Designing an Employee Experience Approach to Teacher Retention in Hard-to-Staff Schools

Abstract

Many school employers struggle with teacher turnover challenges despite their use of wide-ranging teacher retention initiatives. Emphasizing a new Talent Centered Education Leadership approach, this article relies on a theory-building methodology that leverages the theories of career choice and Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene, empirical literature that examines the differentiated needs of teachers throughout the stages of their career, and modern strategic human resource management practices, to argue that school leaders should intentionally design a supportive employee experience for teacher support. Guidance is provided for the addressing of staffing issues in hard-to-staff secondary schools, accounting for the total employee experience journey from entry to retirement.

Keywords

teacher retention teacher career employee experience human resources management talent management

There are many who no longer see teaching as a career-long occupation, as evident by the increase of short-term teachers relative to their career-long counterparts (Glazer, 2018). The U.S. national teacher turnover rate is approximately 8% a year, two-thirds of which leave before retirement age (Sutcher et al., 2016). Many school employers (e.g., school districts) continue to struggle with teacher shortage challenges, despite their use of wide-ranging initiatives to keep teachers in classrooms. Emphasizing a new Talent Centered Education Leadership approach (Tran, in press), this article relies on a theory-building methodology that leverages the theories of career choice and Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene, empirical literature that examines the differentiated needs of teachers through the different stages of their career, and modern strategic human resources management (HRM) practices, to argue that school leaders should intentionally design a supportive employee experience for teacher support as an organizational talent management strategy. Guidance is provided for the addressing of staffing issues in hard-to-staff secondary schools, accounting for the total employee experience journey from entry to retirement.

The Issue of Teacher Turnover

There are many reasons teachers may opt to leave their positions. Teachers can turnover from schools involuntarily (e.g., terminated or laid off) or voluntarily (e.g., resignation or retirement). Even among those who voluntarily leave their schools, they can do so for a variety of reasons, including attrition, meaning they left the teaching profession entirely (i.e., the leavers) or migration, meaning they left their position to teach at another school (i.e., movers; Ingersoll, 2003). The sources of these turnovers can stem from negative reasons such as dissatisfaction with working conditions (e.g., low pay, noncollegial environment, large class sizes, unsafe working conditions), natural reasons such as retirement and neutral reasons such as spousal job relocation. Some leave teaching to raise a family, for example, then return to the profession years later and become “returners” (Gray & Taie, 2015). Olsen and Anderson (2007) further identify “shifters” as teachers who leave the classroom, but move into related education roles such as administrators and educational researchers (see Sutcher et al., 2019, for further review of the sources of teacher shortages.

Given that teachers can leave their job for numerous reasons, Kelchtermans (2017) defines teacher retention as “the need to prevent good teachers from leaving the job for the wrong reasons” (Kelchtermans, 2017, p. 965). One primary “wrong reason” involves insufficient employer support for teacher needs. This particular reason is worthy of attention given that administrative support has been identified as the most important factor for teacher retention (Horng, 2009; Ingersoll, 2001), and more recently, teacher recruitment as well (Tran & Smith, 2020). It is this definition of teacher retention that is the focus of our article.

Constant teacher turnover threatens educational continuity, depletes institutional memory, diminishes trust within schools, can negatively influence school culture negatively, is costly and often detrimental to student achievement (Barnes et al., 2007; Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2019; Sutcher et al., 2016). Ronfeldt et al. (2013), for instance, found that students in grade levels with higher teacher turnover scored lower in math and reading, with the effects more pronounced in schools with larger proportions of low-performing and Black students. Students in these “hard-to-staff” schools experience higher rates of inexperienced and inadequately trained teachers, substitute usage, and canceled classes. Consequently, teacher retention is often an issue of equity.

An Employee Experience Talent Management Approach

While districts and policymakers have employed various teacher retention initiatives, they have done so in a reactive and piecemeal fashion. This approach often leaves traditional public school employers (especially in “hard-to-staff” contexts) struggling to consider how those initiatives might function holistically to address their educator staffing issues (Strunk & Zeehandelaar, 2015). Meanwhile, progressive thinkers in strategic HRM have emphasized the total employee experience, from entry to exit (Mazor, 2018), as the core of the organization’s talent management strategy. Historically, organizations have assessed organizational needs and have leveraged employees to meet these needs. Alternatively, an employee experience approach starts with empathizing with the needs of the employee, based on the understanding that satisfied employees become more engaged with the organization and are more motivated to go beyond the call of duty to accomplish the organization’s missions and goals (Manning et al., 2012). Originating out of design thinking, an employee experience approach to talent management:

. . . treats work not as mere employment, but as a life journey, with the employee as the hero. The employee journey has many milestones and interactions (or touchpoints), and the quality of employee experiences has a direct influence on employee satisfaction, engagement, commitment, and in the end performance . . . Rather than the traditional “transactional” [human resources] strategy, the organization must more deeply understand, the needs, wants, fears and emotions of each employee.” (Plaskoff, 2017, p. 137)

Progressive employers who seek to intentionally engage and retain their employees employ strategic talent management that optimizes the employee’s entire organizational experience (see Figure 1). For schools that desire to employ a Talent Centered Education Leadership Approach (Tran, in press), their focus should move beyond organizational needs to be inclusive of employee needs. The first step is to understand the needs of teachers across each phase of their careers. Then, considering employment problems at decision points across the teacher career journey, schools must test potential fixes and implement a mix of different solutions to design the ideal overall workforce experience.

