Leaders of multi-site services have a complex set of challenges in supporting consistent, high-quality outcomes for children, staff, families and their businesses.
Storypark works with over 11,000 customers in 37 countries (many of whom are multi-site operators) and one of the most prevalent challenges faced within the ECE profession globally is recruitment and retention.
As part of our mission to empower the community around each child, we are actively working with ECE leaders to understand and support these challenges. Recent work in this space has included developing and sharing a series of innovations, resources and tools. These include:
1. Mapping an educator's career journey
We’ve collaborated with multi-site leaders from six different countries to create an Educator Journey Map, designed to help leaders provide a clear and supportive career path to develop and retain quality educators throughout their careers. Read more about this below.
This map allows ECE leaders to easily visualize and observe educators’ experiences from their perspective as they progress on their career journey. There are five stages starting from awareness of the profession through to leadership and advocacy. Each of the different stages highlights the experiences, activities, touchpoints, leadership involvement and opportunities an educator may experience.
Download this resource, or email us to learn more about the Educator Journey Map, ask questions or gather additional insights.
2. Developing unique tools designed to support leaders
Storypark has developed insights, multi-site management and professional growth tools as part of Storypark’s suite of enterprise features. These tools help organizations nurture innovation, support business operations and growth, enhance collaboration and empower leaders to embed effective recruitment and retention processes.
3. Collating innovative practices from multi-site organizations
We’ve facilitated workshops with multi-site leaders at conferences in different countries (most recently at the World Forum of ECE in Vancouver), which included sharing innovative practices that have made a positive impact in their recruitment and retention. The following list ito inspire and empower leaders to take these learnings and implement them in their own organizations.
We’ve been fortunate to gather innovations and insights from organizations across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Denmark and Malaysia.
Analyzing the data collected to date highlights some interesting trends. We’ve recognised and listed eight innovations in recruitment and retention that were most recognised as impactful. Please see this list below.
66% of respondents said most newly recruited people leave in the first 3 years - “On average employees are leaving around the 3-5 year mark. If we get them past 6 years - we keep them long term.”
So what are ECE leaders doing in this space?
Eight trending innovations in recruitment and retention that are most recognised as impactful.
(Listed in order of popularity)
- Increased remuneration and benefits
- Enhanced professional development
- Changing staffing model
- Improving communication
- Personal care and support of staff
- Improving systems/processes
- Employee experience design
- Involving students
Gain further inspiration and ideas of practices you can implement in your organization that ECE leaders around the world have identified as making a positive impact in their organization.
1. Increased remuneration and benefits, such as:
- Pension plans
- Increased sick time, ability to borrow sick time, ability to purchase, time off
- Competitive wages
- Split shift premiums / eliminating split shifts (converting to full time roles)
- Increased vacation, birthdays off and framing paid leave in a meaningful way (vs just a vacation)
- Benefits plan, welcome bonus, signing bonus, referral bonus, years of service bonus, loyalty week off every X years
- Corporate partnership with financial provider to provide discounts & advice
- Childcare discount benefit (including for relatives)
- Pregnancy leave
2. Enhanced professional development, such as:
- Personalization of professional development (instead of group training) to ensure staff are motivated and can see a career pathway
- Each person has their own personal development plan linked to their aspirations and interests during the day
- Closing for 2 days a year
- Paying for professional requirements eg first Aid, certificate renewal costs
- Leadership/mentor program
- Working with a Pedagogista network, mentoring/coaching program
- Summer training for new employees (paid)
- Partner with other ECE organizations and/or RTOs for professional development
“We offered an internal leadership mentorship which was very successful started with an application from those interested, we confirmed 5 participants for 6 months interestingly now all are in leadership roles at our organization”
3. Changing staffing models, such as:
- Restructuring roles to create greater diversity
- Job sharing, co-leadership
- Shortened hours or changing shifts e.g. 4x10 hour days (share the day off) on a 5 week schedule so every 5 weeks 4 days off
- Out of ratio time, individual non-contact days
- Additional staff for planned and unplanned leave, support educators added to the centre team beyond ratio, additional staff to support children with additional needs
- 1:3 ratio, 10 infants, 4 staff. Have stuck with 5 and looking to up staffing if there's budget to do it, generally meeting ratios and taking pressure off the staff
- Embedding a culture of succession planning and highlighting job opportunities within the organization
4. Improving communication, such as:
- Asking for feedback from staff re: engagement with children
- Enhance communications with parents. So they feel like they are educating vs caretaking
- Be present as leaders - visit sites
- Regular ccknowledgement indicating that they are valued
- Building stronger team spirit as well as stronger sense of 'worth' and 'contribution to the children future' through our professional knowledge and roles
- Employee feedback, they want to be listened to
- Townhalls
- Connection/bonding - culture building
“Listen & truly see who your staff is - that they are individual in their own right with particular qualities & strengths so showcase these. Have frequent conversations with them and be an attentive listener so they see they are heard."
