Why software employees leave and how to understand why
Engineers and product staff leave for many reasons beyond salary. How to run an exit conversation in a software company, read the pattern and act on it.
6 min readRead articleA school software provider supplies attendance, fee, timetable and parent-communication systems to schools. Here is how to manage developers, trainers and support staff whose year follows the school calendar.

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Share your requirementsA school management software provider sells systems for admissions, attendance, fees, timetables, exams, report cards and parent communication. Customers are schools and school groups. The work follows the academic year: admissions and fee collection early on, attendance daily, exam and result periods in between, and report cards at year end. Staff include developers, implementation consultants, trainers who visit schools, support agents who speak to teachers, accounts staff and sometimes parents, and sales executives. Teachers and school office staff are often not technical and have little time. Support calls peak at admission season and exam results. Trainers travel widely, and the year has long quiet stretches and sharp busy peaks. See also HR for IT and software.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in school management software providers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Admission, fee and result periods flood support and implementation, and the rest of the year is slower.
Visiting many schools with little rest, they are away from their team and their family.
Teachers learn the system between classes and call support with basic problems.
Parents contact the vendor about fees or results, and agents are caught between the school and parents.
Moving a school's student records from paper or old systems is slow, and mistakes show up in reports.
A change during result week can break report cards and cause an uproar.
Schools negotiate hard, and delivery staff inherit commitments made to win the order.
Staff look for jobs when the year is slow and the next peak is far away.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Operations and Governance; Employee Engagement and Experience; Health, Safety and Wellbeing. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for information technology and software, not in general.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a school management software providers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A year chart of peaks, temporary cover and leave rules, set up with the attendance and shift process.
A year chart of peaks, temporary cover and leave rules, set up with the attendance and shift process.
Realistic itineraries, rest days, safe travel and cost handling.
Realistic itineraries, rest days, safe travel and cost handling. See workplace health, safety and wellbeing.
A clear rule on how to handle parents, passing them back to the school while still being polite and helpful.
A clear rule on how to handle parents, passing them back to the school while still being polite and helpful.
A checklist and sign-off with the school before any data goes live.
A checklist and sign-off with the school before any data goes live.
Training, product work and certification planned for slow weeks, through the learning and development process.
Training, product work and certification planned for slow weeks, through the learning and development process.
No major change during admissions, fee deadlines or result weeks.
No major change during admissions, fee deadlines or result weeks.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Peak-season rotas and leave planning matched to the academic calendar.
Travel safety, fatigue and workload care for trainers on the road.
A plan to use quiet months for skills, product learning and certification.
Keeping staff motivated through quiet stretches and between peaks.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in information technology and software, and one on each of the topics this page points to.

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Plan the rota months earlier, cross-train other teams, hire short-term help where needed and give compensatory rest. Stagger leave across the year.
Group schools by area, allow rest days, plan accommodation and offer remote sessions for simple topics. Track travel load per person, not just visits.
Be polite and clear: the school owns the fee or result record, and the agent can help the school to fix it. Give agents a script and back them when parents are rude.
Use a checklist, run test imports, get sign-off from a school staff member and fix issues before go-live. Document who approved each stage.
Use the gap for learning, product work and recognition. Share the next peak plan early. A planned slow season feels very different from an empty one.
We would ask about calendar peaks, trainer travel, parent-facing support and migration checks. A sensible first project is a year-long staffing plan with a trainer travel policy. Scope goes into writing before you decide.
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