As a sector, recruitment has been challenging for some time. Research published by the National Day Nursery Association (NDNA) in June last year found that seven in ten (69.8%) settings don’t have enough staff to operate at maximum capacity. 

There is, however, some light at the end of the tunnel, with the government’s Best Start in Life policy including measures to tackle recruitment in the sector, such as raising the status of early years educators through a professional register, and supporting more early years staff to boost their qualifications.

First impressions

Nursery groups are also taking proactive action to improve recruitment and retention. Atherton House Nursery Group has taken the innovative step of setting up its own local jobs board online. It uses the board to promote its own vacancies but also accepts posts from a wide range of local employers, including competitor nurseries.

“Posting jobs on your own Facebook page is only going to reach parents and existing staff members,” said Lily Truman, marketing and recruitment manager at Atherton House. “You need to get that wider audience. We set up our own private jobs group, but you might be able to find existing groups in your area.”

Kido nursery group goes out to meet potential candidates “rather than waiting for them to come to us” said Catherine Stoneman, Kido’s chief executive. “We are going out into colleges, job centres, job fairs,” she said. “Anything we can do that elevates the sector in candidates’ minds is a good opportunity.”

It’s important that everyone who interacts with a job seeker is enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the company culture. “You can have the most fantastically well-designed brochure, detailing the benefits of working for your company, but what really matters is interactions with people throughout the recruitment process,” said Stoneman. “All of our recruiters have worked in their nurseries, so candidates are talking to someone on day one who can tell them about the reality of the company, the culture, the ethos.”

Joining incentives

A recent government initiative to incentivise new starters with a £1,000 bonus didn’t have any impact on recruitment, according to an evaluation of the scheme. The panel agreed that such incentives not only have little effect but can have a negative effect on existing staff.

“It tends to make the people currently working with you feel they are not as valued,” suggested Truman. “Two of our nurseries were eligible for the government scheme, but given the incentive was awarded after only 12 weeks, we were worried about people coming into the sector and going out as quickly as they came in. We found that not a single person applying for the job knew about the incentive, even though it was on the job advert, so it didn’t incentivise them to come into the sector.”

“If we have this theoretical pot of money available that we would use for joining incentives, we would rather turn that into a retention tool and reward longevity,” said Stoneman. “Rather than doing joining incentives we have introduced long service benefits, such as increased holiday and a monetary bonus after five, 10 and 15 years. Rather than reward people for starting, we would prefer to reward them for staying.”

A survey of the audience found that a number of settings did offer their own joining incentives, with one offering £1,000 after new staff members passed their probation period, while another offered £350 on joining and another £350 on passing probation.

A warm welcome can be extended on day one even without a joining bonus. “We send new starters a packet of seeds with the message ‘grow your career with us’, as part of a welcome pack,” explained George Apel, director at Atherton House. “People like receiving things in the post, and it’s a bit unusual.”

Retention

“Retention is something we absolutely obsess about, and something we believe should be at the top of all of our agendas,” said Stoneman, who revealed that Kido’s retention rate is around 86%. “If your retention rate is not a statistic that you know off the top of your head, I urge you to go away and have a look into it – post probation, because you may have some people whose departure is not a bad thing for the company or the business.”

While dealing with more negative and weaker staff members, for example through performance management, can be challenging, it must be done in order to retain stronger members of the team. “A nursery is a team effort and if you have a slightly weaker link in one room, the other person in that room has to make up for that,” said Apel. “Over a long period of time that person will feel you are letting this other practitioner get away with not doing as good a job as they are.”

“It is a really brave strategy isolating the toxic personality in the room, especially when we are struggling to recruit people, but ultimately it’s the right thing to do, if they are annoying lots of other people that you are relying on,” commented Marc Frost, operational lead at early years recruitment company Tinies UK and panel chair.

Training and career progression opportunities are key to retaining staff. “Nursery is traditionally quite a hierarchical place; you qualify at a certain level then you might become room leader, then deputy, then manager,” said Stoneman. “We have spent a lot of time thinking about how you can break away from that ladder into more of a lateral development landscape. For example, we have champions across different elements of our curriculum, such as a STEM champion, we have ESG champions across our nurseries, we have a charity champion. It’s a way you can enhance people’s careers without always tying it into a pay rise and a step up.”

Keeping the door open

“It’s important that we listen and try to understand why people are leaving, and what we can do better in the future as a company, especially if people are saying the same things,” said Apel. “The exit interview is one of the most important parts of managing the workforce,” agreed Frost.

There are many reasons for high staff turnover in nurseries, but it’s important to ensure the door is always open for returning staff. “If you get people’s offboarding right you leave the door wide open for them,” said Stoneman. “I love nothing more than a boomerang candidate, who has gone away then come back, because I think it speaks volumes about your culture.”

Frost suggested conducting “stay” interviews as well as “exit” interviews. “You can interview your staff and ask why is it they are staying, what are we doing right?” he said. “It just solidifies what you are doing around retention.”

Atherton House retains CVs of previous staff and applicants with permission, through its Caterpillar Careers recruitment arm, and keeps in touch by sending out newsletters and other information. “We probably now have about 3,500 CVs on a database,” said Apel. “We can get in touch and say, if you are a nursery practitioner at the moment and you would like to be a room leader, we have these vacancies at the moment.”

Apprenticeships

In a challenging recruitment market, growing your own talent has always been an attractive proposition. “We always try to have at least one or two apprentices per setting,” said Apel. “Retention rates of apprentices have been really good.”

Atherton House apprentices don’t start on 40-hour weeks like other staff members. “It is such a long working week when it is the first job for them and they are just coming out of college, so we put them on shorter hours which can be reviewed after the probation period or after they have passed their qualifications,” said Truman.

“We see apprenticeships as the key to solving recruitment challenges across the sector,” said Stoneman. “We currently have about 110 apprentices across our network.”

Nurseries are sometimes put off training apprentices by the thought that they may leave as soon as they have qualified. Stoneman suggested engaging with apprentices’ career aspirations from an early stage. “The ‘what’s next’ conversation is important quite early in their apprenticeship journey,” she said. “You might say ‘well actually by the time you graduate, you are going to potentially graduate into a deputy room leader role’, encouraging them into that mindset of staying here and seeing that progression in their career and learning.”

At the end of the day, recruitment is about attracting the right people for the right reasons. “We work in a sector which has a huge impact and a huge responsibility on getting it right,” concluded Stoneman.