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:
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.
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.
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)
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:
2. Enhanced professional development, such as:
“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:
4. Improving communication, such as:
“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:
6. Improving systems/processes, such as:
“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”
“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:
8. Involving students, such as:
Other resources - organizations have noticed a reduction within the workplace, but increasing stress outside the workplace is impacting teams.
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