Stats show FE’s Greatest Retention Opportunities are the Everyday Ones

The biggest challenges facing the further education workforce are no great secret. 

Pay remains a big concern. Funding pressures limit what colleges can offer, while recruitment difficulties continue to affect vital subject areas. Recent research also found that one in five FE teachers receiving a targeted retention payment would otherwise have left. 

These structural challenges require serious attention. But when so much of the retention debate centres on the issues individual colleges cannot solve alone, it is easy to overlook the areas where they have more immediate influence. 

People Insight’s analysis of 153,027 scored survey responses from 4,394 employees across 13 FE organisations suggests that some of the sector’s greatest retention opportunities are found in ordinary working life. 

They are in the conversations employees have with their managers. They are in whether good work is noticed, whether people can see a future for themselves and whether their workload feels sustainable. 

These everyday experiences cannot replace fair pay or adequate funding, but they help determine whether employees feel valued, supported and able to continue building a career in FE. 

FE already has a workforce that cares 

Official People Insight benchmark data shows that 93% of FE employees care about the future of their college. That level of commitment is a tremendous asset. FE does not need to persuade its workforce that its purpose matters. The people teaching learners, supporting students and keeping colleges running already understand the value of what they do. 

However, commitment should not be mistaken for an unlimited resource. 

People can care deeply about their college and still become burnt out, frustrated or uncertain about their future. In fact, that commitment can sometimes disguise problems. Staff may continue giving more because they do not want their learners or colleagues to suffer, even when their own experience of work is becoming less sustainable. 

The question for colleges is how to protect the commitment that already exists. 

Only 54% receive regular manager feedback 

The largest gap in our FE benchmark concerns manager feedback. 

Only 54% of FE employees say their manager gives them regular feedback on how they are doing, 14 percentage points below the all-sector benchmark of 68%. 

Managers shape so much of the everyday employee experience. They help people understand what is expected, recognise progress, address problems and identify opportunities for development. 

Without regular feedback, employees may be left unsure whether they are doing well, where they need support or how their contribution is viewed. A formal annual appraisal cannot carry all of that weight. 

Regular feedback does not need to mean another complicated process or a diary full of lengthy meetings. Short, focused conversations can be effective when they happen consistently and cover more than immediate tasks. 

Managers might ask: 

• What is going well at the moment? 
• Where are you encountering unnecessary difficulty? 
• Is there anything preventing you from doing your best work? 
• What support or feedback would be useful? 
• Is there an area in which you would like to develop? 

The quality of these conversations matters, too. Telling someone they are doing a good job is pleasant, but explaining what they did well, why it mattered and how it helped learners or colleagues gives the feedback substance. 

Managers will need support to do this properly. So many are dealing with the same capacity and workload pressures as their teams. Colleges should ensure they have the time, information and confidence to hold useful conversations, as well as a clear route for escalating problems they cannot resolve themselves. 

A sector built on learning cannot let its people feel stuck 

Only 52% of FE employees in our analysis say they have opportunities to learn and grow, 10 percentage points below the all-sector benchmark, and for a sector dedicated to education and skills, that finding should give us pause. 

Development is often associated with formal courses, qualifications or promotion. Those routes matter, of course, but they are not the only ways people grow at work. When budgets and time are limited, colleges can still create meaningful opportunities through mentoring, coaching, job shadowing, project involvement and peer learning. 

The first step is often a better conversation. 

Do employees know what development is available? Can they see how their role might evolve? Are managers discussing their strengths and aspirations, or only addressing immediate priorities? 

Not everybody wants a conventional promotion. Some people want to deepen their expertise, take on a new responsibility or gain experience in another area. Development needs to be broad enough to recognise those different ambitions. 

Colleges should also examine whether opportunities are accessible across roles and departments. If development depends largely on who has the most confident manager, the greatest visibility or the most time to ask, valuable employees may be overlooked. 

People are more likely to imagine a future with an organisation when they can see how they might progress within it. 

