HRMT20024 Essay: Attracting and Retaining Staff in Education Sector

This essay delves into the significant challenges encountered by the education sector in Australia concerning the attraction and retention of qualified staff. The paper highlights various obstacles, including high workloads, job insecurity, inadequate rewards, and insufficient resources, which contribute to high turnover rates. It examines the financial implications, such as the substantial investment in training and replacement, and the difficulty in finding candidates with the necessary professional, interpersonal, and leadership skills. The essay reviews the impact of institutional issues like discrimination, imbalances in reward systems, and limited growth opportunities, particularly for younger employees. Furthermore, it addresses the importance of effective human resource practices, interpersonal issues, and the need for non-financial benefits, such as recognition and promotion, to motivate and retain employees. Inefficiency in human resource management, poor talent management strategies, and ineffective leadership are also discussed as contributing factors. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of addressing these challenges to ensure the development and success of educational institutions.

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HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

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Human resource management is the strategic approach which leads effective management
of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive
advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer's
strategic objectives. Human resource department takes various initiatives in managing the
employees in the organization which includes training and development, reward management,
talent management as well as by adopting the human resource practice, so that employee will
feel motivated (Noe R. A., Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2015). However, still various
challenges faced by the organization while managing and retaining the employee in effective
manner (Shen & Benson, 2016). Therefore, in this essay, the education sector is selected and
various challenges which is faced by the sector in retaining and attracting of employees is
discussed.
The education sector is considered the system of education in which the group of
institutions such as schools, local educational authorities major aim is to offer education to
children as well as young people in the education setting. However, due to increase in the
competition, the education sector does expansion, development and innovation (Hewett, Shantz,
Mundy, & Alfes, 2018). This is the reason it become difficult for the sector to attract and retain
the competent employee in the organization, so that they can provide high level of professional
education to the students. However, various challenges faced by the education sector such as the
education sector also finds difficulty in attracting the new employees because of various reasons
such as high workload, job insecurity, insufficiency in the reward, recognition, funds as well as
resources (Stone & Deadrick, 2015). The other reason leads inadequate practices of management
and inadequacy in other faculty programs. However; the turnover rate in education sector is also
high because of increase in the institutions in Australia up to 22% in the year 2017. Therefore it
is difficult in recruiting and retaining high level of competent employees because of high
competition in the market, for this they need competent and talented employees which provides
education according to the needs and requirement of the students (Baum, 2015). However, it
becomes costly for the education institutions because of high expenditure in providing the
training to the employees. It is estimated that the education sector in Australia spends up to $25.9
billion in the training and replacement of employees (Tyagi, Singh, & Aggarwal, 2017).
However, it is become challenge for the institutions to find the competent employees because in
the education sector, companies find difficulty in searching the employees which have the ability

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of professional skills, interpersonal relations skills, and better traits of leadership. Therefore, for
recruiting and attracting the new employees in the education sector, it finds challenge in
searching the employees according to the requirements of the position as well as high rate of
funds spends in providing training to the employees (McCaffery, 2018).
From the articles reviewed, it finds that several institutional challenges leads difficulty in
retaining and motivating the professional teachers in the institutions such as discrimination
among the disabled individual which decreases the satisfaction level of the person. However,
reduction in the motivation negatively influences the retention of teachers (Lincoln, et al., 2014).
The imbalances in the system of rewards as well as high level of stress it is due to the increase in
competition among the students, so it significant for the teacher to provide high level of
education. However, this results in increases in the stress level among the teacher of the
institutions. In the Australian universities, there are lower opportunities of growth for the
professional teachers; however, it directly influenced the development of the universities (Noe,
Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2017). It is mainly for the young employees, which are playing a
major role for the growth of universities, in Australia the rate of young employees are higher
who all are dissatisfied because of lower opportunities of learning and development. It shows
that institutions have lack of planning about the workforce in the changing environment (Shen &
Benson, 2016). It is because nowadays because of high competition in the marketplace, some of
education universities in Australia such as Monash University, University of Melbourne finds
difficulty in retaining the old employees and attracting new one. Monash University also finds
challenging in retaining the employees by adopting the approach of reward management by
providing the staff discounts. However, this strategy is adopted by the company to motivate the
competent employees so that they feel motivated as well as to retain the existing employees
(Hecklau, Galeitzke, Flachs, & Kohl, 2016). Through this other members which is not performed
according to the satisfactory level gets dissatisfied, it become challenge to motivate and retain
those employees to performed efficient and results in the problem for both employees as well as
organization. Therefore articles describes that it is difficult to retain and motivate the teachers in
the Australian universities. However, it also has relationship with the development of educational
institutions because reduction in the motivation level leads difficulty in retaining as well as
attracting the talent in the institutions. This results in influencing the institutions in negative
manner.

