Some thoughts on attracting and retaining quality Educators to your Service

By Narelle Nettlebeck.

Many services seem to be struggling to attract and retain new staff to their service.

Here are some thoughts regarding this current sector issue.

Simon Sinek created the Golden Circle theory for businesses.
In a very brief ‘Narelle Nutshell’, he said that generally what you do and how you do it are similar to other businesses providing the same service. This is true for Education and Care. We educate and care for children. We do so in a similar manner to the service down the road because we have the same frameworks and standards to adhere to.

What sets services apart, is the WHY. The service philosophy. The things that are unique to your service. The things that you do BETTER than other services.  Are you high quality? Do you have more educators than you require by ratio law? Are your educators highly skilled and awesome with children?

What is your why? Are you using your why to attract educators to your service? Why would I want to work for you rather than the service next door?

What benefits do you offer to a new educator?
You can’t make empty promises, but perhaps you do need to offer potential (and your current educators), something that makes life just a little more pleasant? Maybe you pay above award wages? Maybe you offer additional non-contact time for documenting? Maybe you offer a day off a month? Maybe you offer extra annual leave?

Working in this sector is hard and often thankless. What do you offer that demonstrates how much you value your team?

Quality
Is your service a quality service? Would a prospective educator walk through and REALLY want to work with you? Are your standards high? Is your service clean, appealing, well resourced? Are the educator’s kind and appropriate with the children?

If someone new walks through and observes practices that concern them, they will not be keen to join the team. Don’t look to hire educators to ‘fix’ any problems you might have. Work to ‘fix’ them and be working towards best practice ALL the time.

Hopefully we will see a change in the sector soon, but until then, I do hope this is food for thought that will help you find fantastic educators!