The Childcare Business Owners Podcast
The ultimate podcast for childcare business owners looking to thrive and grow! Join your host, Rezin and Christi Howes, as we dive into the essential strategies, insights, and tips for managing and scaling your childcare business. Each episode brings you expert advice, real-life success stories, and practical solutions to everyday challenges. From improving your business operations to boosting employee performance and enhancing your marketing efforts, we've got you covered. Tune in every week to transform your childcare business and create a lasting legacy. Subscribe now and take the first step towards childcare business excellence!
The Childcare Business Owners Podcast
Navigating the Childcare Staffing Crisis: Strategies for Success
How can you manage a childcare center when facing severe staffing shortages? Explore how our industry is grappling with this persistent challenge and what strategies can make a difference. We bring you firsthand experiences and effective solutions to keep your daycare operational amidst the ongoing staffing crisis. From continuous hiring to balancing the tricky equation of quality versus quantity in recruitment, we share insights that could transform how you approach HR in both rural and urban settings.
Rising economic pressures and increasing minimum wages have complicated the landscape for childcare providers. We tackle the financial balancing act necessary to offer competitive wages while managing operational costs, and how government subsidies fit into this puzzle. Discover creative solutions such as applying for grants to combat childcare deserts and the importance of innovative approaches to sustain the industry.
Leadership and culture are the bedrock of staff retention. Learn how to ensure a good fit during the hiring process by leading with salary requirements and organizational culture. We break down the steps of thorough onboarding and continuous training and discuss how performance-based raises and flexible scheduling can create a supportive work environment. Recognize staff achievements, maintain open communication, and foster mutual growth to build trust within your team. Don’t miss out on these invaluable strategies to enhance your childcare business.
Episode 2 of the Child Care Business Owners Podcast, when we will dive deep into the world of child care ownership, bringing you practical advice, innovative industry insights and strategies that have been proven in the field. And now your hosts, Reason and Christy.
Speaker 1:Well, good morning everyone in the child care realm out there.
Speaker 3:Hello.
Speaker 1:How are you today, Christy?
Speaker 3:I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited to be doing this podcast. It's a long time coming. We've been looking forward to doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've been trying to figure out how we would support other daycare business owners for a while because typically, in a small area that you're, in even large areas, your competitors are your next door neighbors in this business and they don't want to share secrets, they don't want to give tips and advice and typically they don't want to work together. So we're always looking like where do we go then to get this advice and help? So I think this podcast is going to be crucial to help other business owners really connect with real market. What's happening right now in today's world in the child care business which is what our topic is about today is the child care staffing crisis. Now this has been going on for some time. We are experiencing this currently in our daycares as well. We just opened a brand new facility just a couple few weeks and we have clients that need to put their children in the daycare. But what's the issue?
Speaker 3:Well, it is a staffing issue. It's, you know, we could have been much fuller than we are with children, but it's just getting the right bodies in there. And often you hear in the childcare realm is I just got to get bodies? And that has been a cycle that I hear from a lot of childcare owners is, look, I'm going to have to shut my doors If I can't get a body in here, I'm going to have to shut my doors. And that's the reality of business owners the struggle that we have to make sure that we're able to pay bills and the the tremendous pressure that we have, you know, to provide for the people that work for us. It's a lot, and so if you don't have bodies in the building, you literally cannot have children, which ultimately is everybody's paycheck. So there's this tug of war on our soul between just bringing in a body and then bringing in a quality body, and so there's the training and development, and so in our situation, we had not a problem with getting applicants. In fact, we've learned that you always hire right.
Speaker 1:Always hire. You never stop hiring.
Speaker 3:And that's not a concept that we had fully understand until about a year ago, when we were always going through this cycle. Now you and I have been in the childcare industry, minus a few years when we sold our first daycare to homeschool. But you and I have been in the industry since oh, what is it? Oh, nine.
Speaker 1:Oh, nine 2009.
Speaker 3:So you know, we have a good good 15 years, and the history of how we've always done it is, you know, once you hire out your positions, you stop marketing for it. You got your people, because you don't want your people to be offended, that you're hiring out for a preschool teacher when you have your preschool teacher. But we've learned that the moment that that person puts in their two week notice and sometimes they don't it's like this urgency within the team and everybody's panicking. Or if there's call-outs and everybody's panicking, and so it's always this crisis that there's never enough people and there's never enough quality people. And so we learned that we and we began to not only learn it, but we began to communicate it that we will always hire out for your positions. And so there's some things that we do, um, to kind of help us during the childcare staffing crisis is we're funneling money all the time, all the time on social media and through local ads to just get, get people in, and then, uh, we have our own set, which we can talk more about. What we do that is that is effective.