Figure 1.

School employer’s employee experience talent management approach.

To aid school employers with designing an employee experience approach to talent management, we pose the following question:

How can school employers intentionally design their teachers’ employee experience to sustain the retention of quality teachers, especially in hard-to-staff contexts?

We utilize a theory-building methodology (Gioia & Pitre, 1990) to leverage the theories of career choice and Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene, in conjunction with a careful analysis of the teacher retention literature, to promote a modern HRM strategy in response to this question. This article guides school employers and policymakers on how to address teacher retention issues by developing individualized solutions and accounting for the total employee experience journey of teachers in their talent management efforts. This guidance is especially needed for secondary school teachers, who are speculated to be more susceptible to the influences of working conditions because of their more “fragmented” workdays. This fragmentation reduces their time and connection with students to address their own needs (Rinke, 2008), which has implications on their sense of self-efficacy. While we emphasize support for secondary teachers, the model can be applied across school levels.

Methodology

Theory building is a method that allows for the refinement or development of theory, based on an integration of prior theories, the literature and occasionally, cutting edge practices. The approach, popularized in HRM literature (Gioia & Pitre, 1990), has been increasingly prevalent in other fields, such as education leadership (Myran & Sutherland, 2019). The purpose of this article is to offer a model for capacity building that counters the neoliberal and managerial emphasis in education HRM and progress toward a more developmental and human-centered approach of Talent Centered Education Leadership (Tran, in press). This work also aligns with what Gioia and Pitre (1990) refer to as theory building in the radical humanist paradigm, where

[t]he goal of theory is to free organization members from sources of domination, alienation, exploitation, and repression by critiquing the existing social structure with the intent of changing it. (p. 588)

It does this by serving an emancipatory function (Biesta et al., 2011) that reframes the utilitarian HRM narrative often promoted in service of the needs of the organization to be inclusive of the needs of the education workforce.

In the next sections, we respectively introduce career choice and Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theories, while integrating a synthesis of the teacher retention literature. We then present the sustaining teacher employment model to make sense of the theories and literature and explain how the model can be used to shift the paradigm and norms towards a talent centered focus that takes into consideration how to support teachers through their career journey. We focus specifically on its application in hard-to-staff schools. An employee experience approach to education talent management is theorized to not only improve teacher retention but also satisfaction, engagement, and performance as well.

Career Choice Theory

Given that approximately 12% of teachers leave the profession within their first 3 years of teaching in the United States (Gray & Taie, 2015), it is understandable that teacher retention scholarship and policy have focused on entry-level teachers. However, scholars increasingly recognize that teachers beyond the first career phase need more attention (Margolis, 2008; Smith & Ulvik, 2017; Towers & Maguire, 2017). Because the factors that affect teacher employment may differ between beginning and veteran teachers, a more comprehensive examination of these career-spanning factors is warranted as potential means to mitigate shortages in high attrition teacher labor markets.

The career life cycle is not linear. Instead, it has a “dynamic manner” that “reflect[s] responses to personal and organizational environmental factors” (Lynn, 2002, p. 179). Career choice theory accounts for this. Farley-Ripple et al. (2018) describe career choice theory as the interactions among three influential factors—personal characteristics (e.g., teacher ethnic background and sense of self-efficacy), environmental conditions (e.g., school contexts/locale and accountability pressures), and individual behavior (e.g., teachers’ job duties and responsibilities)—and advocate for its use in examining educator career paths and trajectories. Ultimately, they argue that these complex interactions shape/produce career decisions.

Huberman (1989) similarly emphasized the importance of considering the unique combinations of different types of factors as they can shape a teacher’s development or trajectory. For example, a teacher may be generally confident in her or his teaching but feel considerably more diffident in high-poverty rural and urban contexts, which may result in the avoidance of such locales. This theory accounts for both external and internal influences that align with motivator and hygiene principles deriving from Herzberg’s seminal motivation-hygiene theory that are described as having a “push” (out of the profession) or “pull” (into the profession) effect with implications for satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory

Since its introduction more than half a century ago, Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory has seen its share of supporters and critics. However, recently, the theory seems to have been gaining traction again. Sachau (2007), for example, argued that the theory is consistent with the emerging positive psychology research that focuses on human well-being.

Herzberg et al. (1957) motivation-hygiene theory posits that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction exists on a dual continuum (Figure 2), where attractive factors (motivators) affect the degree of job satisfaction (i.e., high to no job satisfaction) and detracting factors (hygiene) affect the degree of job dissatisfaction (i.e., high to no job dissatisfaction). Motivators represent intrinsic motivation associated with the job, whereas hygiene factors represent extrinsic factors associated with the job context.

Figure 2.

Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory’s view of job satisfaction.

Motivators involve growth, whereas hygiene involves avoidance of unpleasantness (Herzberg et al., 1959). Herzberg distinguishes between motivation, which refers to the former and movement, which refers to the latter. Motivated employees are engaged with and invested in their jobs because their hearts are into it (increasing job satisfaction), whereas employees are controlled to “move” by extrinsic incentives, for example, via financial rewards (that may reduce job dissatisfaction). To employ a relationship approach to Talent Centered Education Leadership would mean demonstrating respect for and understanding of teacher needs (both intrinsic and extrinsic; Tran, in press). This relationship approach, in turn, increases the likelihood that the teacher will be motivated to work and stay at the school.

