🙋🏽♂️Bringing Staff With You: Making 2026 Changes Feel Safe and Doable
You can have the best ideas in the world for 2026, but if staff feel overloaded or left out, even the smartest changes will struggle.
Service design takes staff experience seriously. It asks:
“What is it like to work here – and how can we design 2026 changes that respect that reality?”
❤️ Start with empathy for staff
Before you roll out anything new for 2026, it helps to pause and ask:
What was last year really like for staff?
Where did they felt most stretched?
What are they proud of that we should protect?
This sets the tone. It says: “We see you. We’re not just layering more work on top.”
👥 Involve people early, not at the end
Instead of presenting a finished 2026 plan, you can:
Share the journeys you’ve mapped and the feedback you’ve gathered
Ask staff what resonates and what’s missing
Invite a small group to help shape the first round of improvements
This doesn’t have to be big or formal. Even one short workshop or focused conversation can send a strong signal that staff voices matter.
🧪 Make 2026 experiments small and time‑boxed
Staff are far more likely to try something new if it:
Starts small (one class, one year group, one process)
Has a clear time frame (“we’ll test this for 6–8 weeks”)
Comes with visible support, not just an email
You might say:
“For Term 1 of 2026, we’re going to test a new way of communicating about events with one year group. We’ll keep an eye on questions and feedback, and we’ll decide together how to move forward.”
This turns change into a shared experiment, not a forever decision.
Celebrate wins and be honest about lessons
As you test small changes for 2026, share:
Where you’re seeing benefits (fewer calls to the office, calmer mornings, clearer expectations)
Where things still feel clunky
What you’re going to adjust next
Being honest builds trust. Staff don’t expect perfection – they do appreciate being kept in the loop.
🩼 Supporting staff as a leader
As you design 2026, your role might include:
Protecting a bit of time for reflection and planning
Choosing fewer, better‑designed changes over lots of scattered ones
Modelling curiosity: “Let’s see what we learn from this.”
In service design work with schools, some of the most powerful shifts come from how leaders frame and pace change.
Next week, in the final post of this series, we’ll bring it all together and look at what a simple service design project for 2026 could look like in your school.
Image for post created by:
https://unsplash.com/@priscilladupreez