Speaker 3:I I literally run our HR department, so this is something that I'm passionate about and that I understand well, but getting resumes in and getting applicants, we probably get 12 to 15 a week consistently. That's not a problem. But in Barnesville now for us, we're rural, we're pretty rural, Okay. So when you look at our county, surrounding us, in our situation, we're not like a Columbus where there's 890,000 people in a half hour radius For us, between all the counties that surround five counties that surround us within an hour and a half direction, there's only a total of 192,000 people. 192,000 people. So the community that we put in our locations, our campuses, you know, may have 5,000 people at on its best day in the immediate area. So our picking is a lot more slim. But I hear this crisis going on with people in Houston, with people in Chicago, that it's not hard to get bodies but it's quality, and so often we do just hire the bodies and then it brings a whole plethora of problems with it.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about what created this crisis. So I've done a lot of research on this. We've all been asking the same question and I think we all know the answer. I think but we ignore it is that a lot of this happened when the pandemic occurred.
Speaker 3:Well, I know it has definitely increased from the pandemic, but this has been around you ask anybody that's been in daycare longer than you know before the pandemic. You know we dealt with this back then because it was really. It was the pandemic and we can definitely talk about that, but it also was a mindset that we had Childcare staffing crisis. Yes, there's environmental or pandemic issues that we have to deal with, or regional, geographical issues, but I do believe that it's a mindset and we can talk more about that. Let's talk about the pandemic, because we can't deny that that actually did. Child care changed after that yeah.
Speaker 1:So what happened was you had this mass exodus. All the companies had been shut down. That's every industry, with the exception of fast food or restaurants that would do take out, but during this time, even those people, there was so much fear, um instilled into people and didn't know what was going on, that people were just staying at home. They didn't care. They were not risking their lives to go out. So what happened was these other industries started raising the floor of the wage structure. So when you would go to would go to McDonald's and work for a minimum wage $10, $11 an hour they needed people there to service the public, so they raised their floor to $13, $14, $15, $16 an hour. It's $17 an hour for the majority of fast food restaurants and on top of that, for the people risking their safety for lack of better words they also offered to pay them cash at the end of each shift. So that was a bonus reward to come to work.
Speaker 1:So here we stand in a very large gap where the childcare industry does not create or generate a lot of income. Staff was never paid high wages. Most staff that worked daycare did it because they loved it. It was their calling, they liked working with kids, but they didn't want to go into higher education or elementary education. This was where they wanted to be. Was this early, early education model.
Speaker 1:So they were in there and daycares pretty much all shut down across the US during this time and there was a mass closing because daycare owners couldn't stay afloat. And that's when the government stepped in and started giving some grants and subsidies. And that's when the government stepped in and started giving some grants and subsidies, but these monies, unfortunately, were either passed off to staff to keep them on during the pandemic, but not necessarily was the raises put into people, because daycare owners were nervous that if I raise my floor of my pay from $11.50 to $15, what do I do when that grant money runs out? I can't take my staff back to $11 an hour, but I also cannot afford to pay $15 an hour. Because what some of you that are not in daycare are listening to this or thinking about going to daycare is that daycare is a very heavy labor business. Most people see 65% labor in some instances. That's very high. It gives you just a little bit of percentage left to. You know, pay your rent, your utilities, growth, repair, replace things like that.
Speaker 3:Well, definitely smaller daycares, okay.
Speaker 3:So small to medium daycares are the ones that are going to see that 60, 65% labor cost, you know, and it's kind of like a fine dance. You know you have to look at how many kids you can have in your facility versus, you know, the staff that you can have, making sure your room sizes are big enough so that you can support more kids, which then ultimately, you know, your labor rate could potentially go down. So it is. It's really tough for the small to medium daycare centers to really make a living on it and pay their people. Well, in fact, probably a sweet number is around 100 or more is where you start to see that you can afford to pay kids or pay. We pay our kids, pay the pay the staff a little bit better. So that's tough. And there's a lot of small I don't even know that number, I want to look it up how many I know there's around. There's half a million daycares, early learning centers in America. I wonder what the percentage is of how many of those are small, medium versus large.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, to go back to the point of you know, childcare is not easy. It's not an easy industry to work in, whether you're a teacher, if you're the cook, if you're the administrator, if you're the administrator, if you're the owner, it's just not easy. There's a lot of high demands, low pay, and then you are taking care of people's prize possessions.
Speaker 1:So these, this is like the perfect storm and it's hard for us to compete with mcdonald's that's paying 17 bucks an hour to go in oh yeah take some orders, flip some burgers, throw some fries out the window and go home at the end of the day and they have nothing else to worry about. But if you're in child care you're taking care of somebody's child. You're always thinking did I do something wrong? Did the parent was upset with me? I mean, there's just all these emotions that goes into child care oh yeah, I uh, I remember talking to a local sam's club.
