We all know the early years childcare system is both complex and fragmented. Provision falls across private, voluntary and public sectors; funding is tight and providers are stretched. And while many of the workers are passionate about their jobs, low pay and long hours are the norm.
Unsurprisingly, retention is difficult; 40 per cent will go on to leave the sector altogether. But as always, it’s not just about the money. Workers are burnt out, and many struggle to balance the role with their own caring responsibilities.
This is one of the most overwhelmingly female workforces in the UK: 98% of employees are women, with the largest portion aged 25-39. Key years for many, for building their own families. As one employee noted, “It’s ironic that we cannot see our own families because we are looking after other people’s all the time.”
Why looking at flex possibilities in childcare is important
Having a stable, well-trained early years workforce is important not just for the people involved, but for society as a whole. Early Years education has been strongly linked to better outcomes for children “A strong foundation in the early years is critical to children’s success throughout their education and beyond” Amanda Spielman, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Ofsted. And while issues around pay and training need solving at a sector level, we at Timewise believe that tackling the lack of flexibility could make a huge difference in both the recruitment and retention of staff.
It’s for this reason that we partnered with our two Childcare Pioneers partners, the Early Years Alliance and the London Early Years Foundation. As both had a large number of settings, and both are keen to innovate, they made ideal partners to explore options for flexible working in the sector with. Funded by the JP Morgan Chase Foundation, we ran a a two-year project, which set out to understand the context of the sector and the barriers to progression and flexible working; explore what flexibility means in a nursery environment; and support managers to process flexible working requests and build a more proactively flexible working culture.
The barriers
So what did we learn? Well, as you would expect, it’s a complex picture, but there are some universal themes, which include:
- A lack of capacity and slack in the sector, and tight operation margins, which makes it hard to offer training and development for staff.
- The challenge of balancing personal caring responsibilities with more senior roles, and the training and qualifications needed to progress to them. “A lot of the training (for qualification) is in my own time, or I get short notice that I can have a few hours off.”
- A growth in demand for flexible working, which managers are struggling to accommodate, exacerbated by staff shortages and the need to meet staffing ratios. “The number of requests is increasing. It’s getting increasingly difficult to say yes.”
- · A high use of bank and agency staff, who get to determine the hours and days they work, leaving permanent staff to fit around them. “What’s been allowed to happen is that the people with flexibility in our nurseries are bank staff.”
- · A lack of data on staff needs, preferences and aspirations, which makes it difficult to create relevant solutions.
All of these have an impact on recruitment as well as retention and progression, and there was a strong consensus that flexible working could be an important part of the solution. Staff told us: “Flexible working is the most important thing we could offer staff” and “It would make more people consider joining, if they offered more flexible roles upfront.”
Our recommendations for overcoming these barriers
It’s not easy to change your systems and processes overnight. And even less so – your working culture. But here is two-prong action plan that any leader can take:
- Shift from a request-response model to an open, proactive approach to flexible working. This includes opening up the dialogue about flexibility and exploring what is possible in your setting. Understanding staff needs and preferences and discussing how to collectively balance preferences with the overall needs of the nursery and children This proactive approach brings teams together to find solutions.
- · Embedding flexibility into recruitment. This includes exploring flexible options, considering alternative working patterns or how responsibilities could be allocated differently to enable flexibility. Being open to new ways of working, expressly stating flexible working options in adverts and starting to find ways to talk about your flex when recruiting for new roles.
Early years providers need more, ideally experienced staff if they’re to meet the demand for places and offer a high-quality service; particularly with 35,000 spaces to fill in time for the expansion of free care. We believe that a national workforce strategy, with a recruitment campaign centred on part-time and flexible working, could attract 50,000 people to the sector and help to staff the equivalent of 17,500 of those vacancies. Together, we'll start shifting the dial on flexible working for nursery workers and managers. But only if action begins now.