Herzberg et al.’s (1957) approach contrast with others that purport a single continuum of job satisfaction-influencing factors (Figure 3). Specifically, they theorize that satisfaction and dissatisfaction operate on different continua rather than occupy opposite positions on the same continuum (i.e., job satisfaction to dissatisfaction). According to Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, the opposite of job satisfaction is not job dissatisfaction but no job satisfaction and the opposite of job dissatisfaction is not job satisfaction but no job dissatisfaction (Herzberg et al., 1959).

Figure 3.

Traditional view of job satisfaction.

Hygiene Factors

According to Herzberg’s theory, addressing hygiene can allay dissatisfaction, but are less critical for influencing satisfaction. Herzberg theorized that job satisfaction is influenced by achievement and growth derived from the actual work itself. These factors are incentives that are intrinsic to the performance of the work. On the other hand, addressing motivator needs is vital for influencing satisfaction, but failing to address them will likely not produce dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction derives from factors that represent extrinsic factors (to the performance of the work) such as the work environment or compensation.

Hygiene factors are theorized to be more extrinsic to the performance of the job, and they include factors such as organizational policy, working conditions, and interpersonal relations. They are often related to the job’s context. Motivators were theorized to be more intrinsic to the job itself and include factors such as job recognition, responsibility, advancement, and the actual performance of the duties of the work itself. They are related to the job’s content and the individual’s intrinsic attitude about the work of the job.

Despite the knowledge accumulated concerning the factors that promote teacher staffing challenges, the problem has existed for quite some time, especially for “hard-to-staff” subjects (e.g., special education, math, and science, ESL [English as a second language]) and schools (e.g., rural and urban “high needs” contexts with a large proportion of underrepresented minority, low academic achieving, and high poverty backgrounds). The long-standing existence of this problem may be because

. . . analyses of these factors lack a coherent theoretical framework that could provide much-needed insight into the processes that drive teacher [staffing challenges]. Without such a theory, policies aimed at curbing teacher turnover will likely suffer from weak or misidentified theories of change, and ultimately, be ineffective. (Vagi & Pivovarova, 2017, p. 782)

While the bulk of the teacher employment scholarship and policies often focuses on extrinsic hygiene factors such as increasing financial incentives to recruit and retain teachers, according to Herzberg et al. (1959), even if properly implemented (e.g., salary incentives are sufficient to matter), this only addresses the reduction of job dissatisfaction, which does not necessarily increase satisfaction. Take teacher salary for instance. Judge et al. (2010) reviewed 120 years of research across 92 quantitative studies and found a weak relationship (r = 1.4) between salary and job satisfaction (a frequently perceived antecedent to retention; Griffeth et al., 2000). Despite this, policymakers, legislatures, and school leaders often look to financial and compensatory incentives such as loan forgiveness and salary increases as potential solutions to teacher staffing challenges, particularly in hard-to-staff areas (McClure & Reeves, 2004; National Conference of State Legislatures, 2017). Nonetheless, schools in these contexts continue to struggle with retaining their teachers.

The emphasis on extrinsic hygiene factors, especially financial incentives, is understandable given that (a) they are more easily manipulated by policymakers (Maranto & Shuls, 2012) and (b) teachers in hard-to-staff contexts often receive lower pay relative to their counterparts (Jimerson, 2003). Low pay, for example, results in job or pay dissatisfaction, which leads to increased turnover (Curtis, 2012), intentions to turnover (Tran, 2016), and is linked to lower student outcomes (Grissom & Strunk, 2012). However, as mentioned, mitigating job dissatisfaction alone will not keep teachers in hard-to-staff schools, and any positive effects are likely ephemeral. In other words, adequate pay is a necessary but insufficient condition for sustained teacher retention.

The reality is some teachers enter and exit the teaching profession at various points of their longitudinal experience due to a complex array of interactions between the individual, professional, and environmental influences that span across the teacher career (Farley-Ripple et al., 2012; Rinke, 2008). These influences include the work environment, the individual’s identity, the social status of the teaching profession, institutional and societal pressures, and life choices, just to name a few (Kelchtermans, 2017). The result of these complex interactions can be employment choice decisions that offer difficult tradeoffs—such as leaving a higher paying job for a lower-paying one because one feels disrespected by their employer or limited in their creative expression on the job. Borman and Dowling (2008) further argue that the relative importance of the factors that influence an individual’s teacher employment decision evolves over the teacher’s career, and teacher employment theories should capture such nuances. Putting it all together, the factors that draw an individual into the teaching profession may differ from those that draw teachers into specific schools, and those may further differ from the factors that sustain a teacher to remain in the profession.

From a recruitment perspective, hygiene is essential to address because they represent barriers that decrease applicant interests working at hard-to-staff schools, while motivators attract and motivate applicants to apply to teach there. From a retention perspective, both are important for keeping employees, but addressing motivators and hygiene factors in conjunction results in enduring job satisfaction and mitigates unattractive conditions that would result in job dissatisfaction, respectively. To contextualize this, imagine an individual leaving a teaching job they enjoy because they do not earn enough in salary to pay for living expenses (hygiene factor) or an individual leaving a teaching job that pays well, but they do not enjoy teaching daily (motivating factor). From these examples, the ideal situation is to hire someone who intrinsically enjoys teaching and is paid enough to not worry about the salary.

Motivation Factors

Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory suggests that intrinsic motivators are more critical than hygiene factors when it comes to enduring retention of employees in general (Herzberg et al., 1957). However, more recent research has supported the argument that the limitations in providing financial rewards in the public sector make the theory particularly relevant to public sector employees, by distinctly linking motivators (as opposed to hygienes) with job satisfaction (Hur, 2018). Even among public workers, it is arguable that the theory is even more relevant to teachers. There is a saying that people do not enter the teaching profession for money. Many educators who have persevered through the years and thrived in the profession originally came into teaching because of a “calling” (Yinon & Orland-Barak, 2017) or a “sense of mission” (Freedman & Appleman, 2009). Relatedly, findings from past studies have supported the argument that individuals often enter the teaching profession because of intrinsically motivated altruistic reasons. These reasons include enthusiasm for teaching youth (Curtis, 2012), helping children (Struyven et al., 2013), making a positive difference in society (Brunetti, 2001; Curtis, 2012; Tran et al., 2015), and improving social equity (Fokkens-Bruinsma & Canrinus, 2012).

Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory is supported by empirical data gathered from Herzberg et al.’s (1959) own work based on interviews with engineers and accountants. In this work, interviewees described aspects of their jobs that brought about positive and negative feelings. Their results suggested that motivators determine job satisfaction and hygienes determined dissatisfaction. Bassett-Jones and Lloyd (2005) tested the staying power of Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory approximately half a decade after it was introduced with a sample of 3,200 employees because critics of the theory claimed it was outdated and no longer applicable. They found evidence to support the theory that intrinsic motivating factors are more important for positive employee outcomes (in this case, employee idea contribution) than extrinsic hygiene factors. Supporting evidence for the theory has also been found in the field of education. For instance, Chu and Kuo (2015) found motivating factors to be more important than hygiene factors for job involvement in their sample of Taiwanese elementary school teachers. Similarly, Katt and Condly (2009) found support for the importance of motivating psychological growth factors on the positive motivation of their sample of college students.

Herzberg’s seminal theory of work motivation provides a foundational understanding for the concept of job satisfaction, which is associated with workforce retention (Griffeth et al., 2000). The use of Herzberg’s theory of motivation as an interpretive tool is also relevant because “[t]he reasons individuals are motivated to take up or leave any profession are many and complex so understanding the motivational reasons is necessary before any change can be advocated” (Ashiedu & Scott-Ladd, 2012, p. 18).

In addition to material needs, many hygiene factors likely influence symbolic processes. For example, lower teacher salaries may prevent entry into or staying in the teaching profession because of material disadvantages, such as the requirement of teachers working a second job to “pay the bills” and make ends meet, but the individual can also interpret it as a lack of respect and appreciation for the work (Kelchtermans, 2017; Tran & Smith, 2019). Many proposed teacher staffing initiatives for ‘hard-to-staff’ schools, such as financial incentives, target hygiene needs, essentially only addressing the foundational physiological levels of Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs. Yes, hygiene needs (e.g., the ability to earn a living, pay bills, and care for one’s family) need addressed; however, addressing only hygiene needs will not mitigate teacher staffing problems. Instead, sustainable and effective talent management strategies must first comprehensively tackle prospective teacher applicants’ hygiene needs to minimize negative extrinsic factors, then address motivator needs to captivate their intrinsic desire/interest.

The Sustaining Teacher Employment Model

Enduring satisfaction, engagement, and the consequent employment sustainability necessitate teacher retention policies that prioritize mitigating the detrimental effects of hygiene factors. These include policies that address low salaries and challenging environmental work context. Furthermore, intrinsic motivating factors, such as providing administrative support so that the employee’s work is manageable and meaningful, must also be attended to. Within the employee experience framework, addressing material hygiene factors alone can serve as a short-term “quick-fix to organizational engagement issues,” but real, sustainable “[e]ngagement in work in the experience economy stems from meaning and purpose” (Plaskoff, 2017, p. 141). Figure 4 graphically displays this model, demonstrating the necessity to address both hygiene and motivating factors in order to sustain teacher employment. As shown, though hygiene factors may minimize dissatisfaction during a teacher’s initial years with an organization, they primarily address recruitment via mitigating deterrent factors.

Figure 4.

Sustaining teacher employment model.

Conversely, while motivator factors can affect both recruitment and retention, they predominately impact teacher satisfaction. Thus, it is only in tandem that schools can craft an environment conducive to sustained teacher employment, retention, and engagement.

There exists research to support the model. For instance, Goodpaster et al.’s (2012) phenomenological study focused on six rural in-service science teachers to better understand their perceptions of the benefits and challenges of rural teaching, specifically in science. The findings revealed the importance of strong interpersonal relationships and community ties (e.g., teacher-parent connections, mutual trust and sense of reward, developing connections as an “outsider”), school factors (e.g., contact between teachers and administrators, personal interactions with students, safe school environments, salaries, and benefits), and professional factors (e.g., intellectual stimulation, opportunities for professional development, satisfaction, job security, insufficient mentoring). As can be seen, extrinsic hygiene factors (e.g., challenging public relations, depressed salaries and benefits, safe school environment) and intrinsic motivators (e.g., sense of reward from work, intellectual stimulation) often work simultaneously influencing rural teachers’ perception of their employment in both positive and negative ways.