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The challenges which education sector find in retaining as well as attracting the
employees of organization, when it does not follow the human resources practices. However,
according to the estimation employees leave their job because of personal problem and mainly
due to the interpersonal issues from their supervisor. Interpersonal issue is considered the major
concern in the education sector it is because of the reason that employees perform various tasks
such as guiding, teaching, motivating the students to perform well, organizing several programs
and activities for the students (Cascio, 2015). This results in interpersonal problems with the
manager, executive as well as with the other staff members of the institution (Collins,
McFadden, Rocco, & Mathis, 2015). However, it is considered the problem because education
sector find it very difficult to retain the existing worker, which is already having the
interpersonal problems with their supervisor.
The education sectors in Australia attract the employee by providing attractive salaries
packages to the employees. However, there are some of the employees which are not only
motivated with financial benefits they need non-financial benefits to remain motivated in the
education sectors. Therefore to retain and motivate those employees in the institutions,
institutions need to provide various benefits like recognition, awards, promotion (Negi, Negi, &
Pandey, 2015). It is considered difficult for the intuitions to provide the awards according to the
capability of employee, so that they feel motivated and other employee also not gets
dissatisfaction from this approach. This is the major problem in the educational universities to
maintain the financial as well as non-financial approach for managing, retaining as well as
attracting the employees (Black, 2015). The inefficiency in the executive of human resource also
led a problem of retaining and attracting the competent employee, the human resource of the
educational sectors has the responsibility to developing several strategies for maintaining as well
as attracting the employees. Therefore ineffective human resource does not make the initiative to
retain and attract the employees.
The education sector find difficulty in managing the talent, however, it is because of the
poor strategies of hiring as well as inadequate management of performance. However many of
the small institutions in Australia find difficult to retain the employees because they does not
know how to source the candidate as well as also find difficult in attracting the talent (Secundo,
Dumay, Schiuma, & Passiante, 2016). Sometimes the education sector does not provide the

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feedback to the employees in timely manner leads a problem of retaining and attracting
competent employee. It is due to the reason of expansion of education and considered time
consuming in providing the feedback to the employees in frequent basis (Madanat &
Khasawneh, 2018). Through this, universities may also find difficulty in giving the job offer to
the employees (Sparrow & Makram, 2015). Therefore the one reason can be ineffective
strategies of the institutions, that are without the bad plan for managing the staffing the company
finds difficulty in the procedure of managing the talent. However, lack of accuracy as well as
correctness in managing the performance considered a major challenge in retaining the existing
employees of the organization.
Further, sometimes the institutions set the goals for the employees that cannot be
achieved as well as measured to the employees who are not specialized in that educational
course; this creates inefficiency among the employees (Audenaert, Decramer, George,
Verschuere, & Waeyenberg, 2019). Therefore through this stress among the employees increases
and they end up quitting the job. The ineffectiveness in leadership also leads the issue of
retaining and attracting the employee in the organization. Therefore because of inadequate
initiative inside the institutions, representatives won't have direction in building up their ability.
The institutions all in all need to meet up to train and keep workers. However, lack of
performance management in the institution, it leads a problem in retaining the employees
because through ineffective management because of not providing complete, clear and attainable
explanation about the path for improvement. This results in decrease in the development of
educational institution because research demonstrates that reduction in the motivation level of
the employees has higher impact on the development of educational institutions (Thunnissen,
2016).
The other challenges which educational sector faced in retaining as well as attracting the
professional teacher in the institutions includes higher expectations of the teachers. However,
because of increase in the job opportunities employees have higher expectations from the
institutions. (Massaro, Dumay, & Garlatti, 2015) The other reason can be high competition; due
to increase in the competition the educational institutions takes the initiatives to provide the
benefits to the employees, so that it attract and hire superior talent in the educational institutions
(Prayag & Hosany, 2015). This is the challenges for the companies in retaining and attracting the

