Leading Your Staff Towards a Better Life-Work Balance

In most schools, long hours are simply assumed. Leaders joke that life-work balance isn't possible in education, and staff take the hint. That only changes when leaders decide what a reasonable working week looks like and act as if they mean it.

This session gives you practical places to start. Write a to-don't list of the tasks and meetings that make no difference to pupils, and see what happens when a regular meeting loses 10 minutes. Plan the year so there's a meeting-free 'duvet week' when everyone is running on empty, and start praising the habits you want to see rather than the late nights and early emails.

There's more to balance than workload, though. You'll also look at helping staff reconnect with why they came into education, and giving them permission to care deeply at school and switch off at home.