The high school is a large organization (with less than 1000 employees) that has seen significant improvements in recent years. Thoughts and responses from interviewees reflect on the clear divergent state of the school. In other words, the organization is within a sustained period of growth and success in terms of student pass rates and the general performance of the school. Indeed, success is considered to be at an all-time high and the results and comments from OFSTED reflect this.
Much of this is connected and attributed to the Head of the school who took the leadership reins at a time when motivation and performance were thought to have almost hit ‗rock bottom‘. This new leader with a new vision is regarded as the linchpin for turning the fortunes of the organization around. The following expressions are mentioned in relation to the Head‘s leadership style:
―Very approachable … big on positive feedback.‖ High School respondent – support role;
―Very supportive and encouraging.‖ High School respondent – teacher;
―Dynamic, innovative, creative …‖ High School respondent – senior manager;
―Inspirational.‖ High School respondent – line manager.
Thus, employees praise his/her leadership approach and especially applaud the differences he/she has created before IIP involvement, in terms of training and development, and career enhancement opportunity. The Head integrated high standards of training and development as common practice. Interestingly, this common practice is available to all staff if they desire it; it is not a structured delivery process. This is thought to motivate employees further, because they feel in control of their own career destinies. In addition, the school intends to maintain IIP recognition for the foreseeable future.
The IIP journey for the high school is a fairly straightforward one. Before first achieving IIP recognition in 2002, the Head initially sought to analyze the current training and development practices, as the following quotation illustrates:
―We started the process of talking to them [IIP UK] and find out what it [IIP] was about. My reasoning for that was to get reflection – it wasn‘t actually to get Investors in People status. I didn‘t honestly expect to get it first time as we did. What I wanted was for them to reflect back to us where we needed to improve.‖ High School respondent – senior manager.
The initial assessment conducted by IIP assessors, however, led instantly to recognition. This is because the school was already able to provide evidence for the ten indicators that assess employers, as the following highlights:
―Investors in People is just saying ‗well yeah, you‘re doing it‘.‖ High School respondent – senior manager;
―It just rubberstamps a lot of the things we‘re doing already.‖ High School respondent – line manager.
This means there was no requirement or need to collaborate with IIP UK to enhance the current practices of the organization to achieve IIP status. In addition, and subsequent to both of the IIP recognition processes the organization has gone through, the school was given very few points to develop between assessment phases. In other words, IIP assessors:
―found it extremely difficult to secure a development point for [the school].‖ High School respondent – senior manager.
This is because the organization was already achieving and maintaining such high standards of training and development practice. This highlights an ease with which the school achieved and maintained IIP recognition. Added to this was another factor:
―Since the last Investors in People [reassessment], we‘ve never given Investors in People a second thought.‖ High School respondent – senior manager.
Thus, it appears that the school is more than capable of preserving the standards that it aspires to with or without the involvement of IIP. These perspectives on the IIP journey already begin to highlight issues with regards to the relevance and sustainability of the standard. Nevertheless, that dialogue and analysis is reserved for the discussion section that follows the data findings.
Employees‘ pride is expressed continuously throughout the interviews. The word ‗enjoyment‘ is frequently connected to the workplace and the high morale status of the workforce reflects this:
―I love it down here, it's my second home.‖ High school respondent – support role.
In addition, most of the employees discuss their long-term hopes to maintain a career within education, many referring directly to their desire to remain within that particular school. An abundance of employee biographies and stories of personal triumphs highlight much of the positive energy that existed at the time of the interviews. When discussing persistent difficulties and problems within the workplace – for example, large class sizes, bureaucratic red tape, departmental cultural differences – interviewees accepted such issues and retained their positive outlook. In other words, because the organization was performing so well, employees appeared to be able to cope better with the day-to-day difficulties that are thought to occur frequently within any educational establishment.
For the interviewer, this kind of positive outlook is thought to be extremely rare and precious within a workplace. It is a tribute to the leadership skills of the Headmaster and surrounding senior staff that this high performing culture can be achieved and maintained. This positive outlook was continuously and thoroughly questioned and probed throughout the interviews, but employee mindsets stood up to all scrutiny within all areas of the questionnaire.