Speaker 3:Uh, the manager of a local Sam's Club and she was just expressing we were talking about the pandemic and about workers. Even through the pandemic, it was hard for them to find workers that were quality, so you definitely saw them increase in their wages and what they were paying to be able to attract, and then the bonuses, like we were talking. But she had mentioned that they start between 14 to 15 an hour and these are people that don't you know, you don't really need education to work at at sam's club. This is entry-level positions, entry-level and their club alone, uh, in 2022, had done over 80 million dollars and that's how, their staffing being $14 to $15 an hour at an entry level.
Speaker 3:And so then there's there's us, who we def. We do seven figures, but we definitely don't do 80 million, seven figures. So, um, for us it was very difficult to even compete and compare with that and because I'm not making $80 million dollars. So, also, when you look in, just in the state of ohio and this is true for a lot of the states is the minimum wage increase? I mean, we started back in 09 the minimum wage was like 880.
Speaker 3:It was, it was uh and it continued to grow uh up to. It was like then it went to 9, 10, then then it was 1010, then it was 1045, and then it was 1065.
Speaker 1:The state kept raising that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they kept raising the threshold and what they want to do in Ohio specifically, and they want to get the minimum wage to $15 an hour. And here this is kind of like a double-edged sword here I love the people that work on our team. I love our staff members and I desire for them to have a good job and be paid well and love what they do. So I love to take care of them. The other aspect is when I'm being forced to increase minimum wage, and when I say minimum wage that's for people that come in entry level into our business that don't have all the education. So we do hire good people that meet our stars player and meet our culture. We do hire young people that have potential and we hire them as floats or maybe assistants and we home grow them and we train them and we put them through a CDA class for free so that they can get their education, and I'm totally for that, totally for that.
Speaker 3:So entry level if you come in, we hire you at minimum wage. So what we used to hire at 880 just a few years ago had to increase every year significantly since the pandemic, and now in Ohio it's 1065 and they're continuing to want to increase that by 2026 to 15. Well, 15 is what I'm just now paying our bachelor people and this has put a tight pinch. Now, where do you get this money to continue to offer this? It comes out of the bottom line. Or you got to count on government grants or you've got to be more creative. But you want to be able to take care of these people, but it's very difficult.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the key, key thing was is that with the grants we have to take these monies and then when you take these monies they're requiring us to um raise the floor of what parent pay is. So when I I participate in this subsidy program with the state and they say, okay, for every subsidized child we're going to pay you X amount for this infant spot the amount of money that the government pays for the infant spot the average person that pays for private pay cannot afford that. But I have to be within 10% threshold of that number and even if you take 10% off that number, it's still not affordable. But it also creates a double-edged sword because if I don't charge these rates and I let parents come in at a lower rate or grant them out, then we may not make it, because now I've got to pay higher staff wages, I've got to give different benefits, I've got to give more vacation time, higher pay.
Speaker 1:And it's just tough because now we're dancing that fine dance and, as we all know, subsidy children aren't guaranteed because they can only show up if the parents are working or in college and if the parent graduates college, goes to get a normal job and they no longer qualify for subsidies, that number that we charge still may be too high for them to afford it. So that child's going to grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, aunt, uncle or a friend or a private sitter or a private sitter and then we're losing that child altogether, because the gap between what subsidy pays and what parent pay can pay we have to comply with. So it's a very tough, sticky, slippery slope.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and during the pandemic I know that there had been lots of. There'd been grants, stabilization grants, I mean the government showed up to help out child care facilities. In fact, there was such a decrease. There was a 9% decrease in child care centers. During the pandemic, Over 16,000 centers had to close down due to various reasons Lack of staffing. It was a huge part of that.
