Staffing, 2.0

Among all the concerns that I face as a head of school, one that recurs with the greatest persistance is the challenge of staffing. In addition to the obvious (picking the right people), there is the larger issue of structuring staffing in a way that best meets the needs of my school. Increasingly, I have come to appreciate the importance of overall structure and role definition in getting this mix just right.

Over the last few months, our work in the strategic planning process revealed some important gaps in functionality. We had a robust structure for general and academic administration, but lacked focused expertise in marketing. At the same time, our admissions office needed to add capacity in the area of recruiting. We needed more staff hours to ensure that each prospective parent experienced multiple "touches" by professional staff and parent volunteers alike as they moved through the recruiting and admissions trajectory. The way that we responded to both of these challenges was somewhat out of the box, but offers examples that small (250 students or less) and even medium sized schools should consider.

I'll start with recruiting. I began by tightly conceiving the core functions of this position. Our recruiting associate would staff a volunteer committee that was responsibe for identifying prospective families and connecting them with peers who enroll children at my school. The recruiting associate would maintain a presence at community events and run in-house programs like our open house. Once I framed this role as a quarter time position, I decided not to piggy-back these duties onto any existing staff positions. Our present staff already had their time divided between multiple and competing priorities, and we felt that aggregating these responsibilities into a larger, existing role risked compromising our effectiveness in a crucial area. Still who wants to apply for one quarter of a job? While this position will post in the coming week as a stand-alone .25 FTE, I have also explored some creative vehicles. Looking out into our local community, I found that several agencies had part-time staff who might be a good fit. I have also opened a conversation with our local Federation about merging this role into the job description of a Federation-based outreach and engagement associate. Same demographic, same skill set...so we offered a defined financial contribution to increment the Federation position to a full time role, including health benefits.

In the area of marketing, the decision was much simpler. We knew that a full-time marketing strategist was a luxury that we simply could not afford, even as we remained aware of how critical these skills were to the school. Rather than looking at a position description, I developed a time-line of actionable goals that our school needed to execute, like updating our web page, developing new printed materials and (most important) defining a strategy for increasing the impact of viral marketing and word of mouth referrals. Once I understood the true objectives that our school needed to achieve in this area, it became clear that we didn't need another employee at all. What we did need was a great consultant who could fine-tune existing materials and kick-start the development of a small number of new structures. This person would need to invest a large amount of time from late summer through winter, but much less as we moved into spring. Those objectives turned into an RFP and eventually a short-term consulting contract that included a flexible allocation of hours and a clear definition of deliverables.

While I am approaching our staffing needs in the areas of marketing and recruiting in two very different ways, both began with a ground-up approach to my school's human resource challenges. A clear, functional view of goals helped me to define an appropriate vehicle for meeting the schools needs without taking other professionals off focus or over-investing in a level of staffing that I did not truly require. Whether it be an out-source arrangement like the one that I developed for our marketing needs, a tightly defined, part-time position or even a position-share with another agency, all of these strategies are tools that school leaders should consider as they work to maximize their organization's success.