Here's how Childcare & Early Learning providers can re-engage their employees with HR tech

Working in Childcare & Early Learning workers is a mixed blessing. While many derive fulfilment and enjoyment from working with children, this kind of work comes with inherent caveats that operators, managers and workers must consider. 

The causes of disengagement amongst Childcare & Early Learning workers 

Childcare & Early Learning workers face several pain points that continue to cause widespread burnout and disengagement throughout the industry. 

The overarching cause boils down to the nature of the work itself: looking after and caring for children. It’s a role that demands constant physical and emotional energy, as well as high levels of attention-to-detail. And this becomes even more draining when having to deal with difficult children, parents, or both.   

Emotions aside, there are systematic pressures causing Childcare & Early learning workers to disengage. A skills shortage of around 21,000 workers continues to strain the existing workforce — who are typically underpaid, lack work flexibility, and have only limited prospects for career progression. 

For those still willing to make a go of it, the (educational) barriers to entry must be considered. For entry level roles, one must hold at minimum a Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care, while more senior roles require a diploma in that same area. Those interested in becoming Early Childhood Teachers (ECT) require a bachelor’s degree. There are also a handful of compulsory qualifications, regardless of the position: 

• Working with Children Check (WWCC) along with a National Police Check 

• First Aid Certification (HLTAID012) 

• Child Protection Compliance Training (state specific) 

And while it’s common for new graduates to work while completing their course, many are forced to drop out due to unpaid placements, as well as poor pay and progression prospects.  

There’s also a range of administrative and compliance-related duties these workers need to maintain, which often become major time vacuums for workers and administrators trying to simultaneously provide quality care for children. Having a centralised repository of employee data in the form of a Core HR solution can help ensure operators who have multiple centres in different locations are working from the same dataset. This can facilitate staff movements between centres, reporting, and more.  

Unfortunately, many of the above factors are inherent to the role. Dealing with children requires patience, qualifications, and an incentive aside from personal fulfilment. While it won’t magically resolve these systemic issues, the right HR tech can help Childcare & Early Learning managers re-engage their staff by prioritising their wellbeing and automating tedious administrative tasks.   

Don’t just take our word for it! Listen to what one of our valued customers, Story House Early Learning, had to say about the challenges they’ve faced and how the right tech stack has helped.

Humanforce’s HR tech solutions can help 

Employee Engagement 

According to Gallup’s State of the Workplace Report from 2024, low employee engagement costs the global economy US$8.9 trillion. Not only does disengagement cost your business, but happier employees are generally more motivated to provide better customer service. In Childcare & Early Learning, this equates to better overall care for the children. But sometimes, discerning exactly what your employees care about can be difficult. The best way to find out? Ask them directly. 

Humanforce’s Employee Engagement solution allows you to customise survey forms, collect feedback, measure and improve engagement across your business. Managers can set up 1:1 check-ins, provide recognition and feedback at any time, and measure eNPS scores.  

These functions facilitate key touchpoints in forming and strengthening the manager-employee relationship, where managers can gain a better understanding of what might be causing their employees to burn out or become disengaged. 

For example, a manager notices a particular employee becoming increasingly irritable as of late. They note that they haven’t been able to check in with the employee in recent weeks, so they book in a 1:1 meeting through the Employee Engagement tool to see how they’re tracking. In doing so, the manager can identify, in a genuine manner, any personal issues the employee may be going through. They can find solutions to alleviate the employee’s workload until they return to normal. 

Compliance Management 

Childcare & Early Learning managers are met with various compliance obligations and qualifications management duties, both of which are covered in more depth in our previous article on HCM pain points for Childcare & Early Learning providers. These responsibilities act as major time vacuums — regardless of whether the manager is keeping tabs on qualification renewal dates, maintaining child-to-staff ratios, or manually calculating accurate payroll based on the relevant employment awards or agreements. 

However, recent investigations into Australia's Childcare system have revealed that as many as one in 10 Childcare centres fail to meet the national standards. This comes with reports of centres ‘gaming’ the national quality standards system to push enrollments, while others have been accused of hiring workers with false qualification certificates. While many centres continue to comply and deliver a high standard of care, it’s imperative to keep worker qualifications up-to-date and verified.  

This can be done via Humanforce’s Compliance Management solution, which automates both audit and compliance management to make employee record-keeping effortless. Receive notifications about renewal dates for things like work visas and vaccinations before they hit, track qualifications for different job roles, and stay on top of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) requirements with training and qualifications monitoring.

Additional Humanforce solutions 

As a best-in-one HCM suite, Humanforce also offers a Benefits suite with a focus on wellbeing. Accessed via the Thrive App, the suite offers a range of benefits, including access to earned wages before payday, savings and budgeting tools, discounts and rewards for everyday purchases, and educational features to help improve financial wellbeing.  In a profession that traditionally offers low pay, this can make a genuine difference not just to employee wellbeing but also to overall engagement. 

To learn more about the Humanforce HCM suite, including Employee Engagement, Compliance Management and Benefits, visit our website and chat with one of our experts today.  

About Humanforce 

Humanforce is the all-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK. 

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses. 

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.