Could HCM software for child care & early learning centres improve your team's morale?

Amidst high employee turnover and the ongoing struggle to attract suitable talent to the childcare & early learning industry, staff disengagement is a constant challenge for employers.

Engagement plays a major role in both your ability to retain talented workers and to deliver world-class education to the families in your care. When your workers feel engaged on the job, they’re happier and experience less stress – which, in turn, enables them to devote more time and attention to the children in your care.  

Technology like Humanforce’s human capital management (HCM) suite, which combines workforce management, HR management, wellbeing and pay solutions can help, but only if you understand why you need it and how to use it.

The challenge of child care & early learning worker retention

Retention issues are nothing new to Australian child care providers. In their report, Low pay but still we stay: Retention in early childhood education and care, researchers Paula McDonald, Karen Thorpe, and Susan Irvine note that:   

“In Australia, the percentage of job turnover amongst early childhood education and care (ECEC) employees each year has been estimated to be more than 30% for over a decade”. In addition, they found: “Such turnover includes churn within the sector as educators move between centres, with educators averaging 3.5 years' tenure within a centre.”  

While the reasons for people switching employers or leaving the industry altogether are varied, low pay, lack of appreciation, long hours, high levels of administration and poor working conditions, with limited or autonomy or flexibility can all lead to disengagement and high turnover.

Why worker retention matters

While it’s true that happier workers provide better quality education to the children in your care, that’s not the only reason your child care centre should prioritise worker retention.  

A tight labour market means that top workers with the right qualifications and experience will always be in high demand. If these workers are incentivised away from your centre due to low morale and the perception that they’ll be more respected elsewhere, you’ll lose the institutional knowledge they had – not to mention the emotional bonds they’ve formed with the children in their care.

For these reasons, worker morale shouldn’t be considered a ‘nice to have’. It needs to be a top priority for your business’s long-term survival.

How child care centres can improve worker morale

If your worker morale has been on the decline and people are leaving for greener pastures elsewhere, consider the following recommendations.

Check in regularly with employees

The Australian Psychological Society (APS) suggests: “Leadership positively impacts engagement, particularly through the provision of support and feedback.”  

Regular check-ins with staff can help to get a sense of what’s happening in their life – both workwise and personal.  

Although it’s tempting to delay or neglect things like formal performance reviews and to provide opportunities for feedback, informal check-ins can make a huge difference. People feel appreciated, heard and valued if their manager checks in at least fortnightly – but sometimes weekly or even daily is best.

Do you know what motivates your employees? What do they like or dislike about your workplace? Humanforce’s Employee Engagementsolution can be used to customise employee survey forms, collect feedback, and ultimately measure and improve engagement across the board. Use the solution to strengthen relationships between managers and employees, facilitate real-time 1:1s, and provide anytime recognition and 360-feedback.

Show appreciation and acknowledge effort

The APS notes: “In our current state of disruption and uncertainty, recognition is one of the simplest and easiest strategies to continue with, as it requires little effort and doesn’t cost anything. Now is a good time to remind leaders and employees of the value of saying thanks, and letting employees know that their effort to persist with their jobs despite current adversities is appreciated and valued.”  

Don’t leave recognition to chance. Don’t assume that, when the moment calls for it, you’ll step up and offer the kind of appreciation and reassurance workers are seeking in this uncertain new environment. Instead, make a diligent practise of acknowledging effort on a regular basis.   

Add a daily or weekly reminder to your diary to offer appreciation to one or more members of your staff. Establish a formal process for everyone on your staff to recognise good works done by others. Set an agenda item aside in every whole-company meeting to share your appreciation for specific actions undertaken by members of your team.   

Remember, it’s less important how you share feedback and appreciation. It’s more important that you figure out a pattern of recognition that works for your team and that you can consistently sustain.

Set performance goals and offer continuous development

Setting goals can provide guidance and the guardrails for employees to move to the next level of performance. Indeed, a formalised performance management plan may facilitate promotions, help build out career paths and assist managers in identifying high performers (and under-performers who need extra assistance). A plan may also be used to reinforce company values and strengthen the organisation as a whole – especially if personal goals align with organisational or team goals.

Humanforce’s Performance Management solution enables leaders to assess performance trends across key metrics, address issues in a timely manner, and reduce disengagement and flight risk. Workers can easily update progress towards goals, and managers can tap into 360 degree peer evaluation and facilitate continuous feedback. Skills and training needs analysis is also offered through the system.

Enable teamwork and collaboration

Finally, in their report, APS suggests that childcare centres: “Make technology available to enable connection and encourage its use. Provide your staff with opportunities to talk to colleagues, develop personal relationships, discuss opinions, share ideas and collectively problem-solve. This will increase social support and opportunities to influence decision-making, thus enhancing engagement and wellbeing.”  

Being a traditionally undervalued and underpaid profession, child care workers may be keen to take on additional shifts due to cost-of-living pressures. This type of collaboration technology has become more important than ever. However, you can’t simply pick a new software program at random, install it, and hope for the best. Much more needs to go into your selection process when it comes to HR and workforce management software for childcare centres – especially if you want to bolster engagement.

Everything required for work – in the palm of your hand

Humanforce’s HCM suite can help boost worker engagement and retention in one other key way: by providing everything workers need via their mobile device.

For example, if your centre is currently using a simple rostering or time-keeping app, your technology likely doesn’t have the full capabilities required to enable teamwork and collaboration from within a central platform. For true engagement, you need all the functions of Humanforce’s innovative Rostering & Scheduling and Time & Attendance solutions combined into a robust mobile app like the Humanforce Work App.  

Once implemented, the Work App allows workers to:

• Send messages directly to individual workers to check in with them and see how they’re going. 

• Send team-wide messages sharing your appreciation or to welcome new starters. With shift work being the norm for many workers in this sector, sometimes whole team meetings aren’t practical. While sharing appreciation in person is always desirable, our Work App can ensure your feedback is still communicated if you can’t meet face to face.

• Facilitate common work requirements, including checking schedules, swapping shifts or bidding on available shifts, requesting or managing leave, updating licences or certifications, and clocking in and out. Workers can also check their payslips.

Using technology to improve team morale

Ultimately, improving worker morale at your child care centre doesn’t have to be a big production. You don’t need costly incentives or promotions to get the job done.  

What your workers need to hear from you right now is that you appreciate the work they’re doing and that you’re committed to supporting their happiness and success. Using technology to express your gratitude and make workers’ lives easier can be enough to get them through these challenging times.  

About Humanforce

Humanforce is the best-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, 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 solutions can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.