The Employee Experience

Everything we do is founded on four School Values: courage, honour, humility and fellowship. These Values set out what matters most to us, and the behaviours below are intended as a shared set of expectations to refer to, and standards to aspire to, in our dealings with others. They are the practical application of our values.

The Employee Experience

Harrow School recognises that a great employee experience creates a great school experience. We aim for employees to be rewarded fairly, feel valued, and able to use their skills and opinions to make a positive difference in the organisation.

There is a rolling programme of activity to review policies, seek improvements, provide more information, deliver empowering training and encourage two-way communication.

This may take the form of enhancements to the School reward package, focus groups to gather equality and diversity opinion, an intranet site redesign to provide the tools and information that is important to everyone, or bespoke training that empowers and improves career prospects.

At the beginning of the School year, all staff gather in Speech Room for the Start-of-Term Briefing. The Head Master calls us all together as a whole community to reflect on the past year and focus on what is to come. We all keep in touch with what is going on with the weekly Harrow in Brief email sent to all staff. When we are unable to congregate on site, the Head Master holds regular video calls to which all staff are invited.

Wellbeing

The School puts employee wellbeing at the forefront of its employee strategy and has an annual Wellbeing Action Plan that co-ordinates the implementation of initiatives to promote mental wellbeing, improve internal communication, enhance employee skills and capture any other activities that positively affect employee wellbeing.

The wellbeing activities of the School are organised under these four headings:

• Myself: Understanding and looking after myself
• My community: Having a sense of belonging and value within the team and wider community
• My career: Having a role that is satisfying, stimulating and makes a difference
• My life support: The tools that provide freedom from worry and offer help in difficult times

Wellbeing champions from each area of the School support staff with wellbeing issues and drive wellbeing initiatives. We have held courses in personal financial management, devised lunchtime walking routes through our grounds, created a website that holds wellbeing information and signposting to expert organisations, and put together guides on different wellbeing subjects. These initiatives are being developed on a regular basis as we respond to the requirements of our staff community.