Data analytics firm PeopleBench is focusing of education through a human resources strategy

The woman behind a Brisbane-based data and analytics company says it's a ‘no-brainer’ that a better work environment for teachers would ensure a better outcome for students.

Education is in crisis.

And with a background in organisational and workplace psychology Fleur Johnston is tackling this crisis from a different angle – human resources.

Staff shortages, crushing workloads, over work, stress and poor culture are some of the issues plaguing a school system where Australian students continue to slip behind the world in literacy, numeracy, science and math.

As calls for more money to be thrown at the problem mount but Ms Johnston – the founder and chief executive of Australia’s leading school workforce research, analytics and advisory company PeopleBench – said while leaders know the symptoms they don’t know which problem to tackle first to find a cure.

That’s where PeopleBench steps in.

“In education, HR is a very low priority. There seemed to be no conversations in education on how to aid the teachers. It seems to me to be a no-brainer that making it good for teachers would make it better for kids,” Ms Johnston said.

Chief executive of PeopleBench Fleur Johnston. Picture: Tertius Pickard

Based in West End, PeopleBench began in 2017 as a pro bono research project that investigated the relationships between workforce variables and student outcomes and drew on data from 22,000 students and nearly 3000 educators.

It started asking questions about the school system and answering them in ways never explored in Australia before.

“HR professionals who have worked elsewhere and go into education and look at schools and school systems, go `how can they be so far behind in prioritising making a great place for teachers to work and a great job for them to do’,” Ms Johnston said.

“That was a real watershed moment for us. Things that are standard practice in other sectors are not in education. Traditionally education does not collaborate outside the system.

“While there is incredible wisdom and excellent leadership in the local context the fundamental processes around workplace strategies have been missing and that’s where the PeopleBench platform helps.”

The daughter of a teacher and mother of two teenagers Ms Johnston said through the use of algorithms they can harvest a “unique set of data”.

This data focuses on a raft of workplace issues such as recruitment, culture, leadership skills, defining teaching and in an occupation with 80 per cent of staff are women, workplace flexibility.

What they produce aims to help schools and school systems to build strategies to improve their education outcomes.

PeopleBench is democratising workforce strategy in schools.

PeopleBench started trading in 2019, and raised $2.1m though seed and grant funding.

From a short time span of operation PeopleBench has about 550 private and state schools across the country which are at different stages of working through the confidential data provided by Ms Johnston’s team.

“One of the things we say about what we’re doing is that we are democratising workforce strategy. In the past schools with lots of cash could afford expensive consultants. We don’t think that’s OK. We think that even the smallest schools should have access to high quality multi sector benchmarking and analytics,” Ms Johnston said.

“If we have stressed out teachers they will not do their best teaching and that has an impact on the kids and over time on the economy.”

Peoplebench has a number of major shareholders and currently has 13 staff with a mix of skills such as workplace psychology, business, data analysis and research. That number is expected to rise and the company has forecast annual revenue to rise 23 times over the next five years.

The company plans to expand into the US and in Australia there is the opportunity to use the system to expand its school based mandate into childcare and higher education, and more broadly into the health, community services, aged care and disability sectors.

But at this stage PeopleBench’s priority is the school systems battling with the changing landscape of work, the impact of technology and a global shift in expectations.

“People giggle about HR but before PeopleBench, the links between workforce variables and student outcomes in schools was not being investigated in any long term, cross-sector, or scale manner,” she said.

“The absence of sector benchmarks and research into what matters most when it comes to the teaching workforces has contributed to the difficult position the sector is in today – making it hard for leaders to know where to invest their limited human and financial capital to make things better in the future.

“That’s the long term challenge that PeopleBench, and the movement of educators across the country working with them, intend to meet.”