Nursery Chains: Recruitment - Hire ground

Job satisfaction is something that childcare workers have long enjoyed, but employees cannot live on dreams alone, and the GCSE requirement at Level 3 was stalling career progression in the field.

Since that rule was scrapped by the Government in this March’s Workforce Strategy, and trainees now have the hard-won option of qualifying in functional skills for maths and English, settings are hoping for a restored pipeline of quality staff.

Of course, a return to pre-GCSE staffing levels won’t be instantaneous, especially with low pay continuing to be a problem, and the lag has been well-documented.

‘It will probably take us at least another six months to recover from the recruitment block posed by the GCSE requirement,’ says Cheryl Hadland, managing director of Hadland Care Group, which owns medium-sized chain Tops Day Nurseries.

An analysis of Ofqual figures for Nursery World by awarding body CACHE shows that between 2014 and 2016, the number of students finishing Level 3 courses halved, from 35,275 to just 17,530. And last year’s workforce survey by the NDNA found that the percentage of Level 3-qualified staff had dropped from 83 per cent in 2015 to 75 per cent, with applicants’ lack of GCSEs cited as the main stumbling block.

From now on, students will have renewed potential for qualifying at Level 3 and beyond and, unlike with GCSEs, it’s possible for them to take the functional skills tests at any time.

ONGOING CHALLENGES

Ms Hadland reports that, as of the end of September, most of Tops’ 19 settings had two to four vacancies. Indeed, of the 43 childcare openings across the chain (which has around 500 employees), around half were for Level 3s and above. The issue is so high on the MD’s agenda that she has a full-time recruitment manager dedicated to filling them.

Pre-school Learning Alliance chief executive Neil Leitch says the diminished pool of Level 3-qualified staff ‘remains a challenge’ for the Alliance, which runs 108 settings, particularly as a provider operating in deprived areas.

Against this tough backdrop of campaigning for more constructive Government intervention, nursery groups may themselves need to step up their efforts to help make the profession attractive again.

Speaking from the Alliance’s position as a membership organisation, Mr Leitch adds, ‘Looking at the sector more generally, it’s of course important for providers to constantly evaluate if they could be doing more to retain good staff members.’

Penny Tongo, a senior recruitment manager at social enterprise the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF), has her work cut out to fill 50 vacancies across its 37 settings by December.

The nursery group, which also has the challenge of settings being based in deprived areas, has already recruited a staggering 220 extra staff this year alone, as part of plans to more than double the number of children it looks after over coming years from 1,938, to 5,000.

The recruitment drive will add to its existing 500-plus workforce. The manager says for the first time, the organisation has created a pool of bank staff, and 86 of the new recruits are working on this basis. It is such a hive of activity that she has even taken on two new assistants to help with hiring, checking and signing up the new starters.

STAFF PRESSURES OF THE 30 HOURS ROLL-OUT

With the 30 hours initiative now fully under way, groups are reporting variations in their strategies. Bertram Nursery Group (right), which owns 37 nurseries, confirms it is offering the extra entitlement across all of its English settings, but that take-up has been lower than expected.

Managing director Cary Rankin admits that prior to launch, the company was concerned about having the right staff numbers. He says that before going live in September, teams worked hard to build their permanent and flexible staffing, then as bookings for funded places came through, ‘any additional staffing requirements were reviewed on a site-by-site basis’.

Mr Rankin says Bertram is ‘mindful’ that intake may increase as the Government’s application system issues are resolved.

By contrast, Ms Hadland says Tops is not recruiting more staff to support the roll-out because the impact has been ‘minimal to the nursery’.

She adds, ‘Yes we do move staff between nurseries, and we run our own agency, so we don’t have to use external agency staff.’

At LEYF, the chain’s model for offering 30 hours was devised with the recruitment crisis in mind. ‘Of course, lack of staff within nurseries always affects the numbers of children we can take,’ says Ms Tongo.