Speaker 1:It was a huge part of that. That was, over 370,000 jobs were lost in the child care sector during the pandemic. That's a huge number. That's a lot of daycare workers.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So with such a low paying wage and it requires so much training and development, how do we continue to provide a career opportunity for people in this industry that are wanting to be involved in in the childcare industry but, you know, can't afford what they're doing? So with all of that, that is a that's a huge burden on us as owners. And then, not to mention, there's such a demand for child care, like the daycare deserts that we're experiencing. There is an insufficient supply of licensed child care facilities in so many areas. Now, one of those we kind of lucked out because we are rural in our region, there literally was not a 24-hour care facility. In the four counties surrounding us, there literally was not a center. So you know, one of the things that I would say that you need to do for staffing crisis and for daycare crisis is you got to be creative. And so we saw a need and we knew that we wanted to open up a childcare facility where there was not one in this little community. And so we censused the area and we had heard of a grant that was coming down the pipeline for the state of Ohio, and it was a new center grant that they were pumping out. This is after pandemic. So there's, the federal government is still seeing the great, desperate need for taking care of childcare facilities as well as childcare workers. So there was this. It was a half a million dollar grant and you had to follow follow under certain criteria and you had to be a higher quality facility facility you already have had to have one that was open, that was already higher quality quality facility. You already had to have one that was open, that was already higher quality. And so we went ahead and applied for it and we knew that this was going to allow us to potentially get our teachers to a local kindergarten teacher wage or a preschool in the public school preschool teacher wage, because we struggled with that when you can go to Sam's Club at 15, but I'm only bringing my bachelor's degree in at 12 or my director's in at 12 because that's in my area, that's the pay, because we're so rural. That's a huge burden and you lay your head down at night and you're like I need to be able to take better care of them.
Speaker 3:So we ended up applying for the grant. There were several thousand people at centers facilities. It was open to any educational facility applied for this grant and we were one of the 150 that were chosen for it, and so that immediately was such a reprieve for us because we were able to increase our wages all across the board, not just at the new location but for our administrators, for all of our incoming new hires. We were able to start offering benefits, and so we could not have done that had we not received that grant, and so often you know we're grateful for that and we're grateful for that help. But the question is is that sustainable? And that's something that we are constantly working through is how do we sustain when the minimum wage goes up to 15, and my bachelor degree people are making 15,. I can't keep my entry level and my bachelor degree at 15. So it's definitely a common issue that a lot of us face.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's been the story from the beginning of time. Even when I worked a normal job and I was making, I was typically in a supervisor position and I was making X amount of dollars for this position. Then there would be a minimum wage increase and pretty soon my subordinates were making the same amount as I was, but the company never afforded me the raise to offset that cost. So the playing field offset that cost.
Speaker 1:So the playing field was never even, so to speak. But speaking of daycare deserts in 2018, now we're coming from the US, for those of you who are not here in the US. In the US, over 50 or over half the country so 50% was considered daycare deserts, and the problem with that is and what they call daycare desert basically is any area that doesn't have sufficient supply for licensed childcare facilities. The problem with those is, if it's a daycare desert where there's not enough people to take care of people's children typically. There's also another part of that problem is you don't have enough qualified people to come in and work those places either, and you don't. There's not enough money. There's no grant yet that will actually help people relocate to daycare desert areas that want to be in child care so they can actually live there and work in that community where that daycare desert is yeah.
Speaker 3:So what do you do? I mean, what's the resolution? So we are fighting through that and here is some things that we have done that actually is successful. How do I get 12 to 15 applicants a week in a very rural community, in a very rural area? I one, like we said, always hire you, never stop. It's worth the investment.
Speaker 1:We're putting about a thousand dollars a month into hiring and um that's cheaper to do that than it is to continually have to find people and then turn people away because you don't have enough staff to actually enroll the children that you need spaces for right, and then your staff is stressed out because there's no quality people with them, and then they feel like there's no help and then you burn them out and so then they leave and then the administrators are working, you know, over time.
Speaker 3:Oh, and here's another thing too in the state of ohio, they, they changed the salary requirements as well, which made it even more difficult for are working, you know, over time. Oh, and here's another thing too in the state of Ohio, they, they changed the salary requirements as well. Which made it even more difficult for small, rural childcare businesses is they took the salary requirements up to $35,000 a year that you have to make about $35,000 a year to stay on salary, and then they just raised it again to $45,000 and they're getting ready to raise it again close to a hundred thousand dollars. So, like it literally has eliminated small to medium sized daycares and rural, rural areas from being able to have salaried administrators. So now you have to make sure that you're. You know and trust me, we want to take good care of of our people.
Speaker 3:So it's a balance of making sure you're being a good steward, making sure that you're also pumping money into marketing to make sure that your capacity. Your capacity with children is at 90, 95. I mean you need to know those numbers, you need to always know those metrics and those numbers is how many children do I have? What's the percent? You always want to be 90, 95. So you want to be pumping in. So we're pumping in a couple thousand dollars a month just into marketing to make sure that that stays solid, because that's their paycheck, right? If I don't have kids full, if the building's not full, I don't, I don't get to pay people. Well.
Speaker 1:So what happens when, um, we're putting all this money into marketing or to get people to come in to apply for these jobs, and they start coming in and it's you and an administrator and you're a small company, what do you do? This is where we pivot to. Okay, so one of our sponsors for this program is Child Care Virtual Assistance. So what they do this is one of the companies that we have that helps sponsor this. But we actually offer full back-end support for busy daycare owners and administrators so that you can off-board some things like payroll social media. They can interview these folks that are coming in for you and screen them to see, you know, do they meet your culture before they ever step through your door. They can help with the onboarding process, all the HR stuff that you might have to do. So if you have an interest or want to learn more about that, go to childcarevirtualassistcom. That's childcarevirtualassistcom care virtual assistcom. Okay, now that that's out of the way.
