I'm employed in a MAT (14 academies) after the school that I worked at transferred into the trust. The HR team that I'm in has developed over the last few years into a team that consists of HR Managers, HR Cluster Leads and HR Assistants. As a Cluster Lead I am the first point of contact for my cluster of academies (5 of them). I have tried to spend a day a week in the academies which has helped to build really good relationships with managers but the downside of that has been that some academies become reliant on you to sort things out when it's perhaps not a HR matter. We're now pulling back centrally and will only be in academies for meetings etc.

Hi Lynette - we have 3 schools also. One HR Manager, a Co-ordinator and a part time HR Assistant. Centrally based with the Trust leadership team but with visibility within the academies through planned days spent working there to co-ordinate with HR related meetings.

SCR maintenance is done centrally as is absence, recruitment, reward and all HR process. All strategic and operational HR is done from the central office. A key benefit which wasn't in place is building good relationships, systems and processes with administration teams in each school. We cannot be there to collect absence details or check ID docs of contractors for SCR for example - so this sits with Academy admin who are now trained to check documentation, sign it and then scan it over to HR. We've held sessions for them and produced checklists. Key benefit is you have more control over what you do and the impact HR can have. HR are accountable to deliver longer term business planning that is aligned with school improvement plans and Trust objectives. Another benefit is data is centralised - metrics can be compared and what works well can be shared at network meetings with Principals.

In reply to Amanda:

Thanks Amanda - can i just also ask how do you co-ordinate recruitment and vacancies across the schools - is this done centrally or do the schools arrange their own adverts, arrange interviews etc......

In reply to Lynette:

It's all done centrally Lynette. Once a vacancy becomes apparent we liaise with the Principals around the look of the advert, JD etc and post the ads from here. We have created an HR email account called Careers@.....Trust and all applicants are guided to apply through that. We then forward applications for shortlisting and often work with the Principals around interview schedules / tasks etc. All the offers, contracts, on boarding is done centrally. I did consider an applicant tracking system and know that some larger MATS use these - however we have designed quite effective spreadsheets which allow us to track who has applied for what, who is appointed and where they are regarding compliance, start date, induction, probation etc. all personnel files are held centrally too. Happy to discuss further by phone if it helps.

In reply to Amanda:

Hi Amanda

that's great thank you - we are introducing a new HR software system this year which will hopefully reduce the need for some admin and spreadsheets however i would be grateful to make contact in the future once we have decided which way to go with our structure