EdFuel | June 2025
The end of the school year brings a natural pause— one that offers the perfect opportunity to zoom out and reflect on your talent strategy. Before the whirlwind of recruitment, onboarding, and summer planning kicks into high gear, take time to ask:
- What worked?
- What didn’t?
- What patterns are emerging, and what do they tell us about where we need to grow?
At EdFuel, we believe this reflective moment is one of the most strategically powerful points in the year – a time to pause, reflect, and refine. That’s why we recommend building in an annual Talent Stepback— a dedicated, collaborative time to look holistically at your talent practices and use data and experience to drive your priorities for the next school year.
Step 1: Conduct a Talent Stepback with Your Team
Start with our Strategic Talent Stepback Protocol. It’s designed to help leaders facilitate focused conversations around hiring, retention and staff culture. This window— when the year is still fresh but the pace is slowing— is ideal for surfacing real insights.
The protocol includes guiding questions, sample data points, and a facilitation plan to make this stepback both efficient and meaningful. Whether you hold a one-hour session or a half-day retreat, the insights you surface can shape smarter planning going forward.
Step 2: Re-Take the Talent Diagnostic
Once you’ve reflected on the past year, now is the right time to (re)take EdFuel’s Talent Diagnostic. This free dynamic 10-minute tool provides an updated picture of how your organization is performing across each stage of the talent lifecycle from recruitment and hiring to development and retention.
You’ll receive a customized set of recommendations and curated tools based on your results— making it easy to align your stepback insights with actionable next steps. Many school teams use the diagnostic to gauge progress on focus areas from last year and identify new areas of focus for the coming year.
Step 3: Align on Priorities
Now that you’ve gathered both data and reflections, it’s time to focus and prioritize. Remember, improving talent systems is a marathon. It takes strategic action over the long-term to refine systems. Take the first step and be realistic about what you can accomplish. Use your favorite prioritization activity – and if you don’t have one, a few of ours are the 100 point method, start/stop/continue, and dot voting 😉.
Step 4: Review and Update Your Talent Calendar
Now that you’ve aligned on your strategic priorities, it’s time to review and update your Talent Calendar. This is a critical planning tool that maps out key talent activities across the school year including everything from recruitment and onboarding to performance management and staff development. It helps ensure you are aligned with other talent and HR leaders and makes visible the work across the year to the fuller leadership team. Updating your calendar annually ensures it reflects lessons learned from the past year and stays responsive to shifting organizational priorities and staff needs.
Step 5: Identify Tools to Support Your Summer Planning
Once you’ve gathered data and clarified your top priorities, check out the recommended tools and resources aligned to your goals. Whether you’re working to strengthen onboarding, manager development, or retention, our curated tools save you time while improving staff experience and retention. Now’s the moment to equip yourself with tools that make change possible before next year begins.
By building in a thoughtful pause now, you’re setting the stage for stronger retention, smoother hiring, and a healthier staff culture next year. Let the Talent Playbook do some of the heavy lifting so you can focus on what matters most.
🔧 This Month’s Top Tools: