Navigating the Current Nursery Recruitment Crisis

Keeping staff – motivating your staff to create a successful nursery

The nursery field is in a crisis, with more and more staff leaving to join other professions, which usually offers more pay and with less responsibility.

This has left many nurseries struggling.

But, what can you do about it?

This is what we will discuss in this video.

By the end you will learn some important ways you can ensure your nursery doesn’t struggle during this nursery recruitment crisis.

Before we get into that, I want to welcome  you to the channel how to open a nursery, where I support you in opening, growing and running own your nursery.

If you want further guidance on any childcare topic, then head over to the website openanursery.co.uk

If you stick around to the end, I’ll give you some information about how you can get started opening your own nursery.

now is more important than ever to work on keeping and motivating your staff.

If your not making staff well-being and job satisfaction a priority then it can affect the long-term success of your nursery.

In this video, we will explore the importance of empowering nursery and early years workers so that you can keep them.  As ensuring your staff are happy and stay is key to you navigating this current recruitment crisis.

It is agreed amongst most theorists that in order to keep your staff you need to satisfy certain needs and wants they may have.  Usually these needs and wants are more important than just offering more,

job satisfaction is usually achieved by satisfying certain things. 

Some of which we will go into now.

Starting with:

Personal freedom

Personal freedom refers to the ability of an individual to make choices and decisions that affect their lives without interference from external forces.

In the context of the workplace, personal freedom can be an important factor in determining job satisfaction and employee retention rates. For instance, when comparing the job of a preschool teacher to someone working in a more restrictive environment, such as a call center, it becomes clear that the former has very little personal freedom.

While call centre workers can take breaks whenever they want and make personal phone calls without worrying about ratios, preschool teachers are confined to their classrooms and are required to get permission to leave or use the restroom. This lack of personal freedom is one of the key factors contributing to the high turnover rate in the industry.

Therefore, it is important for employers to recognise the value of personal freedom in the workplace and work towards creating a more empowering and supportive environment for their employees. By doing so, they can improve job satisfaction, reduce turnover rates, and ultimately create a more productive and successful organisation.

The next key thing you should be doing with staff involves:

Empowerment

Empowering nursery practitioners is an essential aspect of creating a positive and effective classroom environment. In addition to providing early years staff with the necessary tools and structure, it is also important to allow them to manage their classrooms without excessive micromanagement.

By giving practitioners more autonomy, they can be more innovative in their teaching methods and create a learning environment that is tailored to the needs of their students. This approach is also likely to lead to higher job satisfaction for nursery workers, which can result in lower turnover rates and a more stable workforce.

Ultimately, the goal of empowering nursery practitioners is to provide them with the support they need to help their children to succeed, both academically and socially.

As a result, empowering early years staff can have a positive impact on the development of young children and set them on a path towards lifelong learning and success.

You should also try to provide

Opportunities for growth

In order to support the long-term motivation of nursery workers, it is important to provide them with opportunities for growth and leadership. While these practitioners may not be able to advance within the organisational chart, they can still be given the chance to become grow by becoming specialists in certain areas, like becoming the nursery first aider or Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator, or by mentoring those who are new to the field.

Not only does this benefit your nursery staff by giving them a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment, but it also fosters a more collaborative and supportive work environment that can lead to better outcomes for the children in their care.

Engage with staff

Implementing a Management by Walking Around (MBWA) strategy is crucial for managers to stay connected with their employees and create a supportive work environment. This involves taking the time to walk around your nursery and interacting with staff in a spontaneous and non-planned manner, with the conscious focus of getting up and away from the desk.

In the case of nursery settings, taking time to walk around the rooms and ensuring that practitioners have all the tools they need to do their job is an important factor in supporting them. By doing so, managers can make sure that teachers feel supported, clear about what they’re doing, and have the opportunity to meet with their manager one-on-one if needed.

Not only does this improve the quality of care provided to the children, but it also helps to create a more supportive and collaborative work environment for practitioners.

It also gives you a crucial opportunity to role model good and effective practice to your staff.

Tools and Supplies

One personal bugbear of mine is the number of staff I see at various nurseries having to buy resources for their nursery out of their own wages.

Which is why I add this as a point to try to ensure your staff aren’t doing the same.

Providing early years staff with the necessary tools and supplies is essential in helping them perform their job to the best of their ability.

Practitioners often go above and beyond by purchasing their own supplies for their classroom, if this is random additional items they may need for an activity then it can get a pass.  But when practitioners are having to purchase key day-to-day items for their setting, this really is unacceptable.

Employers should ensure that nursery staff have all the resources they need to create a positive learning environment, including curriculum materials, books, manipulatives, and toys. Not only does this provide staff with a sense of support and value, but it also enhances the quality of care provided to the children under their supervision.

Nursery work is a challenging job that requires a lot of patience, empathy, and creativity.

To keep nursery practitioners motivated and supported, it is important to empower them, give them opportunities to grow and lead, manage by walking around, and provide them with the tools and supplies they need to do their job.

Employers should recognise that the lack of personal freedom can be a significant factor in the high turnover rate in the industry, and work to provide their employees with a better experience, a better career, and a better motivational reason to come to work every day.

This is how you can keep and motivate your early years staff, and how you can help your setting survive the current nursery recruitment crisis.

If you want tips on how to hire the best staff, you can find tips on recruiting staff in the article in the description below.  Plus subscribe to the channel as I will be doing a video covering this shortly.

As I said at the beginning I was going to let you know how you can get started opening your own nursery. 

Well you can join the 100s of people already enrolled and enrol onto the course shown on the screen here. 

It is a complete guide showing you how to open your own nursery.

Check out the comments of some of the people who have already enrolled on it and gone on to open their own nursery.

If you want to join them, click the link in the description to enrol.

Plus, get an extra 10% off the course by using code youtube1.

Good luck and I look forward to supporting.

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God bless.