Nurturing staff

How does a medium-sized childcare provider score so highly as a great place to work?

Child Base was one of the best performers in this year’s Sunday Times ranking of the Best Companies to Work For – advancing from number 72 to number 31.

So how does the company do it? Part of the answer lies in the company’s excellent staff communications.

Working in a nursery, rather like being a young mother, can potentially be quite isolating. For most of the 800 team members working within Child Base’s 33 nurseries, the job is to look after one age group, for example, one- to two-year-old children, and when they’re indoors, they’ll be in a different room from most of their colleagues. Opportunities for team get-togethers are limited, and any meetings have to take place outside normal opening hours. For a nursery worker, there’s also limited access to email or intranet at work.

Yet, despite these challenges, Child Base has recently been shown to have one of the most engaged and happy workforces in the UK. So how does the company achieve this?

Executive Assistant to the Managing Director, Caroline Raine, a key member of the company’s communications team, explains: “We rely primarily on face-to-face communications, and our nursery managers are the people who make it work.

 “We bring them together around once a month to ensure there’s good communication between senior management and the people on the ground. In their turn, each manager holds a team meeting every few weeks in order to pass on important messages and receive feedback from team members.

“We also hold a number of events and road shows during the year. These help team members feel valued and part of a larger team.”

Another key part of the strategy is a staff representative group, which meets regularly to ensure that any issues are aired and all staff can get a fair hearing.

Finally, there’s talk, the bright and lively quarterly newsletter that goes out both to nursery staff and customers. Having a single magazine for the two groups is an unusual approach that, says Caroline, works well for them.

“We used to have two separate newsletters, but we have found this approach makes for a better magazine – both staff and parents want to read about new  developments in childcare and the news from all our nurseries.

 “The feedback on the magazine is very positive – we know people look forward to receiving it,” she adds.