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The wellbeing of education staff remains a significant concern for schools and trusts. The Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025, published by Education Support, states that teacher wellbeing is at crisis point, with 76% of all staff stressed, 36% at risk of probable clinical depression, and 77% experiencing symptoms of poor mental health due to work. The report also records the lowest overall wellbeing score since recording began in 2019.
While many of the pressures facing the education sector stem from wider systematic challenges, there are meaningful steps that individual schools and trusts can take to improve the working lives of their people. In this blog, we will explore each step.
Workplace culture shapes how people experience their working environment. It influences whether staff feel valued, trusted and empowered, how they respond to challenges in the workplace, and whether they believe they can build a sustainable career within their organisation.
While teacher workload has been an important topic when understanding retention, it is rarely the whole picture. The wider working environment, quality of leadership, relationships between colleagues and group support all contribute to employee experience.
Effective staff wellbeing strategies need to extend beyond one-off activities. To make a sustained difference, wellbeing must be embedded into the culture, systems, and everyday behaviors of an organisation.
This means addressing the factors that contribute to stress and burnout while creating the conditions in which people can flourish. Key considerations include:
Autonomy and empowerment: Giving staff appropriate ownership of their work, opportunities to use their strengths and platform their voice in decisions that affect them.
Psychological safety: Creating an environment where people feel able to raise concerns, ask for help, challenge existing practices and learn from mistakes without fear of blame.
Trust and connection: Building positive working relationships.
Recognition and appreciation: Acknowledging contributions, celebrating successes and ensuring that staff feel their work is valued.
Sustainable ways of working: Reviewing processes, expectations and staffing arrangement to identify avoidable pressures and create a manageable working environment.
In a positive culture, successes are celebrated, challenges are addressed constructively and professional expertise is trusted. Leaders create opportunities for collaboration, listen to staff feedback and demonstrate that wellbeing is a shared organisational responsibility.
Practical changes do not always need to be complex. However, isolated actions will have limited impact if they are not supported by wider organisational behaviours. Staff need to see consistency between what an organisation says about wellbeing and what it expects of its people.
This requires leaders to consider not only what wellbeing initiatives are offered, but also how decisions are made, how workloads are managed, how change is communicated and how staff are treated when pressures increase.
A thriving workplace culture does not mean removing every challenge. It means creating the conditions in which people have the resources, relationships, confidence and support to navigate those challenges without compromising their wellbeing.
Staff wellbeing should not be viewed as separate from an organisation’s wider strategic priorities. It is closely connected to workforce sustainability, recruitment and retention, financial planning and the quality of education provided to pupils.
When staff feel valued and supported, organisations are better placed to retain experience, protect professional knowledge and maintain continuity for pupils and communities. Conversely, persistent stress, disengagement and avoidable turnover can create additional recruitment costs, increase pressure on remaining colleagues and undermine long-term workforce planning.
For schools and trusts operating within challenging financial circumstances, this makes a strategic approach to wellbeing particularly important. Investing in a positive workplace culture is not simply an additional cost or a gesture of goodwill; it is part of building a sustainable organisation.
Improving retention requires leaders to understand why people stay, why they leave and which aspects of the working environment can be changed. Reviewing workforce data and identifying patterns in absence, turnover and employee feedback can help organisations move from assumptions to evidence-informed action.
By bringing these insights together, leaders can make more informed decisions about the interventions most likely to improve staff experience and support organisational objectives.
As schools and trusts begin to navigate growth, mergers and evolving workforce challenges, creating a strong organisation culture has never been more important.
At Edwin People, we recognise that sustainable workforce strategies must consider the whole employee experience, including the culture, leadership behaviours and working practices that influence whether people feel able to thrive.
Through our Thriving culture package, we help leaders explore the relationship between people, culture and organisational performance, identifying opportunities to create healthier and more sustainable working environments.
Ultimately, for schools and trusts, prioritising staff wellbeing is an investment in the long-term health of the organisation, helping to strengthen relationships, improve retention and create the conditions for sustainable school improvement. By putting people at the heart of organisational strategy, education leaders can build workplaces where staff do more than cope with the demands of the sector; they feel valued, supported and able to flourish.