25 Years in School HR: The 5 Most Valuable Lessons You Need to Know
For 25 years, we’ve worked behind the scenes to help school districts recruit, select, onboard and retain the best talent. We’ve stretched budgets (by helping districts find hidden dollars they could put to work), streamlined processes, and communicated complex benefits simply. Clear Concepts didn’t start in a garage like Apple, but a dining room table did the trick!
What began as a mission to clarify employee benefits quickly grew into something bigger. Along the way, we learned that HR teams also needed support to tackle compliance, technology upgrades, process improvement and much more, all without breaking the bank. Now, as we celebrate this milestone, we’re sharing five key lessons from our journey. Let’s dive in!
Turnover Can Be an Opportunity: With 10% turnover each year, half your staff could be new in just five years. That’s a huge opportunity—if you have the right hiring process. Too often, schools rush through interviews, making quick decisions that favor good interviewers over great employees. A strong selection process with well-crafted, job-related questions, effective assessments, and a trained team that knows what to look for (including red flags!) means you’ll hire the right people to drive student success.
In Barrow County, the school board initially saw benefits as separate from the hiring process. After sharing how compensation and perks influence candidate decisions, they became firm believers in the connection. We helped the district refine its hiring approach for bookkeepers, shifting from traditional interviews to skills-based assessments. Instead of hiring candidates who simply interviewed well, they selected those who demonstrated the necessary computer skills for the role. The impact? A stronger, more capable team. Today, turnover isn’t due to poor fit, it's because their bookkeepers excel so much that they’re promoted into higher positions within the district.
Employees Need Continued Reinforcement: After onboarding, employees often interact with HR only when they have complaints or issues. Our advice? Seek out opportunities for HR to continuously affirm what a great place your district is to work. This proactive engagement is way more rewarding than just putting out fires!
For the past three years, Clarke County School District has provided total compensation statements to its employees, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Many staff members, including an HR generalist, were unaware of the district’s significant contributions to health insurance and the Teachers Retirement System. Seeing their full compensation in black and white, with their name on it, gave employees a new appreciation for the district’s investment in them. The result? More employees chose to stay. Contract renewals increased, and the number of job openings dropped from 152 to just 95 in a single year. Clarke County also reinforced this effort with its Find Your Fit initiative, which highlights physical, emotional, and financial well-being—further strengthening employee retention.
Technology Is Only as Good as the Process You’re Automating: If you automate an inefficient process, the automation will merely amplify existing errors and issues. Before implementing technology, thoroughly analyze and refine your processes. A well-designed process will maximize the benefits of automation and prevent it from perpetuating problems.
As Fayette County Public Schools considered how to overhaul their onboarding process, Clear Concepts consultants took them through our “Brown Paper Exercise” to get a complete picture of the current process and design a much more efficient one. New hires here enjoy a paper-free, headache-free onboarding experience! Check out what Fayette had to say HERE!
Technology Training Shouldn’t Be One-and-Done: New technology and processes come with a steep learning curve, and employees may struggle to absorb and apply what they’re learning. Over time, turnover and system upgrades lead to patchwork solutions and inefficiencies. Keep things running smoothly with a continuous training plan that ensures everyone stays up to speed. School districts invest heavily in systems like Munis, but too often, the knowledge to use them effectively is lost as employees change roles. Initial training is limited, and once the free sessions run out, organizations face the choice of paying for more training or struggling with underutilized software.
If you ask us, technology should come with unlimited, expert help – including tip sheets, decision trees, and short “how-to” videos—giving employees the right information exactly when they needed it. This approach reduces frustration, increases efficiency, and ensures your people always have someone in their corner, ready to help.
Better HR Without Bigger Budgets Is Possible: Improving processes, upgrading technology, and boosting employee morale don’t always mean spending more. Hidden dollars are slipping through the cracks in HR and recapturing them can fund real change. Many school districts unknowingly lose money through benefits programs, whether through commissions paid to brokers, unclaimed FSA forfeitures, or overlooked cost-saving opportunities.
For example, we’ve helped our clients find significant savings by simply encouraging employees who are married to each other to combine under the same health plan. Small changes like this allowed them to redirect funds toward other improvements, without increasing their budget. The key to better HR isn’t always more money; it’s knowing where to look to for dollars that you already have.