Speaker 3:So what are some things that we can do to combat these struggles? Well, one higher all the time it's worth the investment. Two is I think that we lead by culture, and it is incredibly important to get out of the mindset that you hire bodies. We've got to get out of it. Your people will, the people that are star players. Okay, so you're star A players One. You have to be able to identify that. Who are my star players? And if you don't know what your star player is, you've got to sit down and write down what your vision, what your mission, what your values are and how you identify somebody who you think is an A player, because everybody talks about A players. Okay, so for us, our star player is somebody who has strong communication, who does team collaboration, who's adaptable, who's reliable and who has skilled leadership. And we identify those people through asking, questions asking. And then we also lead with our culture. We have our KC3 culture at our facilities. It's we are a Christian child care facility that strives for kindness and caring in a creative and clean environment.
Speaker 3:So when we bring in 12 to 15 interviews a week, we start first with HR. We do Zoom calls, because I vet everybody on social media. I want to make sure if you are raunchy on social media, you're not. Your character speaks loud. I want people that have solid character and if you're a vile person and cussing people out, that that is a demonstration of your character. That's not professional. So I want to make sure that you are emotionally sound person and so I vet through social media.
Speaker 3:Secondly is I do a zoom call. I do a 10 minute zoom Zoom call and I lead with culture and with my stars player and I just identify look, these are the things that's important to us. How does that resonate with you? I look at their resume. I get to know them for five minutes. They get to ask questions with me for five minutes and if they feel and I feel that it could potentially now again it's like a date I don't know you. We just met you five minutes ago, but let's get to know each other a little bit better. So it's worth taking the time to do that rather than just you know and I get it in our in our one location we have not been able to open up classrooms because we've not had the right players in the right seat, and I'm not willing to open up classrooms until we get the right players, because when you hire the wrong people it affects the whole culture and then it also affects the current team members that maybe are not making the best wage but they love their job.
Speaker 1:They're there for the mission so do you think it's important to um when somebody comes in? Do you lead with your culture and your how much money you're paying first to this way? Don't waste an hour of your time or Absolutely.
Speaker 3:In fact, that is the first question that I ask them. Is I say okay, I don't want to waste your time, but what are your salary requirements If they didn't put it in our system? We have a great system set up. We actually have a whole website for it where people go to go to the website, and it's a whole career page and I'm on our website as well. But what, uh, what are your salary requirements? Because if you're going to come in and and see, look, there's people that come in and their salary requirements are more than what we offer, um, sometimes they're exponentially more, and immediately I've said I love you to pieces. This is not going to be the best fit for you because I only pay this much. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Cause you don't want to talk them into the position of taking less money, cause they're going to be unsatisfied and leave eventually.
Speaker 3:Nope, if I already don't have that answer. It's the first question I lead with. Second thing is um, you know everybody, everybody's salary requirements, most everybody. It's negotiable because people don't quit their their jobs necessarily over only finances. People quit their jobs because of culture and because of their bosses. With their bosses right, so somebody is willing to maybe come in at a lesser rate if your culture is on point, if you take good care of them, if you are, have great communication. So not only do they need to be a star player, but you have to be a them. If you have great communication, so not only do they need to be a star player, but you have to be a star owner.
Speaker 3:So you really need to shape up and make sure you've got it together as well. So all that to say is, yeah, we lead with that. And then after that we bring them in for an interview on site with the administrator. And if they like that and the administrator likes them, then they do an informal classroom observation where they spend two hours in a classroom and the teachers and we get to know them. If we like them and they like us, then we go ahead and we send them and we'll talk more about this in another podcast. But we send them an assessment and that assessment is for a childcare worker. When that assessment comes back, that tells us I mean, you can't lie through it, it tells us who they are. If that assessment goes well, then we send an offer letter.
Speaker 3:So, okay, that process is a lengthy process. And then we have all onboarding training. I mean, we take two weeks of modeling, training and doing all that. Why do we do this? Okay, because we have a child care crisis. We cannot afford to not do this, because when you bring in bodies, just because you need to fill it up, the whole system gets messed up. And so one hire constantly. Two, we always say hire slow, fire fast when you're building a teacher culture that they love their job and they do their job well. They take care of the children and the children are happy and the parents are happy, which increases your income. So it's all a domino effect.