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new employees because of increase in the opportunities of job. Every, employee have higher
expectations from the job, so in this retention become the major issue when the employee
expects very high salary. Sometimes, the teachers has unrealistic assumptions, this is considered
the expectations which are unrealistic; although by getting all the comforts still they are not
satisfied (Annan-Diab & Molinari, 2017). This results in increasing the issue to retain and attract
those employees for the institutions.
Salary is the fixed payment which is received by the employee on monthly basis; it is
fixed according to the responsibilities as well as allocation of tasks. Salary is become major
concern, employees mainly attracted towards the job which provide higher packages (Bryson,
Crosby, & Stone, 2015). This is considered major issue for the companies to retain the
employees in the organization, when employee needs higher package which is mismatching with
their responsibilities of the jobs. However, the lack of developmental opportunities also results in
difficulty to retain the professionals in the universities (Hudi, Ruslan, Samad, Hadi, Nair, &
Punadi, 2018). In the educational sector professionals, teacher provides the education to the
students. However, there are some of the specialist, who is specialize in particular area, due to
performing same tasks without the development opportunities, the person will be less energetic
and become bored at certain point of time (Behera & Khatei, 2018). Therefore it becomes
challenge for them to retain the employee who are more competent and want to work in the
challenging tasks.
The major reasons, through which the institutions find challenge in attracting and hiring
the competent employee for the job position because of lack of initiative in adopting the strategy
of social media platform which includes Twitter, Facebook (Al-Alawi, Abdulmohsen, Al-Malki,
& Mehrotra, 2019). It is because this social media apps support the educational institutions in
searching the competent candidate as well as also helps in attracting them by connecting with
various number of candidates. However, inefficient procedure of selection also becomes a
problem for the educational institutions to attract talented employee. It is the significant strategy
for the institutions to attract the competent teachers in the universities (Oke, 2016). Therefore
inadequate resources for the teachers for providing efficient education to the children lead in
dissatisfaction among the teachers of institutions because many of the institutions in Australia,
does not provide various facilities to the teachers. However, this becomes the challenge for the

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educational institutions to retain the employee’s finds that educational institutions provide
inadequate resources. The internal factor of institution that is culture, which is in the form of
trust, believes system, method as well as structure which are the main aspect of the employee.
This is considered important because this factor motivates the employee to perform effectively in
the organization (Omotayo, 2015). The workforce diversity also considered an important factor
which is the challenge for the educational institutes to hire diverse culture in the universities.
However, the education sector is to focus on these aspects and work within the structure of the
organization. If workforce of the organization does not trust and believe their manager, it is
difficult for the institutes of educational sector to motivate for the efficient work as well as to
retain the employee in the organization.
The employees could be having various personal issues which disturbing them to work
efficiently (Areekkuzhiyil, 2016). Therefore it becomes challenge for institutions to retain and
attract the competent employee, which are having their personal issues. It also finds challenge,
when the employee is lacked in the training because of the inadequate resources, employee were
having lack of knowledge according to the requirement of the job that is lack of communication
skills, lack of ability to provide effective education to the students (Duarte & Neves, 2015).
However, employee would quit the job because of lack of developmental facilities as well as
inadequacy in the resources. The company finds difficulty in retaining those employees it is
because of lack of inadequate resources which hinders the development of employees.
From the above it is conclude that human resource management is considered a
significant approach which helps in retaining as well as attracting the competent employee in the
organization. However, from the previous studies, it conclude that various challenges faced by
the institutions of educational sector, which has the direct influence in the growth and expansion
of institutions. From the above it also conclude that there are many reasons, which become the
challenge for the educational sector such as high level of stress, workforce diversity, inadequate
growth opportunities, high expectations of employees as well as inadequate salary packages.
These all are the factors which are important and leads a major issue for the education sector to
adopt the strategies, through which the employees remain, retained and attracted.
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