Purpose does not remove the need for recognition 

Our benchmark data also shows that only 56% of FE employees feel valued and recognised, eight percentage points below the all-sector benchmark. 

FE employees may be motivated by making a difference, but purpose alone cannot sustain people indefinitely. Staff still need to know that their effort is visible and that their contribution is understood. 

Recognition does not have to be expensive or elaborate. In many cases, its value comes from being timely, specific and sincere. 

Rather than simply saying “thank you”, a manager or leader might explain how someone resolved a difficult situation, supported a colleague, improved a process or helped a learner achieve an important outcome. 

Colleges can also look at whose work is most likely to be recognised. Teaching achievements may be more visible, while the contributions of professional services, operational teams and support staff can be easier to miss. 

Recognition should reflect the full range of work that allows a college to succeed. 

This is not about introducing constant praise or pretending everything is going well. It is about ensuring that good work does not become invisible simply because it happens every day. 

Work-life balance cannot remain an individual problem 

Only 58% of FE employees respond positively about their work-life balance, 11 percentage points below the all-sector benchmark. 

Workload in FE is not a new concern, and no single college can remove every source of pressure. However, organisations can still examine how work is designed, prioritised and distributed. 

When workload becomes unsustainable, the response is often focused on helping individuals cope. Wellbeing resources can be valuable, but they cannot compensate for unclear priorities, unnecessary administration or a working culture in which people feel unable to say they have too much to do. 

Leaders should ask: 

• Which processes create work without enough value? 
• Where are employees completing the same task more than once? 
• Are new priorities being added without anything being removed? 
• Do staff feel safe raising concerns about capacity? 
• Are flexible-working policies reflected in everyday management decisions? 
• Are leaders modelling the working practices they encourage others to follow? 

Listening to employees is essential here because the people doing the work are often best placed to identify friction, duplication and avoidable demands. 

Not every workload problem will have a quick solution. Being honest about that is better than making vague promises. But when a college can remove even one recurring frustration, it shows that employees’ time and energy are being taken seriously. 

Retention is built one working day at a time 

Major initiatives attract attention because they are visible. They come with launch dates, project plans and announcements. 

The employee experience is different. It accumulates. 

It is shaped by whether a manager makes time for a conversation. Whether good work is acknowledged. Whether someone can see an opportunity to grow. Whether a difficult workload is examined or simply accepted. 

No single interaction will determine whether someone stays in FE. Together, however, these experiences tell employees what working for their college is likely to feel like in the months and years ahead. 

This is why retention should not sit solely with HR. Senior leaders establish the priorities and conditions, managers turn them into everyday experiences and employees provide the insight needed to understand where change would make the greatest difference. 

Rather than launching a long list of disconnected initiatives, colleges could begin with four practical questions: 

1. Are managers having regular and useful feedback conversations? 
2. Can employees see realistic opportunities to develop? 
3. Is good work recognised consistently across every part of the college? 
4. Are workload concerns leading to changes in how work is organised? 

FE staff surveys can identify where the problems are concentrated, but the conversation must continue after the results are shared. Colleges need to explore what sits behind the scores, choose a manageable number of priorities and report back on what has changed. 

Colleges can act while continuing to call for wider change 

FE needs serious national action on funding, pay and workforce capacity. Improving manager conversations or recognition should never be presented as a substitute for that. 

But colleges do not have to wait for every structural problem to be resolved before improving the everyday experience of their people. 

FE already has a highly committed workforce. The opportunity now is to make that commitment more sustainable by giving employees clearer support, greater recognition, meaningful opportunities to grow and a working life they can realistically maintain. 

The greatest retention opportunities may not always arrive through dramatic interventions. Often, they are built through the smaller experiences repeated across every working week. 

Those experiences may feel ordinary. To the person deciding whether they still have a future in FE, they can mean everything. 

By Jane Tidswell, HE and FE Director at People Insight