pay for each complete year of service for staff aged between 18 and 21, one week’s pay for each complete year of service for staff between 22 and 40 years of age and 1.5 week’s pay for each complete year for staff aged 41 and over – taking account of a maximum of 20 years of service in total.

To qualify for the statutory payment you must have at least two years’ continuous service. Under this scheme, a week’s pay is capped at a maximum of £475 (from 6 April 2015). However, as we have said, this is a minimum, and your employer may have agreed to a policy that enhances this amount.

Often, your employer will want you to sign a settlement agreement (see below) if you are facing redundancy. This can sometimes be used to seek enhancements to any package, particularly where all that is currently offered is the statutory minimum.

There is often pressure to make an early decision about your future. If you want time to think, consult with family and speak further to your union, then insist on it.

Finally, ask for any offers in writing.

Alternative employment If you are facing redundancy, your employer has a legal duty to offer you “suitable alternative employment” where it is available, and you must consider any such offer. Should you refuse the offer then your grounds must be reasonable. Such an offer must be made before your current job becomes redundant; and the new position must start within four weeks of your current job ending.

By law, you have a four-week trial period after which you can leave and still qualify for redundancy payment (if eligible), provided you have reasonable grounds for deciding the job is not suitable. What might be considered “suitable” is open to debate, but would generally mean a post that is not substantially different in terms of status, pay and conditions.

Nor should you have to compete for any available suitable alternative jobs with those not facing redundancy. An employment appeals tribunal has ruled that advertising a potential alternative post to employees not at risk of redundancy is not reasonable (Ralph Martindale & Co Ltd v Harris).

The only other alternative may be to take a redundancy package. Ensure that you know exactly what redundancy compensation your employer will pay you, and the tax implications of the settlement (the first £30,000 should be free of PAYE and national insurance) before making a decision.

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Finally, be cautious when using the phrase “voluntary redundancy�. It is not a legal concept but could affect state benefits and things like mortgage protection insurance. You are still being dismissed (by reason of redundancy) whether you volunteer or are pushed, so avoid using the term.

Accepting new job offers Because, for redundancy purposes, employers in FE, local authorities and related services are treated as the same employer, care should be taken when accepting a new post.

If while you are still working but are to be made redundant (ie under notice), and, before your current job ends, you are offered a job in another school, college, new university or local government, then you should not start that job until a clear 28 calendar days after the termination of your contract of employment.

If you start any earlier then your continuous service in the sector will not be broken, and your current employer could refuse to make a redundancy payment.

For all other jobs you can start next day, including working for yourself.

Notice period You are entitled to, and can be required to work, your notice period.

Alternatively, your employer may dismiss you without proper notice, and, as compensation, add to your redundancy payment the gross pay you would have earned for that period. The tax position of pay in lieu of notice (PILON) will depend on a number of factors, including whether or not you have a PILON clause in your contract of employment.

Settlement agreements It is likely you will be asked to sign a settlement agreement. This is a formal way of settling the termination of your employment. Basically, in return for your redundancy compensation, you agree not to issue or make further legal proceedings regarding your case. It may also set out restrictions on what work you can perform once you leave.

Settlement agreements are regulated by law and should only be entered into after receiving advice from your union (you do not need to use a solicitor unless you are not in a union, in which case you will be subject to the cost of this legal advice).

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Was the redundancy fair?

A number of selection criteria were listed above which automatically make a redundancy unfair. But a redundancy dismissal still has to be fair under the general provisions of the Employment Rights Act 1996. So, for example, you may have a potential claim of unfair dismissal if: • the selection criteria were not objective and fairly applied • you were not warned beforehand and then consulted about your redundancy selection • suitable alternative work was available.

In deciding whether or not a dismissal is fair, a tribunal will consider whether the employer’s actions fell within a range of possible actions that were reasonable for it to take. A tribunal will not consider the business case for the redundancy.

Whether or not there is a financial or operational reason for your redundancy simply does not matter. The tribunal will only be concerned with the process.

Nor will it subject the selection criteria or the application of those criteria to minute scrutiny. If the criteria are objective and can be verified by reference to data such as records of attendance or performance, then the tribunal just needs to satisfy itself that the method of selection was not unfair and that it was applied in a reasonable fashion.

It is highly recommend that employers take advice from their HR service or solicitor. Cost pressures have led some employers to forego this, ploughing resources straight into a restructure process only for costly revisions to be required once a union has pointed out that the changes made or proposed breach employment law.

Further contact AMiE helpline: 01858 454171

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Resources Collins, J. (2002) Great to Good, Collins.

The Institute for Turnaround (IFT) Peters, S. (2012) The Chimp Paradox, Vermilion.

Jankel, N. (2015) Switch On, Watkins.

Wise, J. and Myatt, M. (2013) The S Word: Spirituality in the learning and skills sector.

‘Triage for casualties of change’, Times Educational Supplement, 11 July 2014.

SHL Talent Management: Guidelines for Best Practice in Restructure and Redeployment.

Archer, D. (2007) Leadership Trust: http://www.leadership.org.uk/files/ uploads/72.pdf.

Green, D. And Wright, M. (2014) Well-being: Leading and managing a well workplace, AMiE. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/leading_organizational_ transformations. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140108090250/http://www. ukces.org.uk/assets/ukces/docs/publications/evidence-report-18-executivesummary.pdf.

Griffith, J. (2004) ‘Relation of principal transformational leadership to school staff job satisfaction, staff turnover, and school performance’. Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 42, Issue 3, pp. 333–356.

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AMiE produces a range of resources – all free to members – that can be used either towards your CPD or as an aid to your working practice.

Listed below is a selection; for full details visit AMiE’s website at www.amie.atl.org.uk.

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE SERIES

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE SERIES

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE SERIES

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE SERIES

Leading to Outstanding Teaching and Learning

Improving performance through critical conversations

Well-being: leading and managing a well workplace

The Importance of Talent Management

By Peter Rushton

By Peter Rushton and Pauline Morris

By David Green and Mark Wright

By Peter Rushton

AMiE is ATL’s section for leaders in education

iv

Leading to Outstanding Teaching and Learning

AMiE is ATL’s section for leaders in education

iv

Improving Performance Through Critical Conversations

AMiE is ATL’s section for leaders in education

iv

Well-being: leading and managing a well workplace

AMiE is ATL’s section for leaders in education

iv

The Importance of Talent Management

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