Cultivating healthy workplaces in Christian schools requires intentional effort. When staff feel valued, heard, and connected to a shared mission, they are more engaged, bringing greater energy to their work.
According to the State of the Christian Workplace 2025 Report by Best Christian Workplaces, only 60 percent of Christian schools have a healthy or flourishing workplace. In addition, 43 percent of staff in Christian schools are not engaged. Stronger engagement means improved outcomes in the classroom and beyond. When the needle moves on engagement in this sector, the student experience is positively impacted—academically, spiritually, and socially.
The Covenant School in Dallas, Texas, is a K-12 Christian school that equips students with the tools necessary to pursue a lifetime of learning. The leadership team at The Covenant School has demonstrated their commitment to continuous growth and improvement in employee engagement and workplace health. Their five-year journey of consistent improvement illustrates the power of intentional leadership and equipping their faculty and staff to flourish, so that students can thrive.
The Covenant School has used an annual Employee Engagement Survey through Best Christian Workplaces since 2021.
Every Best Christian Workplaces Ministry Partner receives a detailed report of their own Employee Engagement results, along with comparisons to benchmarks based on peers in their sector. In addition to the written report, the leadership team is debriefed on their results. Their Best Christian Workplaces consultant offers suggestions on areas of focus that can yield the strongest improvement.
Dr. Doug Waldo, Senior Consultant, has worked with Covenant over the years. He reflects on their process: “What impresses me about Covenant is how intentional they are about follow-up action. They take recommendations seriously and are committed to taking the time for listening, planning, and acting on their results. Their hard work and diligence have paid off as each year they have seen overall improvement, and specific growth in their areas of emphasis.”
For example, over the last few years, Covenant has taken specific steps to value their faculty and staff by implementing a comprehensive performance management system. The system was developed over a 12-month period with staff input. In addition, they focused on making teacher salaries more competitive with the local economy and improving other benefits. All of these improvements have impacted Uplifting Growth, one of the eight FLOURISH Factors in the Best Christian Workplaces model.
In their most recent Employee Engagement Survey, Covenant ranked higher than 95 percent of their peers in the following areas:
School systems that focus on excellence for students should also be environments where the faculty and staff continue to learn and grow, but that is not a given. Covenant models a commitment to growth, development, and excellence for faculty, staff, and students. Their diligent and focused approach to using data to drive their action plans maximizes their return-on-investment from the Employee Engagement Survey.
While survey-based data helps leadership assess workplace health, a flourishing workplace is centered around people who have healthy work relationships. Covenant is a true community of like-hearted people.
Brandt Wright, Assistant Head of School for Finance & Operations, emphasizes the importance of the people who make up The Covenant School:
Our faculty and staff are central to all that we do. They truly are the hands and feet of Christ to our students and their families. It is this belief that leads us to always have our faculty and staff in the forefront of our minds and to constantly consider how our engagement with them drives their life-changing engagement with our students.
We also invest a tremendous amount of time connecting with our faculty in the classroom, engaging them in an ongoing dialogue about their experience and performance, and expressing our appreciation for them. Classroom connections take the form of formal and informal observations, and spontaneous pop-ins just to say, "I see you!" and "We're grateful for you!" Our performance evaluation process is a priority for us, and we convey to our faculty and staff that the feedback they give is just as important as the feedback they receive. And, finally, we show appreciation for our staff through our peer-to-peer recognition program, providing meals and unexpected treats when we can, making time for fun and fellowship, and making compensation a priority. We believe that these priorities have and will continue to contribute to Covenant's flourishing culture.
Healthy Communication is one of the eight FLOURISH Factors in the Best Christian Workplaces model. Communication affects virtually every other aspect of employee engagement, and it impacts the effectiveness and the perception of leadership.
Brandt Wright reflects on the ways that the leadership team keeps focused on the importance of healthy communication practices for the school community:
One of our greatest challenges to maintaining high levels of employee engagement is communication, specifically, taking time to communicate the right message at the right time and in the right way. Our faculty and staff continue to tell us that they want to be informed in a timely manner, and they want to understand the reasoning behind decisions that affect them. Consequently, our leadership team has assumed responsibility for identifying the messages that need to be communicated week-to-week along with the “who,” “when” and “how” related to each message.
The Covenant School serves more than 700 students in three divisions: The Grammar School (K-5), The Logic School (6-8), and The Rhetoric School (9-12). The core values are shared across all the schools, but each has a distinct focus and leadership based on the developmental stage of its students.
Recently, Doug Waldo met separately with the heads of each school. They drilled down into team snapshots that offered data specific to each school. This level of detail meant that leaders could fine-tune their focus on distinct areas of strength and challenge.
In addition, Doug conducted Discovery Groups, which are small group conversations with faculty within each school to bring forward ideas for growth in employee engagement.
Melissa Hill, Head of School, shares about how helpful the Discovery Group information is in planning:
We are addressing areas for improvement on a day-to-day basis, and as an added layer, we have engaged discovery groups, allowing us to dig into specific areas of our school that need addressing. From the information gleaned in these discovery groups, we have a solid understanding of where our people are and how we can help them find ever-increasing satisfaction in their roles.
Team-level reporting of Employee Engagement Survey results is available to any Ministry Partner with a large enough staff to protect the anonymity of responses in each segment. While top-level leaders focus on organization-wide initiatives, customizing action plans by team empowers more people to take ownership of continuous improvement. This team-level involvement also creates culture champions throughout the organization.
Times of leadership transition impact employee engagement and workplace health. The Covenant School recently went through a carefully planned transition as Robert Littlejohn retired, and Melissa Hill was promoted to Head of School.
A flourishing workplace culture, where there are strong shared values, creates a strong foundation for leadership transitions. Highly engaged employees create momentum for continued success and engagement.
Melissa Hill, Head of School, underscores the value of regular assessment:
As I have jumped into the Head of School role, I find that the habit we have created of regularly engaging faculty and giving them a voice to share their perspectives and speak about their experiences has been really helpful. Although my management style involves a very open-door policy, these surveys provide another vehicle for them to express their successes and challenges. They know we will ask, too, so the stability and predictability of the survey hold us accountable to actively address areas that need improvement and continue to lean into areas where we have had success.
We have developed annual goals—focusing on fortifying our strengths and addressing our weaknesses. Because we have several years of survey data and measures, we anticipate productive feedback on the transition of leadership when we roll out the survey next spring.
Flourishing organizations can attract and retain top staff; the best in their field want to be part of an innovative, positive work environment. An ongoing commitment to excellence and workplace health means that The Covenant School is positioned to continue to flourish, even as it grows and innovates to meet the needs of tomorrow’s students.