Similarly, Ashiedu and Scott-Ladd (2012) interviewed and surveyed both active and retired Australian teachers concerning their source of attraction to the teaching profession and what influences their decision to stay or leave. While extrinsic factors such as pay, job security, and working conditions were important, the most influential factor on their retention decision was intrinsic motivation, such as their desire, joy, and intellectual fulfillment obtained from the act of teaching itself. As aligned with Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, departed teachers frequently cited extrinsic conditions as influencing their reason for departure, but active teachers identified intrinsic motivators as their most significant attractor and reason for retention. In sum, according to the authors, their “findings suggest that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are important; there is not only a need to improve pay and conditions-employee autonomy, support and recognition are also critical” (Ashiedu & Scott-Ladd, 2012, p. 28). That said, to better strategize policy decisions to address what factors matter when, it is essential to gain a better understanding of the teacher career journey.

The Teacher Journey

When considering the teacher career journey, we focus on the intrinsic motivating factor that is most critical to supporting the work of teaching—development. Huberman (1989), leveraging a stage theory of development, was among the first to detail the teacher career cycle comprehensively, separating it into distinct phases: the beginning, mid-career, and late-career. While presented linearly, Huberman argues that the model may progress nonlinearly, especially after the stabilization phase, and teachers may skip or transition back and forth between phases. Likewise, Ballantine and Hammack (2014) suggest three major stages of the teacher career cycle, which differentially impact their commitment: the early survival years, the stable middle years, and the disengaged final years. As teachers progress through the phases, they can either engage in critical reflection and growth or disengage and eventually withdraw from the profession. Many consider the career life cycle a developmental model; however, like Margolis (2008), we argue that it can be a helpful framework for better understanding teacher employment decisions, and in our case, the sustaining teacher employment model.

Within the employee experience framework, each phase in the teacher journey contains distinct “moments that matter” (Mazor, 2018) that require specific solutions for differentiated issues (see Figure 5). While the HRM literature considers an individual’s pre-employment experience with an employer as part of the employee journey, for clarity and succinctness, we restrict our following discussion to post-hiring employment.

Figure 5.

Mapping the teacher journey through the employee experience framework.

The importance of the distinction between career stages for teacher outcomes is supported in the empirical literature. For example, based on a nationally representative School and Staffing Survey data set, You and Conley (2015) examined factors that predicted secondary (middle and high school) teachers’ intention to turnover across different career stages (i.e., beginners, mid-careers, and veterans). They found a direct relationship between administrative support and mid-career teachers’ intention to turnover, and the indirect relationship between the two through job satisfaction, work, and career commitment for beginning and veteran teachers. Teacher empowerment factors such as classroom autonomy and discretion affected career commitment for mid-career and veteran teachers. Because of the importance of career stages, we review each primary stage, based on Huberman’s (1989) career cycle conception of each stage, in further detail.

Beginning Teachers

Beginning teachers with 1 to 3 years of experience are in the first phase of the teacher cycle, what Huberman (1989) calls the career entry or “survival” years. These teachers are learning how to teach, navigate their school environment, and interact with stakeholders, including parents and students. During this phase, teachers with no serious interest in teaching (Lindqvist et al., 2014) merely explore the profession (Rinke, 2013), and many become overwhelmed by the associated pressures and anxieties and leave the profession. While all teachers can benefit from recognition, realistic expectations, encouragement, clear expectations, actionable feedback and less uncertainty with their day-to-day work environment, for beginning teachers, these types of support are particularly critical. Most of the research on teacher employment and retention strategies focus on teachers in this stage of the career cycle (Lindqvist et al., 2014), likely because this is when a large portion of teacher attrition (i.e., almost 20%) occurs (Glazer, 2018; Gray & Taie, 2015).

Several early teacher career retention strategies and policies show promise. For instance, Ronfeldt and McQueen (2017) examined survey results from a nationally representative sample of schools and teachers and found less teacher migration and attrition among first-year teachers who receive induction support. These results would indicate the importance of helping new teachers acclimate and develop their sense of self-efficacy and represent an interaction among personal, individual, and environmental factors. Similarly, Ronfeldt (2012) examined the influence of teacher preparation experiences on early-career retention and found that teachers with preparation experiences in easier-to-staff schools were more effective and more likely to stay 5 years, even if they became employed in a hard-to-staff school. Conflicting findings (Silva et al., 2014) that show less promise for teacher preparation on retention suggest that the specifics of the induction support matter. Given that administrative support is critical for teacher retention and that teachers with more negative perceptions of administrators are more likely to transfer/leave (Boyd et al., 2011), school principals should be trained to provide differentiated levels of support and development based on individual teacher needs.

Studies have also found loan forgiveness and service scholarships to be influential for attracting new teachers to hard-to-staff schools, retaining them longer, and improving their effectiveness (Liou et al., 2010; Steele et al., 2010). Teacher attrition increases when the financial benefits end, however, putting into question the sustainability of such initiatives (Feng & Sass, 2018) without prolonged financial investment from a tax-wary populace. Moreover, research indicates that the implementation of these incentives affects their utility significantly and that financial benefits must be sizeable to be effective. Maranto and Shuls (2012) and Bull et al. (1994), for example, demonstrate that forgiveness programs of $3,000 per year or less are often too low to offset the higher salaries offered by other regional schools. As mentioned before, addressing financial hygiene needs work best when coupled with enhancing the positive effects of intrinsic motivators as well.

