Strategic Workforce Design in Education
Are You Making the Most of Your Workforce Strategy?
Design the Workforce You Want. Build the Culture They Stay For.
Strategic Workforce Design in Education
Workforce challenges, particularly around recruitment and retention are complex, systemic, and deeply contextual. They cannot be solved through generic solutions or isolated interventions. Our Workforce Strategy Design service supports organisations to develop clear, sustainable workforce strategies through a structured, insight-led and co-designed process.
Our strategic design partnership empowers you to innovate your workforce strategy and design your culture and systems that future-ready how you attract, develop and retain talent.
Teacher turnover costs English schools an estimated £20 000 per teacher in recruitment and training.
(NFER, 2025)
Employees who feel aligned with company values are 41% less likely to leave.
(SHRM, 2025)
A strong organisational culture can reduce employee turnover by up to 50%.
(Glassdoor, 2019)
Our approach follows a three-stage design cycle that combines insight, interpretation, and organisational ownership.
Insight Tools & Evidence Gathering
Designed to surface patterns across leadership, culture, workforce experience, and systems.
We analyse and interpret the data to identify themes, pressure points, and opportunities.
Interpretation & Co-Design Lab
Insights are brought into a facilitated co-design lab with leaders and key stakeholders.
This is where strategy becomes meaningful, owned by the organisation.
Strategic Direction, Action & Review
Following the co-design lab, we support the organisation to:
Refine strategic workforce priorities
Agree practical, achievable actions
Set ownership, timelines, and success indicators
The strategy is set by the organisation. Our role is to support clarity, coherence, and alignment.
Optional Follow-Up
Many organisations choose to revisit their strategy after a period of implementation.
Optional follow-up support may include:
Review and reflection sessions
Leadership or team development aligned to the strategy
Coaching or advisory support during change
Further insight screens to track progress
This ensures workforce strategy remains live, responsive, and sustainable.
Insight is interpreted
Strategy is co-designed
Ownership remains with the organisation
Actions are realistic and context-specific
Follow-up is available without creating dependency
This approach supports long-term improvement in recruitment, retention, leadership capacity, and workforce sustainability.
Why This Approach Works
Who This Is For
This service is suited to organisations that:
Are experiencing recruitment and retention pressure
Want evidence-informed, human-centred strategy
Value ownership and co-design over external prescription
Are ready to move beyond reactive workforce responses
We work with executives, senior leaders, HR and people teams, and boards.
Craft a Clear, Effective and Sustainable Workforce Strategy
Enhance your systems level thinking to diagnose and address specific workforce challenges.
Design attractive and engaging recruitment offers.
Benefit from in-depth collaboration to problem solve and solution find.
Embed workforce strategy as a core component of school improvement, not as an operational afterthought.
Through key themes and concepts
Co-design
Feedback and
reflection for growth
Values informed
recruitment
Systems level thinking