Engage Education Social Value Policy

Our Business

Engage Education is a multinational education recruiter with offices in the UK and overseas. We work on behalf of UK schools to support all of their recruitment needs. We provide ongoing training and support for senior leaders, teachers and graduates in the teaching profession. Engage Education recruits across the whole school environment, from headteachers to support staff. As a service-focused organisation with people at our core, we take our ethical and social responsibility commitments extremely seriously. We are the expert voice of our market. Collectively, we deliver expertise from best practice recruitment to specialist teaching knowledge. Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) company policy outlines our commitment to ethical and environmental practices throughout our global business.

Our Staff

Our employees are appreciated, valued and given regular feedback so that each individual has a clear understanding of their role and how they contribute to the business. Our staff are at the heart of everything we do, and we strive to provide the best working environment possible and encourage new ideas and collaboration across all areas of the business. All employees are recognised and rewarded based on their performance, effort, contribution and achievements. We expect our employees to act with integrity towards one another and exercise a high standard of business practice and workmanship.

We support diversity, fairness and equal opportunities and aim to involve and consult regularly with employees as to the direction of the business. Our staff are committed to delivering ethically sound business practices and receive ongoing training on safeguarding, compliance and changes within the education sector. Our code of conduct outlines our recruiters’ responsibilities, rights, relationships, respect and unacceptable behaviour within the organisation. We also ensure all staff understand how our Equal Rights policy, Anti-Bribery policy and Modern Slavery policy directly relate to their job role and how they can adhere to them.

Commitment To Our Industry

We provide an essential service within a government-led sector. We have a responsibility to those that we hire and the young people they will work with to ensure every candidate that we place is fully trained, compliant, fairly paid and, importantly, will have a positive impact on those that they teach. We are ultimately accountable for securing and retaining quality candidates to reduce staff turnover and improve retention rates in the education sector for our clients.

All of our staff and colleagues are expected to adhere to our company’s code of conduct. Many of the candidates that we place work with vulnerable children and young adults in their roles. We have a moral duty to ensure that our safeguarding processes exceed industry expectations, and we are dedicated to improving wider standards within education. To ensure we remain accountable within our industry, all candidates who work with us have access to free CPD and are required to complete refresher training about Safeguarding every year.

At Engage, we work hard to make sure we exceed all compliance requirements for education recruitment agencies. We’re proud to be REC Audited ‘Gold Standard’, a supplier on the DfE CCS Framework for Supply Teachers, Cyber Essentials Certified and a Saferjobs Partner.

Our Candidates

We change lives by being part of our candidates’ career journey. We aim to provide the right level of choice and support at the right time and go the extra mile to understand how a candidate thinks and feels every step of the way. We put a significant focus on wellbeing by creating content that focuses on positive mental health and establishing partnerships with leading support agencies. Our Partnership & Development team also works closely with our candidates to help with their job search and beyond. Our Partnership & Development team provide on-site visits and observations, constructive feedback and the opportunity to collaborate to ensure positive professional development and personal well-being.

We respect ambitions and strive to meet them – the candidate and their professional aspirations are our top priority. Our goal is to understand, listen, and never assume a one-size-fits-all approach. We always act with professional integrity, remaining objective about someone’s situation without personal judgment. Engage Education takes seriously its responsibility for making sure everyone taking part in our services has read, understood and agreed to follow our Code of Conduct. We partner with non-profit SAFERjobs to provide safer job searches and combat job scams.

Our Partners

It is our goal to give fair value, consistent quality and reliability. We aim to have the highest professional and ethical standards and will be honest, open and transparent in all our dealings with customers and clients. Collaboration with clients enables us to learn and adapt our processes to meet their specific requirements. We aim to conduct all of our interactions with clients and schools with integrity and transparency. As part of our commitment to fair fees for schools and supply teachers, we are accredited members of the CCS Framework and an ever-growing number of local frameworks, allowing our partner schools to make clear, informed hiring decisions.

Our Community

Whenever possible, we utilise local suppliers and buy from local independent businesses for our event and office needs. We are active supporters of job creation in our local communities and consistently work with schools and education boards to improve access to jobs in the education sector.

We take part in local events and support many local and national causes through fundraising for Cancer Research, the Trussell Trust, Sport Relief, Children in Need, MacMillan Cancer Support and The National Autistic Society. As a business, we’ve also sponsored and supported Watford Mencap multiple times. Our Head Office has been recognised by the Watford Observer for being part of a group of businesses on Clarendon Road that donated over a metric tonne of food to the Trussell Trust. Our staff are encouraged to give back to their community too – they often volunteer at local SEND schools and take on individual charity endeavours.

The Environment

We are aware of our environmental impact as a business and have taken and continue to take appropriate steps to mitigate that impact. We have made significant changes to our business over the last few years in line with our ongoing commitment to becoming carbon-neutral. We are establishing new local and remote ways to source our candidates by adapting our in-person events to work fully remotely and supporting school leaders to access remote interview software. We’ll continue to reduce the need for long journeys in the early part of the recruitment process for teachers as part of our ongoing commitment to carbon neutrality. We are also increasing our carbon offsetting and reducing the travel associated with our business operations, including developing a new work-from-home policy that will reduce office commutes for all our UK locations.

We maximise energy efficiency within our corporate offices and encourage good environmental practices among our employees by switching to a paperless office and providing recycling stations. We’ll continue to find new ways to reduce the carbon footprint of our business with the ultimate goal of becoming completely carbon-neutral within the next five years.

Health And Safety

The safety and well-being of our staff and customers are a top priority. We adhere to and often exceed local health and safety regulations in all of our global offices. Our staff are onboarded with full health and safety training and are offered continued training in all aspects of their work. We have appropriate first aid provisions in all our offices and trained emergency first aiders on site. The mental well-being of our staff is also important – regular well-being checks and performance reviews ensure that our employees are able to work effectively and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Our Goals

• Continue to strive for improving best practices in our industry for the long-term benefit of the education sector
• Ensure the continued effectiveness of our safeguarding process, protecting children and vulnerable adults
• Reduce the environmental impact of our business through continued improvement of our remote interview and event offering, and encourage positive environmental practices in our offices
• Becoming Carbon Neutral through a carbon offsetting scheme within the next five years
• Support our community through volunteering, donations and charitable causes