One commonly held belief is that teachers leave their positions at hard-to-staff schools because of the student demographics in those contexts. However, more recent evidence suggests that the adverse working conditions often more prevalent in schools with higher percentages of minority, low socioeconomic, and low academic achieving students are likely the driving force of turnover, not the students themselves (Burkhauser, 2017; Boyd et al., 2011). The relationships teachers develop with students are often identified as the part of teachers’ jobs that were rewarding (Kelchtermans, 2017). Ultimately, school employers must work to improve working conditions in schools (e.g., administrative and colleague support, developmental opportunities, appropriate classroom assignments, and collegial work environment) to effectively retain quality teachers (Simon & Johnson, 2015) that boost student learning growth (Johnson et al., 2012).

Mid-Career Teachers

Mid-career teachers (4 to 6 years of experience) are in the stabilization years (Huberman, 1989). These teachers are more committed, more confident, and more comfortable. They increasingly demonstrate mastery of pedagogy and have developed a sense of self-efficacy. Papay and Kraft (2015) suggest that the relationship between teacher experience and student achievement is the strongest within the first 5 years.

According to Margolis (2008), mid-career teachers also seek new challenges and stimulation, be it within or out side of education. He suggests teaching mentorships as a way to simultaneously challenge more experienced teachers, benefit new teachers, reduce administrative burden, and combat attrition, particularly in under-resourced schools. Carver and Feiman-Nemser (2009) similarly found mentoring to be a favored policy instrument to improve teacher induction and ultimately retention but must go beyond mandating mentor support and include financial resources to develop and support formalized mentoring programs fully.

Teachers with 7 to 18 years of experience are in the experimentation or activism years. They seek new challenges, may experiment with teaching strategies and instructional content, and often contemplate leadership roles, which can affect teacher attrition (Huberman, 1989). Kelchtermans (2017) highlights the misalignment between teacher mobility (often perceived negatively) and mobility in other professions (very much perceived as a positive aspect of an individual’s career trajectory). He argues that although becoming a school principal is one of the few teacher job advancement opportunities, the job is so fundamentally different that it is better understood as a career change as opposed to a promotion, which contributes to the teacher turnover problem. To address this, job rotation and enrichment, which allow teachers to experience other school and district jobs and increase the depth of their duties, respectively, could combat constraints on career growth.

Glazer (2018) examined the influence of workplace changes on attrition for teachers who had taught beyond the initial “survival” years (Huberman, 1989). Some of these “invested leavers” depart the profession even after providing multiple years of service and obtaining additional certifications and advanced degrees. Despite their investment, these teachers noted that reduced classroom autonomy and educational discretion prompted their turnover. They experienced dissonance between increasingly feeling constrained to teach to the best of their abilities (motivator) and providing meaningful educational experiences that they felt would make a change in the lives of their students. Restricted academic freedom is seen as a lack of respect and dignity for the profession.

Late-Career Teachers

While the focus of teacher retention efforts has primarily been on new teachers, there is evidence that the escalating departure of veteran teachers is also a cause for concern (Jacob et al., 2012). Late-career teachers of 19 to 30 years of experience are in their serenity years and often comfortable with their teaching lives, while teachers with 30+ years of experience begin to distance themselves and prepare for life afterward. Bressman et al. (2018) attribute this disengagement, in part, to the lack of mentorship opportunities afforded veteran teachers and to the one-size-fits-all professional development approaches that often fail to consider the developmental needs of teachers at differing phases of their careers. This seeming neglect can promote feelings of isolation, frustration, cynicism, and burnout, all of which lead to attrition.

Furthermore, rapid technological advancement, rising student diversity needs, and an increased linking of student performance to teacher effectiveness create new learning needs and areas of growth. One way to address both issues is for principals to create the time and space for more collegial and collaborative work relationships. Veteran teachers can serve as mentors or peer assistance to more inexperienced teachers, and many of those teachers can share their insights on the technological advancements and changes in student demography with their mentors to better inform the veteran teachers on those issues. Improved mentoring addresses both the cooperative needs of veteran teachers and the instructional support needs of new teachers. It also gives new teachers a voice in the communication process and contributes to the learning of veteran teachers. Indeed, this strategy has a foundation of empirical support in the literature, as team efficacy has found to be directly related to veteran secondary teachers’ intent to leave (You & Conley, 2015).

Employment Solutions in Hard-to-Staff Contexts

Employers should differentiate among career phases and academic contexts (e.g., elementary vs. secondary, ESL vs. special education) when confronting teacher turnover, given the varying needs of teachers of differing experience levels and locations. Because employment decisions involve a complex interplay of personal and environmental conditions, examining teacher staffing strategies and policies in a decontextualized manner yields limited value (Kelchtermans, 2017). For example, in Rosenholtz and Simpson’s (1990) study of elementary school teachers, the commitment of beginning teachers was more influenced by the addressing of boundary issues external to the core of teaching (e.g., constant classroom interruptions and buying needed class materials with personal funds) that represent hygiene factors and affect teachers’ survival needs. Meanwhile, mid-career and veteran teachers were more strongly influenced by factors affecting the core of instruction (e.g., provision of more autonomy and discretion for the direct provision of instruction for student learning), as they typically have figured out how to manage the boundary issues. These results suggest that in order for school leaders to create the conditions for learning to occur, they should emphasize addressing boundary issues for new teachers and then enhancing the core task of instruction for more senior teachers. Although their study focused on elementary teachers, it is reasonable to infer that similar patterns might exist for secondary teachers.

