Discounts on their own childcare are a perk that can keep good nursery staff with an employer, says Mary Evans
Recruitment and retention of high-calibre childcare staff is reaching such a crisis level that managers are searching for new ways to create competitive and attractive employment packages.
Nursery managers are struggling to hold on to longer-serving members of staff who are leaving for jobs that suit their own family lives better. Many positions offered within new forms of provision, such as wraparound care and Sure Start, can offer more money or longer holidays, or both. They can be more attractive propositions for nursery staff coping with the demands of their own families.
One way for nurseries to counter this threat to staff retention is to launch schemes offering subsidised childcare. Obviously, there's a big question of cost in offering staff discounts on fees. But a subsidy scheme, when coupled with the childcare tax credit element of the Working Families Tax Credit, could enable many nursery workers to afford their own employer's rates.
John Edwards, director of the Busy Bees nursery chain, which employs more than 700 people, believes the staff childcare support programme that has operated since the chain was founded 18 years ago has helped to make staff want to stay.
'We feel that it has helped us retain good staff, but you don't know because there is no way you can gauge whether people would have left otherwise. All I can say is that many of them have stayed and we have had a lot of very good feedback from our staff about it.'
Mr Edwards says there are limits on the assistance offered to staff, but there is no qualifying period before someone can apply. 'We started Busy Bees because we wanted childcare for our own children, so we can hardly say to people working for us, "Your children can't come here". In essence, we allocate a sum of money for childcare available in a particular nursery.
'One of the problems you have always got is, for example, what would you do in a 100-place nursery with 20 staff, all with two children, wanting places? You can't do it. The way we do it, everybody can have something.'
Yvonne Birrell of the Birrell Collection chain of nurseries in Scotland says, 'We have a staff childcare policy, offering a discount in fees to staff who return to work for us after taking maternity leave. There is such a shortage of high-calibre staff, you have to offer the best possible package. Nursery owners are desperate for staff. They cannot operate without the right number and they can't operate efficiently without properly trained staff.
'We limit the number of places on which we offer discounts in each nursery and it is based on first come, first served. As 80 per cent of our staff are of child-bearing age we feel we must be fair and what is offered to one must be offered to all. But if everyone took it up there would be no room for fee-paying clients! The profit margin is so tight that you cannot afford to offer too much. However, a 10 per cent reduction on fees saves a fair chunk.
Three staff are taking advantage of the policy which offers a 5 per cent reduction on fees for children aged under two years old and 10 per cent off fees for children over two.'
Lynne Crussell, proprietor of the Abacus Day Nursery in Cambridge, says that her four children attended the nursery, but she concedes that coping with a colleague's children can be tricky for other members of the staff team. 'I think I was quite hard on my children because I didn't want people to think I was making favourites out of them,' she says.
To avoid conflicts between maternal and professional roles, some of the Birrell Collection staff do not enrol their children at the setting where they work.
When someone does work in the same rooms as their child, a clause in the childcare policy triggers a review after six months and gives the nursery the right to move the staff member if necessary, but this clause has not had to be implemented.
Managers say that many parents, including their own staff, are still not accessing the childcare element of the Working Families Tax Credit, despite a 12m Government publicity campaign. Sue Marsden, manager of the wraparound project at Kirklees Early Years Partnership, says, 'The problem is that parents do not seem to know about it. I think some parents think it is not for them or they are not eligible. We think the way to promote it is through one-to-one contact, so whenever we go to a childcare event, we are going to include WFTC.'
Yvonne Birrell is planning an in-house promotion campaign to increase awareness among her staff. 'We have 280 parents and 85 staff, and only ten parents and three staff are benefiting from WFTC. I cannot believe that this is the total of people eligible in our organisation. Our staff don't appear to think it applies to them and they are not making that call to see if they are eligible.
'We need to protect each individual's privacy, but we are thinking about launching a punchy, internal promotion to say there are a number of people here who have benefited from this and you could too.'
Further information
The Inland Revenue publishes leaflets, booklets and helpsheets designed to explain the tax credit system, including:
- WFTC/EG An employer's guide to tax credits
- WFTC/BK1 Your guide to Working Families Tax Credit
- DPTC/BK 1 Your guide to Disabled Person's Tax Credit
- CTC/BK 1 WFTC and DPTC Help with the cost of childcare
- WFTC/AP If you think a tax credit decision is wrong
- You can also obtain leaflets by
- calling the IR Orderline on 08459 000 404 between 8am and 10pm
- e-mailing on saorderline.ir@gtnet.gov.uk
- faxing on 08459 000 604
- writing to PO Box 37, St Austell, Cornwall PL25 5YN.
Many leaflets are also available to be downloaded via the internet from the IR website www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk
Employers can phone the employer's helpline on 0845 7 143 143 with their queries about tax credits. It is open from 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and from 8am to 5pm on Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays.
Copies of the employers' guide to tax credits can be obtained by ringing the employers' orderline on 08457 646 646. Helpline and orderline calls are charged at local rates.