Speaker 1:And you also have to keep in mind too is what. Your idea of what you should be paying those people may not be accurate. So you really need to take some time and do some investigation and look at, like check glass door, see what people are saying about your competitors. How much is being paid in that area? Salarycom is a great resource for you to go in and type in, like child care teachers in my city or you know, and replace my city with whatever your city is, and also consider, like what your local market's like, what's the real estate market like? Is it expensive? Is it hard to own? There Is rent expensive? You know you have to consider all these things and make a list of this stuff and do some research to find out what does it cost for a family to live in your community and and then compare that to can somebody with a two income because typically people work in daycare, it's a two income family. Can you pay them enough to help pay for that second salary in that family?
Speaker 3:You know in other places, and I've been to often is datacensusgov. That tells you about your local area. You know the median pay. It helps you understand when you're trying to figure out okay, what wage do I pay people. So how do we attract better players? How do we?
Speaker 3:In the staffing crisis, we do have to compete with, unfortunately, the Sam's Clubs. That's the nature of it. We have to compete, but we also have to remember the people that we're attracting. This is more of a mission. It's not just about the dollar. So if you create a culture that they love, a place where they feel heard and valued and listened to and respected, most likely they're going to stay with you because you're putting the time and energy into making sure that it is a great culture. And so it's not just about the bottom dollar, right, it's about the culture Our teachers. You ask any of them and we also do reviews every quarter. Not only do we do reviews on them to develop them professionally, but they do reviews on us. We ask for feedback all the time hey, how are we doing? Are we doing okay?
Speaker 3:Are there things we need to change the value that we have, teacher after teacher after teacher, that says that they love working for us, that we're the best bosses they ever had, and not because we're like these leadership gurus, but because we listen to our people and we've created a culture that they want to stay. And so, yeah, there's a staffing crisis, but you know how many people we've had to funnel through? We have almost all bachelor degree lead teachers now. We had started.
Speaker 3:When we first started daycare, we were just hoping to get anybody right. How do you create a culture where you have all bachelor degree lead teachers that call this their career and we're not even the best paying. Well, we have actually become the best paying in our area. We fought for that by hunting after grants, by a lot of tears and a lot of effort over the past several years is saying we want to take better care by being creative, by making sure that you know, leading by culture, so that the classrooms can stay full, so that people recognize hey look, this is a good place getting great Google reviews. So I mean it all kind of works hand in hand to deal with the staffing crisis. It's not just all about money, it is about culture. It's about how you take care of people.
Speaker 1:And care of people. And you also have to really analyze like what, what career advancements is in your center? Like, where can you send people? Because some people don't want to come into a dead-end job, they want to work their way up, make some more money get more responsibilities.
Speaker 1:Some do, some don't, but what are some things that you can offer? I know that we had to analyze this in our business and one of the things was is we really had to look at our benefit package what? What were we offering for benefits outside of money? And we tried the bonus program, which did not go over as great as we thought it would it did during the pandemic?
Speaker 3:because it's the stabilization grant, we were able to give bonuses.
Speaker 1:But then look at some things like can you offer life insurance? I mean, sometimes you can offer life insurance for as little as $5 a month for a staff member, and that's a benefit for them. Insurance for as little as five dollars a month for a staff member, and that's a benefit for them. Supplemental insurance you know how can you help them with their without actually giving full-blown health insurance? Look at some kind of supplemental health insurance product for them ira match, you know. Talk to a financial planner and see is it worthwhile for you to open up an ira in your company and offer a match to some of your staff, because you have to remember, not all your staff is going to participate. Especially younger people don't typically take this as serious as they should. What happens is you find that the middle-aged people, the people that's going to be with you for a long, long time, will take advantage of that and it's going to help you, as a business owner, invest more money into your IRA, but also some of your staff members that want to participate.
Speaker 3:For sure. We offered that to our staff and I'm actually surprised we had about 95% participation in that and we did a 3% match. And if you think about it, if they're putting in $10 a pay, we pay every week. So if they're doing $10 a pay, it's 30 cents a week is what our company is doing. It ends up being $15 and 60 cents a year and that simple IRA they get to take with them when they go. So I love that they actually pay the fee to keep the account going and all of that. I love the fact it will look 15 bucks is not a whole lot. They can put more and we'll match up to 3% of what they put in, but it's it's money that's not breaking our bank and providing an additional benefit to tell our staff look, we care about you.
