Executive principal Jacki Hughes, pictured, said her message to under-pressure staff was that she absolutely appreciated all the work they did.
‘I’m very confident for the future,’ she said. ‘I think that the college staff have experienced particular difficulty, because they’re spread across three campuses.
‘We want an ongoing dialogue – where people have got difficulties, challenges or frustration, they need to talk to myself or to the principal of the College or the head of the University Centre.’
The staff survey carried out by UK consultants featured concerning feedback from teaching staff, particularly those at the former College of Further Education, revealing workload burnout, eroding trust in the leadership and inconsistent and fragile welfare. Mrs Hughes said that the report had clearly been uncomfortable reading for the Institute’s leadership.
‘We believe everything that is in it said by the staff across the organisation, both good and bad,’ she said. ‘We try and communicate very openly, but clearly some of it is missing the mark. That makes up sit up and think “how can we do this differently”?’
‘It’s all very well me saying, we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that. But I’m not one of those teachers who’s facing the challenges that they’re facing.
‘I need to know from those people what it is that’s wrong so that we can begin to put it right, but we’ve got an action plan, leadership training, development exercises, change of communication. We’ve only just got the report and some of those things were already in train. It gives us an actionable agenda for the future.’
Mrs Hughes said as soon as she sent the report to staff, she received an immediate email back from one member of staff who said: ‘I want to be part of the fixing’.
‘So we know that we’ve got a whole set of agents on the ground who want to be part of a solution and not part of a problem. There is no doubt that a small number of staff have got great frustrations. We need to make sure we’re capturing their feedback and are able to demonstrate and work with them on the solution.’
TGI brings together three main post-16 education faculties, the Guernsey College of Further Education, the GTA University Centre, and the Institute of Health & Social Care Studies. Currently they are spread across the island but next year should relocate to the Les Ozouets campus.
Years of delay in developing these new facilities is believed to be a particular contributor to low morale.
‘I came to Guernsey nearly seven years ago with the expectation that this move would be completed in two years and all those delays have added to the frustration,’ she said.
‘Some of our staff during the winter months have to teach wearing their coats, and that’s not new news. That’s why we’ve got this amazing support from the States to build the new campus – we know we’ve been battling against our physical environment.’
The Institute has also faced issues with staff retention and recruitment, which have added to teacher stress and workload.
Mrs Hughes said she hoped the move to the new campus in 2027 would also help alleviate theses pressures, adding that the full integration of the Institute at the new campus was one of the drivers for holding the survey.
‘One of our benefits was to have an effective and united workforce with increased levels of satisfaction. In order for us to be able to measure that in the future, we needed to have a baseline, and that’s a key driver for this staff satisfaction and wellbeing survey.’
‘What we realised from that report is that staff across the organisation are having different experiences of leadership. As a direct result of that, we are going to put some leadership development in place, which will help. It won’t be instantaneous, but hopefully we’ll be able to see some positive impacts.’
However she did not rule out future changes to the TGI leadership.
‘We are just at the tail end of our integration staffing structure process,’ she said. ‘So time-wise, it’s not appropriate for me to make comments about individual posts. But over the course of the next three or four weeks, there’ll be real clarity about who the permanent senior leaders are for this organisation going forward.’