ABC Educare

Managing the needs of a diverse staff

Accessibility

Some people are ringing ABC Educare in New Plymouth as soon as they know they are expecting a child. Demand for places in this private early childhood centre is so high there is a year-long waiting list despite no advertising. Owner/manager Sheri Walsh says it is hard to turn down parents who want to enrol their children but puts the centre’s success down to respect, learning as much as they can and having some fun.

"Respect is the big word we use in our centre," she says. "The management team respect the staff and the staff respect our children and parents. Seeing this kind of behaviour also helps the children pick up respect."

One way to demonstrate that respect is to be accessible for staff and parents. "I work in the centre just about all the time. My office is by the front door so I’m the first person people see when they come in. It means I can greet and farewell our children and parents. A lot of managers are not accessible, they hide away. I want to be friendly and approachable. This keeps the lines of communication open and means we can deal with problems as they arise rather than letting them fester," Sheri says.

Her commitment extends to doing whatever is needed includes cleaning the paint pots, wiping the floor and wiping noses. Sheri says "staff members regularly see me doing other tasks around the centre. It helps confirm that we do not work at such different levels – we are quite similar. It is not like they do all the dirty work and management do all the clean work."

Diverse workforce

ABC Educare is actually three centres catering for children of different ages with an over-arching senior management team comprised of Sheri, the three centre leaders and the centre co-ordinator. The staff has grown from 2 to 36 over the years. Sheri describes working in early childhood as rewarding but demanding. Support is crucial and this extends to all staff having the chance to learn as much as they can from courses and conferences.

"We have a diverse workforce from teachers to cooks to caretakers. Each person also has their own needs, emotions and way of working. We decided to do the Myer-Briggs process which would help us learn about our personality types and how we worked. In turn, this helped us understand how we interacted with others. It explained why some people say the first thing that comes into their head while others didn’t speak up in meetings at all. It was quite a revelation and we identified a few people who needed further encouragement and support," Sheri says.

Positive attitudes

The big difference with their Myer-Briggs process was that it was done off-site and was combined with team building exercises like horse-riding. "Having some time away working together was hugely enjoyable. However, I’m not exactly a horse rider so that was right outside my comfort zone," Sheri laughs.

This commitment to learning and challenging comfort zones included staying in tepees during a session with Dr Tom Mulholland. "His lessons are about positive attitudes and the power of healthy thinking. Healthy thinking shows that our emotions, our day and our success is determined by how we think, feel and act. Basically, how we think follows through in how we act. As a staff, we have learnt over the years not to sweat the small stuff – or at least we have tried to learn that!" she says.

Building a team

A major challenge is to ensure proper communications between the three centres and between the centres and the leadership team. The solution includes monthly meetings with all staff and bringing everyone together for professional development.

"One way of linking up the centres is that the staff will take their children on ‘visits’ to the next centre when the children are almost old enough to move up. This helps the staff as well as the children establish links and get to know each other," Sheri says.

Although ABC Educare has been running for 23 years, the amount of Government regulation has increased dramatically in recent years. Sheri explains that they are required to develop a large number of policies, keep them updated and circulated regularly.

"That’s really the forte of the co-ordinator on the management team. It is so important we wanted to have a specialist. However, all the managers take part in the Ministry of Education audits because they all need to be familiar with what is required."

Managing systems

Sheri has some simple advice for dealing with Government agencies: "be honest, gather the information early and put it in a form you can understand. Check carefully and definitely keep up with all the requirements. Never get behind because it is so hard to catch up. Focus on developing really good systems to make sure everything is done on time and accurate. You don’t want to be chasing your tail."

Meeting the regulatory and paperwork challenge has required a massive change in the office. "We had to pick up technology to be able to deal with all the returns on attendance, staffing and free early childhood education. We now have a lot of computers and they save hours of work. We also use them to help with children’s portfolios. These are books showing the child’s goals, pictures and interests. Children take it with them as a record when they leave," Sheri says.

Time off for staff

Above all, staff at ABC Educare need some fun in the day otherwise it is very hard work. That is also part of the rationale behind the centre’s ownership of a time-share. "Senior staff get a week’s holiday at our time-share. This industry is pretty full-on so it nice for families to get a decent break. It is something for staff to look forward to and something for them to reflect on later. Reflection is a large part of early childhood education, we are always looking to improve," she says.