5. Personal care and support of staff, such as:
- Immigration support
- Career progression and career mapping
- Mindfulness, counselling, personal support services including extended paid parental leave, discounted access for staff children and relatives children
- Wellness and pedagogical hour
- Wellbeing ambassadors at each site
- Professional learning plans, which include focus on equity, diversity and inclusion, and mental health and well-being
6. Improving systems/processes, such as:
- Onboarding welcoming program. Enhanced orientation for new employees.
- Creation of a training video library
“Developing our own online ‘ToolBox’ that centres can use at anytime to enrich & enhance their teachers understanding in regards to our educational approach but doing this pd in their own setting”
- Development of a strategic HR growth plan
- Utilizing digital tools to help craft induction processes to enliven brand and philosophies of organization including prompted 15 and 30 day check in calls
- Human to human initiatives
- Employee wellness
- Employee recognition
- Shift from job descriptions to role description and hiring for disposition
- Stay interviews - identify the whys
- Having current staff involved in the hiring process
- Networking with other organizations to create belonging and PLD opportunities
- Use of ML to analyse correlation between operational trends retention indicators
- Collaborative value based budgeting, teams aligned on desired projects so if funding changes happen/grants come up these can be immediately funded and in place
“We are investing at the mid level management level (program supervisors) to create succession planning that is intentional and focused at a strategic level.”
7. Employee experience design, such as:
- Being innovative with positions, connecting people to their passions, meet the employees mind/learning style e.g. in person, video, reading, virtual
- Leadership development designed for specific generational cohorts to appeal to their needs and drivers
- Internal leadership development programmes, including larger operators purchasing independent training organizations to ensure a supply of students for their workforce
- Encouraging more men in childcare
- Mental wellness and the need for work life balance
8. Involving students, such as:
- Summer internship, with students able to spend their placements in one organization
- Investment in placement students onboarding
- Investment into apprenticeship education
Other resources - organizations have noticed a reduction within the workplace, but increasing stress outside the workplace is impacting teams.
- Key determinants of burnout and the most effective approaches to reduction
- Early Care and Learning Recruitment and Retention Strategies in B.C. Canad
Leaders of multi-site services have a complex set of challenges in supporting consistent, high-quality outcomes for children, staff, families and their businesses.
Storypark works with over 11,000 customers in 37 countries (many of whom are multi-site operators) and one of the most prevalent challenges faced within the ECE profession globally is recruitment and retention.
As part of our mission to empower the community around each child, we are actively working with ECE leaders to understand and support these challenges. Recent work in this space has included developing and sharing a series of innovations, resources and tools. These include:
1. Mapping an educator's career journey
We’ve collaborated with multi-site leaders from six different countries to create an Educator Journey Map, designed to help leaders provide a clear and supportive career path to develop and retain quality educators throughout their careers. Read more about this below.
This map allows ECE leaders to easily visualize and observe educators’ experiences from their perspective as they progress on their career journey. There are five stages starting from awareness of the profession through to leadership and advocacy. Each of the different stages highlights the experiences, activities, touchpoints, leadership involvement and opportunities an educator may experience.
Download this resource, or email us to learn more about the Educator Journey Map, ask questions or gather additional insights.
2. Developing unique tools designed to support leaders
Storypark has developed insights, multi-site management and professional growth tools as part of Storypark’s suite of enterprise features. These tools help organizations nurture innovation, support business operations and growth, enhance collaboration and empower leaders to embed effective recruitment and retention processes.
3. Collating innovative practices from multi-site organizations
We’ve facilitated workshops with multi-site leaders at conferences in different countries (most recently at the World Forum of ECE in Vancouver), which included sharing innovative practices that have made a positive impact in their recruitment and retention. The following list ito inspire and empower leaders to take these learnings and implement them in their own organizations.
We’ve been fortunate to gather innovations and insights from organizations across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Denmark and Malaysia.
Analyzing the data collected to date highlights some interesting trends. We’ve recognised and listed eight innovations in recruitment and retention that were most recognised as impactful. Please see this list below.
66% of respondents said most newly recruited people leave in the first 3 years - “On average employees are leaving around the 3-5 year mark. If we get them past 6 years - we keep them long term.”
So what are ECE leaders doing in this space?
Eight trending innovations in recruitment and retention that are most recognised as impactful.
(Listed in order of popularity)
- Increased remuneration and benefits
- Enhanced professional development
- Changing staffing model
- Improving communication
- Personal care and support of staff
- Improving systems/processes
- Employee experience design
- Involving students
Gain further inspiration and ideas of practices you can implement in your organization that ECE leaders around the world have identified as making a positive impact in their organization.