While average statistical findings can be useful for generalization purposes, it is important, to acknowledge that the individual needs of teachers are often not homogenous. For example, Barnatt et al. (2017) longitudinally examined how the career trajectories for beginning teachers with similar backgrounds resulted in different outcomes. Results from their qualitative analysis suggest that no single factor or policy thoroughly explains the variation in teaching career outcomes for their sample, but rather their careers are affected by teachers’ sense-making of how they fit into the teaching world and the interaction between that world and themselves.

By providing growth opportunities for teachers, principals can help them develop their sense of self-efficacy, which mediates the relationship between workplace characteristics and teachers’ engagement and retention (Rosenholtz & Simpson, 1990). This type of support is particularly important in high poverty rural and urban settings because (a) they are more likely to have more boundary issues external to the classroom that can disrupt classroom teaching and (b) of the structural and environmental barriers to students’ academic success in those contexts. However, providing this support requires that principals buffer external influences so that teachers can focus on teaching. A buffer allows teachers to more quickly develop their mastery of teaching and ability to adapt and contextualize what they teach to their students to maximize their pedagogical impact. Meeting these needs will develop teachers’ self-efficacy, allowing teachers in those environments to believe they can make a meaningful impact on the lives of students, despite their demographic backgrounds. Teachers gain psychic rewards that promote job purpose and retention when this belief is reaffirmed by evidence from data and principal feedback. Different aspects of working conditions that affect the hygiene and motivating factors matter differently for teachers, depending on their career stage (Rosenholtz & Simpson, 1990).

Furthermore, teachers tend to be risk-averse (Bowen et al., 2015) and therefore are likely to seek out positions with perceived lower risks and challenges and higher comfort levels. For example, the remoteness of some rural contexts (an environmental factor) could negatively affect a teachers’ sense of belonging and exacerbate feelings of professional and personal isolation, particularly if the teacher is young and social (Tran & Dou, 2019). Many teachers, especially elementary teachers, which tend to be mostly female, tend to prioritize family life, making teaching positions in high poverty areas unappealing compared with lower poverty positions (Maranto et al., 2018). Furthermore, beginning teachers may be more sensitive to salary levels and raises than more veteran teachers (Milanowski, 2008; Tran, 2017). Taking the same approach with both of those teachers would be less effective than tailoring an approach to fit their needs. Employers should contextualize all approaches, even financial.

Employers and policymakers should also move beyond solely focusing on hygiene needs (e.g., compensation, commute time, and working conditions). While they are important and potentially affect recruitment, they will not resolve the core of the teacher shortage problem alone (Darling-Hammond & Ducommun, 2007). From the lens of Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, the fulfillment of hygiene needs assuages initial dissatisfaction but does not yield the enduring satisfaction that results in job retention. Instead, employers should increase their focus on administrative support for teacher development—the most critical factor for teacher retention (Boyd et al., 2011; Kraft et al., 2016) and possibly recruitment (Tran & Smith, 2020)—and shape it to meet the needs of teachers in various contexts and at different stages of their careers. Administrative support, including mentorship and professional development, should be intentionally differentiated based on teacher needs that are foundational for the growth of their professional identities as opposed to “one-size-fits-all” micromanagement approaches and policies that ignore the complexities of the dynamic interaction that occurs between individual teachers and the educational context in which they work in (Barnatt et al., 2017). By doing so, schools can enhance teacher commitment to the work itself (You & Conley, 2015), a motivator that positively influences retention.

Conclusion

Theoretical models of teacher employment decisions based on static influences of the teacher or school factors miss the nuances associated with such decisions (Glazer, 2018). Instead of focusing solely on the teacher pipeline or teacher retention broadly, the teacher’s entire career and how the confluence of personal, individual, and environmental factors should inform career decisions. This approach, when taken holistically, not only accounts for “leavers” and “stayers” but also can be used to understand the decision factors of “returners” and “shifters” in the teacher workforce. We propose utilizing the employee experience framework—a product of progressive strategic HRM thinking (Mazor, 2018; Plaskoff, 2017; Tran, in press)—to address teacher talent management issues. This approach entails an organizational shift from a process focus to an experience focus. It evolves from the consideration of the “moments that matter” to employees across the spectrum of employee-employer interactions and using that to design the ideal workforce experience (Mazor, 2018).

While structural and economic working conditions are often the target of teacher recruitment and retention strategies, research suggests that the social and relational working conditions, such as working relationships with principals and other teachers, play a pivotal role in a teacher’s retention decision. Kelchtermans (2017) argues that

[professional core relations] operate as double-edged swords: they are at the same time the most important sources for positive job experiences (and the satisfaction and the high self-esteem they provide) as well as of their opposite (disappointment, self-doubt, low or negative self-esteem, increased stress and even burnout). Students (and their parents), colleagues and principal can constitute the most supportive as well as the most destructive working conditions in teachers’ professional lives. (p. 969)

Motivator and hygiene factors can influence teachers’ experiences differently in the various phases of their career. It is important to recognize that while the differences in teacher needs by career stage that we have presented are supported by research, the findings are average findings, and differences would most certainly vary by the individual (Huberman, 1989).

Some argue that focusing purely on intrinsic motivators ignores the context and the social relationships necessary for educational work (Fuller et al., 2016). Indeed, the most successful approaches likely emphasize a blend of hygiene and motivating factors, given that addressing hygiene factors only allays dissatisfaction without motivating and addressing motivators only leaves employees dissatisfied. In order to keep employees both satisfied and motivated, teacher supply strategies must tackle both factors.