Speaker 1:Health insurance is obviously another benefit, but right now, with the healthcare marketplace, we've discovered that it almost does not make sense. You get less benefits for staff than if they went directly to healthcare, and it's a lot cheaper through the marketplace. Raises are bonuses based on performance, which we do something called a 30, 60, 90 day, and during that time period then we do semi-annual and annual reviews for raise opportunities. You always want to have open communication with the staff member. I think that's the first thing that they'll quit you, because if they feel like you're cut off from them or you don't want to give them the time and this could be your administrator too it's a training thing that you really really have to go into. One of the big things that we discovered, though, is that we had to develop a culture that people bought into and they liked and they want to be a part of, and that's huge, because in the workplace, it's stressful enough, so you have to have a good culture and you have to back your people.
Speaker 1:Often um flexible scheduling. I know this is tough, because we want to say you're going to work this to this, monday through Friday, no ifs, ands or buts, but sometimes that doesn't work for people's lifestyle. So trying to be creative and this is where it helps to have good software scheduling software that will help you see what your ratios are for the day, who's coming and then also what staff members you need, so that you can offer this flexible scheduling to staff members that need that flexible scheduling. Because, let's face it, when you're off on Saturday and Sunday there's not a whole lot of personal business you can get done.
Speaker 1:Always recognize your staff for positive work attitude, so we always like to say praise in public rebuke in private and we don't ever want to humiliate or embarrass people in public, because that's a huge turnoff and they'll quit faster than anything.
Speaker 3:You know, some of you all have staffing crises, not because you have staff that don't want to work. Some of you all need to really evaluate your leadership style, and maybe you're abrasive, maybe you embarrass people, maybe you don't value people or offer them an opportunity to grow. You know, if you're a leader, you have a duty and a responsibility to grow leaders. You're not trying to raise up followers, you're trying to raise up leaders, and so when you do that, that is a place of respect, that is a place of where you ask opinions and it's not an attitude like, well, I'm going to do what I want because I'm the owner. No, that's just not how it works. If you want a good staff culture and you don't want to be in a staffing crisis, your best way of not being in a staffing crisis is to retain your employees that you have, and the way that you retain people is by being a good leader that they want to stick with. So a lot of it is working on you.
Speaker 1:And you ultimately want to replace your C and D players very quickly. And I would start immediately, because what happens is when you keep those C and D players in with your A and B players, they get frustrated.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Because they feel like they're not carrying their weight, they're not doing the job. Why do they get to stay here and I have to work my butt off and I don't get anything else? Can you at least get rid of the people that's not pulling their weight?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. You weed those out too in the first 90 days through 30, 60, 90, which we'll talk more about, but everybody in this industry talks about 30, 60, 90.
Speaker 1:We're going to. Actually, the next episode we're going to do is going to be a full 30, 60, 90 day comprehensive overview.
Speaker 1:So that's something to look forward to. But you also want to have a comprehensive job description so that when these new team players come in, or when your current staff is in there, they know exactly what's expected of them, because you cannot yell and scream at them for something they did not know about. So if you have a horrible onboarding process or if you have a system that's clunky and they don't know what they're expected, you can't just throw a handbook out and say, here, learn this, this is what I expect. You really got to coach them through what's expected.
Speaker 3:And I always say look, when you're pointing a finger at somebody, there's three pointing right back at you. As leaders, you want to handle the staffing crisis that you have. Is you make sure that you accuse less and look within yourself intrinsically and say, okay, where did I fail? First, because if you can identify that you failed, don't you dare come at that staff member I mean, unless, of course, they know better like leaving a child outside, okay, that like. Oh, I didn't tell them they shouldn't do that. Okay, come on.
Speaker 3:That's common sense, but in other things you're always intrinsically looking at yourself to how you could be better.
Speaker 1:Yep and utilize multiple recruitment channels Use ZipRecruiter, Monster Jobs, Indeed, your local unemployment office, social media. Look for places that people are looking for these jobs, because this new age of people, this new group of people I don't even know what generation they are of people, this new group of people, I don't even know what generation they are, but they're not looking in newspapers or things like that. Those are things gone by. We need to find out where are they looking and we need to meet them in that place, that media content that they're at.
Speaker 3:Which TikTok is a major up and coming and that's something that a lot of us older people older been in it for a hot minute that's kind of. This is Generation Z, by the way.
Speaker 1:I didn't know, I didn't know what generation it was.
Speaker 3:Born between wait a minute born between 97 and 2012 generation. So, yeah, we're seeing these young adults Generation Z. So they are definitely a TikTok generation. They are a social media generation Instagram, snapchat so we have to change with the times. We really do have to find a way of reaching not that we always want to reach the 20, 21, 22-year-olds, but there are some great dynamic workers that you can home grow right in that generation.