1. Increased remuneration and benefits, such as:
- Pension plans
- Increased sick time, ability to borrow sick time, ability to purchase, time off
- Competitive wages
- Split shift premiums / eliminating split shifts (converting to full time roles)
- Increased vacation, birthdays off and framing paid leave in a meaningful way (vs just a vacation)
- Benefits plan, welcome bonus, signing bonus, referral bonus, years of service bonus, loyalty week off every X years
- Corporate partnership with financial provider to provide discounts & advice
- Childcare discount benefit (including for relatives)
- Pregnancy leave
2. Enhanced professional development, such as:
- Personalization of professional development (instead of group training) to ensure staff are motivated and can see a career pathway
- Each person has their own personal development plan linked to their aspirations and interests during the day
- Closing for 2 days a year
- Paying for professional requirements eg first Aid, certificate renewal costs
- Leadership/mentor program
- Working with a Pedagogista network, mentoring/coaching program
- Summer training for new employees (paid)
- Partner with other ECE organizations and/or RTOs for professional development
“We offered an internal leadership mentorship which was very successful started with an application from those interested, we confirmed 5 participants for 6 months interestingly now all are in leadership roles at our organization”
3. Changing staffing models, such as:
- Restructuring roles to create greater diversity
- Job sharing, co-leadership
- Shortened hours or changing shifts e.g. 4x10 hour days (share the day off) on a 5 week schedule so every 5 weeks 4 days off
- Out of ratio time, individual non-contact days
- Additional staff for planned and unplanned leave, support educators added to the centre team beyond ratio, additional staff to support children with additional needs
- 1:3 ratio, 10 infants, 4 staff. Have stuck with 5 and looking to up staffing if there's budget to do it, generally meeting ratios and taking pressure off the staff
- Embedding a culture of succession planning and highlighting job opportunities within the organization
4. Improving communication, such as:
- Asking for feedback from staff re: engagement with children
- Enhance communications with parents. So they feel like they are educating vs caretaking
- Be present as leaders - visit sites
- Regular ccknowledgement indicating that they are valued
- Building stronger team spirit as well as stronger sense of 'worth' and 'contribution to the children future' through our professional knowledge and roles
- Employee feedback, they want to be listened to
- Townhalls
- Connection/bonding - culture building
“Listen & truly see who your staff is - that they are individual in their own right with particular qualities & strengths so showcase these. Have frequent conversations with them and be an attentive listener so they see they are heard."
5. Personal care and support of staff, such as:
- Immigration support
- Career progression and career mapping
- Mindfulness, counselling, personal support services including extended paid parental leave, discounted access for staff children and relatives children
- Wellness and pedagogical hour
- Wellbeing ambassadors at each site
- Professional learning plans, which include focus on equity, diversity and inclusion, and mental health and well-being
6. Improving systems/processes, such as:
- Onboarding welcoming program. Enhanced orientation for new employees.
- Creation of a training video library
“Developing our own online ‘ToolBox’ that centres can use at anytime to enrich & enhance their teachers understanding in regards to our educational approach but doing this pd in their own setting”
- Development of a strategic HR growth plan
- Utilizing digital tools to help craft induction processes to enliven brand and philosophies of organization including prompted 15 and 30 day check in calls
- Human to human initiatives
- Employee wellness
- Employee recognition
- Shift from job descriptions to role description and hiring for disposition
- Stay interviews - identify the whys
- Having current staff involved in the hiring process
- Networking with other organizations to create belonging and PLD opportunities
- Use of ML to analyse correlation between operational trends retention indicators
- Collaborative value based budgeting, teams aligned on desired projects so if funding changes happen/grants come up these can be immediately funded and in place
“We are investing at the mid level management level (program supervisors) to create succession planning that is intentional and focused at a strategic level.”
7. Employee experience design, such as:
- Being innovative with positions, connecting people to their passions, meet the employees mind/learning style e.g. in person, video, reading, virtual
- Leadership development designed for specific generational cohorts to appeal to their needs and drivers
- Internal leadership development programmes, including larger operators purchasing independent training organizations to ensure a supply of students for their workforce
- Encouraging more men in childcare
- Mental wellness and the need for work life balance
8. Involving students, such as:
- Summer internship, with students able to spend their placements in one organization
- Investment in placement students onboarding
- Investment into apprenticeship education
Other resources - organizations have noticed a reduction within the workplace, but increasing stress outside the workplace is impacting teams.
- Key determinants of burnout and the most effective approaches to reduction
- Early Care and Learning Recruitment and Retention Strategies in B.C. Canad