The argument for a multi-tiered solution to teacher staffing problems is not a novel concept. For instance, Darling-Hammond and Ducommun (2007) argue that individual local programs alone will not solve teacher recruitment and retention issues. They claim, “[i]ntelligent, targeted subsidies for preparation coupled with stronger supports at entry and incentives for staying in high-need schools are needed to ensure that all students have access to teachers who are indeed highly qualified” (p. 7). The support relates directly to job-specific motivators, as more support would theoretically result in increased job performance and the consequent job satisfaction, whereas the incentives to stay may be related to addressing extrinsic hygiene factors.

Relatedly, Mintrop (2018) explained that since the 1990s, education has increasingly moved toward an era of neoliberal public management that heavily emphasizes external incentives, accountability, competition, standards, and measurement to supposedly evolve public service to be more like private business—although Tran (in press) argues the reference to private business is based on outdated notions of how private sector HRM operates and not modern cutting edge practices promoted by private businesses today. Nonetheless, this change has coincided with a deprofessionalization of teaching, especially for ethnically and economically marginalized schools (often the “hard-to-staff” schools that were the focus of this present article) with larger concentrations of novice teachers, with less training and shakier retention commitments.

Mintrop (2018) further explains that the paradigm of bureaucracy had weakened the influence of self-interest in the teaching profession and embedded in it the importance of an ethic of service, commitment to students, and internal motivators over self-interest and extrinsic awards. While neoliberal public management attempts to introduce self-interest as a motivator to control teacher performance, they do so through primarily external hygiene factors such as financial incentives. In his in-depth study of how teachers in three schools (that volunteered for managerial performance management) balanced neomanagerial versus professional concerns, he found that many teachers rebuffed the incentive system that emphasized hygiene factors in favor of teachers’ commitment to student justice and service. In fact, Mintrop (2018) explained that “[w]hile bonus money did play a reinforcing role, the distinguishing criterion between those who rebuffed the system and those who embraced it was the meaningfulness of system elements for one’s own performance expectations and desires to learn” (p. 200).

One could argue that extrinsic hygiene factors affect recruitment, while internal motivating factors affect retention. However, this is not entirely accurate. For example, Tran et al. (2015) found a positive association between the surveyed preservice teachers’ senses of public service and their openness to teaching in hard-to-staff rural districts. Given that the sense of public service is directly related to the job itself and comes from within the individual, this represents an intrinsic motivator that affects recruitment. Similarly, failure to address hygiene needs can result in turnover, as evident by studies that have reported the negative relationship between pay and turnover (Curtis, 2012).

Another underutilized strategy is to increase teachers’ classroom/educational autonomy. Scholars associate the loss of teachers’ educational discretion with turnover (Glazer, 2018; Santoro, 2017). The culture of performativity, with its focus on standardized test-based accountability and limited teacher discretion, has resulted in increased pressure and a perceived lack of respect for the teaching profession, which exacerbates teacher shortages—in both recruitment and retention (Tran & Smith, 2019).

Through the theory-building work presented in this article, we accomplished several objectives. First, we highlighted factors that influence individuals’ self-selection into the teaching profession and particular schools, albeit with some limitations. For example, we did not focus our attention on involuntary turnover. While school-employer directed turnovers (e.g., employment terminations) are rare, they nonetheless do occur and represent an area worth further exploration. Moreover, we examined the teacher employee experience from the teacher’s first day of employment, not from pre-employment (common in progressive HRM approaches), future work should analyze the pre-employment experience as well, given its influence on setting the tone of the employment relationship, which undoubtedly has implications for subsequent employee job satisfaction and retention.

Second, we explored how workplace variables interact in complex ways in order to better inform school employers on how they might design the teacher employee experience for the retention and development of quality teachers in hard-to-staff contexts. School employers should prioritize addressing intrinsic motivating factors then mitigate any detrimental effects of hygiene factors. Otherwise, for instance, to address their teacher staffing issue, a rural hard-to-staff district might successfully recruit teachers with financial incentives, only to lose them due to a lack of motivation, which results in cyclical teacher replacement costs (Barnes et al., 2007) and relational discontinuity between students and teachers (Gordon & Crabtree, 2006). Addressing both hygiene and motivating factors across the teacher career arc is critical not only because the factors influence teachers differently at each phase and experience level but also because teachers who are well treated and feel respected throughout their careers will be the profession’s fiercest advocates. As You and Conley (2015) pointed out, Michael Huberman articulated decades ago that, “[i]f policy makers and administrators can discover the workplace variables that influence teachers’ turnover intentions in different stages of their careers, we may have a basis for altering the workplace to reduce intentions to leave over the life cycle” (p. 562). In this article, we sought to advance efforts toward this education workplace improvement effort by highlighting several influential retention factors across the teacher career span from research and theory and built on existing education HRM theory to recommend employers emphasize a Talent Centered Education Leadership Approach (Tran, in press) in their intentional design of supportive total employee experience for their teachers from entry to retirement.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Henry Tran

Author Biographies

Henry Tran is an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policies who studies issues related to education human resources (HR) and finance. He holds two national HR certifications and serves on the Board of Advisors and Board of Trustees for the National Education Finance Academy. He is also the editor of the Journal of Education Human Resources and the Director of the Talent Centered Education Leadership Initiative.

Douglas A. Smith is an associate professor at Iowa State University’s School of Education who studies P-20 talent management, leadership development, and contemporary P-20 educational issues. He has spent his professional career focusing on the rural education context while living and working in Nebraska, Wyoming, South Carolina, and Iowa.

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