Speaker 1:And then I think something else that's key too is if you have good ABA players or teachers or other staff members, maybe have them interview somebody. Maybe you're not looking at new candidates correctly. Maybe you're looking at them blindly because you need staff so bad that you're hiring bad recruitment. So have somebody else interview them and collaborate.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. That's what we do when we do the classroom observation for two hours is they go into every classroom and leads know that they're observing, 're observing how they interact with each other and with the children, and I want you to know that it's not clicky. Some people may be like, well, that's clicky and and it's like us four and no more. That's actually not the culture. Our, the staff that we've developed is so open arm to people that are going to come in and be an a player and be a star player with them and follow the culture. Now we've invested and we spoke culture, culture, culture, culture. And I continue to tell the teachers, like I'm not here, okay, I'm not here all the time, you are the ones, that's, you're the. You are the thermostat, not the thermometer. You set the temperature of this place. You don't just read it and then tell everybody about it no, you're setting the culture.
Speaker 3:So they're literally coming to me and saying, oh, they're going to fit this culture, oh, they're so kind, oh, they're so caring, so it's pretty cool. They're very open, armed about hey, I want this person to work with us.
Speaker 1:And then, once you think you've found that perfect candidate and they meet all your screening and everything happens, we still offer a placement test with them. We make sure that they're cut out for the child care industry. What's their temperament like? Are they honest? Do they have morals? Are they integral? We still do that. So, with all that, do you have any closing comments about what's going on with this crisis and how we can best avert it? What would your final words be as wisdom for somebody?
Speaker 3:I would say, just as being the human resource director for our companies and learning. First of all, I'm a people person. I am all about people and caring for people and I lead with that. It's in my DNA. It's how can I take better care of my people? I think if you don't have that personality or that attitude and you think that people are here just to serve you, you're in the wrong business.
Speaker 3:When you are an owner, a childcare owner, you become the lead servant and we always say like our workflow, our organizational chart starts with reason and I at the bottom, because we, literally, as the owners, just we are now the servants to those and we make sure that our administrators are equipped and and taken very well care of and very well listened to. And look, they all know they've got the right to come to us and be like I don't agree or I don't like how you went about this, or I don't understand this, and uh, we are obligated to have a spirit that is listening and coachable, and if we're not, they're not going to respect us. And so I think we build a great culture of respect and admiration. It's mutual and we've had them over our house, we've been on trips with them. You know we've really created a culture that I need you, you need me. We got this together. So I would say childcare staffing crisis starts first with that, that leadership, understanding that we are serving those people and that we got to take care of those people. Secondly, there are some pragmatical things that you can do, like really pragmatical things, like constantly hire, constantly be putting money into it. You can't afford not to.
Speaker 3:Two is you got to really build your culture If you can identify your culture and say it in a one statement. If you can't quote out what your culture is, then your people can't. If in a one statement, if you can't quote out what your culture is, then your people can't. If you can't say your mission, vision and values, then your people can't. So you got to get yourself together and figure out okay, who am I, what are we, what do we stand for? And then you got to, like they say, write out the vision, put it on the walls. We have it posted on our walls. It's on our app for our teachers to get it at all times.
Speaker 3:Building that culture really will help people. When you can't pay them, you know the top dollar in the industry because you're not quite yet there, they'll stay because it is a good work environment, because they know that they're cared for and they know that they're loved for. And then the last thing I would say is don't you know, sometimes we're paid last and we know that? Don't ever settle for just continuing to increase yourself, but not increase those that are laboring with you. Last thing I'm going to say I'd made a pretty big error in QuickBooks one year, and we'll talk a little bit more about it. It was a pretty significant error.
Speaker 1:Actually we'll tell that story over on childcarevirtualassistcom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because it totally changed our life and how we started our virtual assistant company, which ultimately helps me not go crazy in child care. But long story short, I immediately I was advising the company based on finances and it was misinformation, and it was a really broken time for me. All that to say is the first person that was cut to save and salvage the situation was myself. I was responsible. I did it. I cut my salary in full.
Speaker 3:So we did have to let a few people go. We had to let a few business opportunities go and we cried through those and we sat down with our staff and I was honest with them and told them you know this is why. But I'm the first person to get cut. And so all of that to say is you know, we're not in this to get rich, we're in this to take care of each other. And when your people know that you're sacrificing too and that you know we're going to grow together, we're going to suffer together, but I have your best interest in mind and I promise you if, if we get blessed, you're getting blessed when people know that they're likely more likely to trust you. So the childcare staffing crisis a lot has to do with mindset. A little bit has to do with making sure you keep enrollments high and do all those things. But when you focus on culture, it seems to really take care of itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think that was a great podcast. If you go to the show notes, you'll get links to the website. There you can go and sign up and get some emails about some things that we're doing in the business and how to make your business better, and then we'll also have some resources over there for you as well. A full list of resources will be in the show notes and our transcripts as well, and until next time, keep going with your childcare business.