TRAINING AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT

One key incentive for improving recruitment and retention is training and support for career progression. A large number of LEYF’s new recruits are below Level 3, and this is part of a conscious recruitment strategy for the chain. Ms Tongo says, ‘We have noticed that the quality of candidates has dropped compared with previous years and there has been a big decline in Level 3 and above nursery teachers on the job market.

‘So much so that as an organisation we have started to employ and train unqualified and Level 2 nursery staff with the view to putting them through the apprentice scheme.’

Meanwhile, Childbase Partnership, which employs 1,686 workers across 41 day nurseries, has seemingly ridden out the storm, due to its ‘consistently high level of investment in training and career development programmes’, says the group’s managing director Virginia Mead-Herbert.

The company also has upped its creative approach to recruitment, with a £300 employee bonus for successfully recommending a friend to work at one of its nurseries, rising to £500 in areas such as Oxford and Cambridge, where filling vacancies has proven tougher.

LEYF’s referral bonus compares favourably to this, with £750 on offer to employees. Perhaps unusually, there is also £500 up for grabs by non-employees, which Ms Tongo says ‘is a way to encourage people to make introductions between us and their network’.

Childbase claims its ability to offer such enviable working conditions (recognised by its status for more than a decade on ‘The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For’ list) means it gets what it sees as the pick of the bunch, leading to ‘more qualified staff in our nurseries and improvements in the quality of provision’, says Ms Mead-Herbert.

She describes how in the past academic year, Childbase’s apprenticeship programme doubled. A bespoke scheme, in partnership with Bristol-based Lifetime Training, delivers GCSE maths and English or functional skills alongside the Level 3 Diploma in Early Learning and Childcare, as well as a range of other programmes.

Similarly, the Pre-school Learning Alliance sees it as important to ‘recognise quality and committed staff’, with support for career progression, which has been recognised with its Investors in People accreditation.

A QUESTION OF BALANCE

Of course, investment carries risk and, despite boasting its own training academy, Bertram has concerns about the balance of new blood and experience.

Mr Rankin says, ‘What we do know is that in the past two years our recruitment costs have increased significantly as we compete, along with many other sector providers, to find suitably qualified candidates. We remain huge advocates of recruiting apprentices, but we also recognise the importance and need to balance the number of qualified and experienced employees across the nursery team.

‘Sadly, it remains a very real problem and challenge in pockets across the country to find and recruit Level 3-qualified practitioners; this is certainly the case for many of our sites in and around Manchester and Liverpool, and I know from listening to sector colleagues that this continues to be a wider national problem.’

The Pre-school Learning Alliance’s 2016 pay and conditions survey, carried out with Nursery World, found that, other than pay, lack of career progression was the most common reason for leaving.

Mr Leitch gives a somewhat bleak prognosis. ‘If staff are finding that they could earn more working in a local supermarket than continuing in an early years field, there is only so much that providers will be able to do to convince them to stay in post,’ he says.

PERKS PAYING DIVIDENDS

Since becoming 100 per cent staff-owned in May, Childbase is averting the employee churn risk with Partnership Dividends, a scheme that rewards workers’ contribution to company success with an equal share of a pot of tax-free cash.

The list of perks goes on – on top of this, all Childbase employees are entitled to a 50 per cent discount on childcare at any of its settings, as well as vouchers for care at other nurseries and wraparound care, private medical care (free or subsidised depending on length of service), opportunities for far-flung adventures, and long-service payments.

At Tops, meanwhile, employee incentives include the company covering 40 per cent of childcare (often below cost) and flexible shifts, as well as well-being initiatives.

Ms Hadland explains that the latter include ‘buddying’, counselling, coaching, support with training, team activities and thoughtful management techniques.

However, despite all of the above initiatives, low wages remain an issue. Ms Hadland adds, ‘We struggle to compete with wages paid by local supermarkets and call centres, so we are fortunate to be in a sector where job satisfaction and enjoyment can be maximised.’