Human Resources 

The Trust’s values thread through the entire employee life cycle, starting from the initial employee on-boarding process onwards. Alongside our People Promise, this approach creates an environment where employees can learn and grow, and where people can see the meaningful contributions they make towards the quality of education we provide for the young people in our care. Every employee contributes towards improving outcomes for children in one way or another. 

As a people-focused organisation, we understand that our mission relies on attracting top talent and being recognised as a great place to work, therefore our work is both reactive and proactive.   

Our People Team includes specialists who support our schools in the entire recruitment process, from advertisement to employee on-boarding. They ensure that we attract the best candidates for every position and implement a process that clearly assesses whether candidates align with our Trust values and possess the necessary knowledge and skills to join our brilliant team. 

We are dedicated to helping school leaders implement and sustain flexible working practices. We recognise flexible working can enhance recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers and support staff, and we have seen the impact it has on improving wellbeing, and promoting workforce equality. 

Employees have access to an exciting range of employee benefits from our health and wellbeing partner Vivup; all designed to improve physical, financial and mental health.  This includes accessing online GP appointments for employees and their children, to saving money on holidays, cinema tickets and the weekly shop.  We have found these benefits really help make a difference to our employees and their families. The exciting range of benefits our employees have access to includes:  

• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP): Confidential, impartial assistance to help staff in times of need including a 24/7, 365 days helpline and face to face and virtual counselling sessions.  
• Your Care: Supporting a healthier lifestyle with the help of assessments, goals and tools available on our wellbeing management platform.  
• Cycle to Work: Save up to 42% (subject to tax bracket) on the latest bikes and accessories.   
• Discounted gym membership. 
• Lifestyle Savings: Access to a huge range of savings across the UK’s major retailers.  

Our pay and reward structures are both competitive and equitable, enhanced by a variety of benefits. We are committed to maintaining fair and competitive grading and pay practices.  

We offer both the Local Government and Teachers’ Pension Schemes, providing our staff with excellent pension provisions. 

The wellbeing of our team and retaining quality employees is of paramount importance.  We aim for every employee to feel that they are important and valued and have the right opportunities to progress and flourish within Active Learning Trust. Professional development opportunities, linked to career pathways, enable this to happen. 

The Trust’s Wellbeing Group meets regularly and consists of approximately 20 colleagues representing each school and team within our Trust. It provides an additional voice across our Trust and initially focuses on enhancing wellbeing. The group’s collaborative efforts are centred on generating ideas and actions to improve the health and wellbeing of our teams.  

Our Trust’s commitment to wellbeing is reinforced by our declaration through the DfE Wellbeing Charter, which guides the board’s primary objective to focus on general wellbeing, mental health awareness, supervision, and school culture, implementing relevant actions across our Trust.  

We value every employee’s voice and undertake an annual employee wellbeing and engagement survey, supplemented with more ad hoc pulse surveys. We always act upon these surveys, reviewing internally over time and benchmarking externally. Action points and outcomes are shared with employees so that they know their voice has had an impact on initiatives or changes. Our commitment to employee engagement and relations also extends to our good working relationship with recognised Trade Union representatives.  We have regular, well-attended and productive consultative meetings with the employee’s representatives.   

We are committed to ensuring that all our colleagues are able to excel and thrive in their role, and ultimately stay with our Trust. We understand that providing high-quality learning opportunities significantly enhances job satisfaction, career progression and impact, regardless of the role.  

We continuously seek ways to develop and reward our staff. By recognising and nurturing talent, we facilitate career aspiration discussions and offer various forms of support for professional growth.   

Find out more about Professional Development at ALT

At our Trust, sharing knowledge and learning is crucial.  We encourage leaders to seize learning opportunities for their own development and that of their team members.  

Our Trust Training Team has developed a Learning and Development Programme that equips colleagues with essential people management skills, such as coaching, absence management, flexible working, policy updates, and promoting wellbeing.  

We have also established an Internal Coaching Programme which grants all our Headteachers access to an external coach. We are launching a coaching training programme alongside our programme of organisational coaching. This initiative aims to foster a coaching culture throughout the Trust, enabling leaders to grow and develop their teams.