The Childcare Business Owners Podcast
The Childcare Business Owners Podcast
002 - 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 two of the Child Care Business Owners Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to the Child Care Business Owners Podcast, the essential podcast for anyone who's passionate about elevating and growing their child care business. This podcast is your blueprint for building a powerful business where 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 you're host, Christy.
SPEAKER_02:Well, good morning, everyone in the child care realm out there.
SPEAKER_00:Hello.
SPEAKER_02:How are you today, Christy?
SPEAKER_00:I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited to be doing this podcast. It's long time coming. We've been looking forward to doing this.
SPEAKER_02: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 childcare 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. Uh, we just opened a brand new facility uh just a couple few weeks ago, and we have clients that need to put their children in the daycare, but what's the issue?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it is a staffing issue. It's, you know, we could have been much fuller than 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 gotta get bodies. And that has been a cycle that I hear from a lot of child care owners is look, I'm gonna have to shut my doors. If I can't get a body in here, I'm gonna 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 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_02:Always hire. You never stop hiring.
SPEAKER_00:And that's 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 day care to homeschool. But you and I have been in the industry since oh, what is it, oh nine? Oh nine. Oh nine. 2009. So, you know, we have a 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. Um, but we've learned that the moment that that person puts in their their two-week notice, or 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 to kind of help us during the child care staffing crisis, is we're funneling money all the time, all the time on social media and through local ads to just get people in. And then uh we have our own, which we can talk more about what we do that is that is effective. 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 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. So the community that we put in our locations, our campuses, you know, may have 5,000 people at it on its best day in the immediate area. So our 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_02:So let's talk about what created this crisis. Um, 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_00:Well, I 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 pandemic, and we can definitely talk about that, but it also was a mindset that we had. Um, 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.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, 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 takeout. 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 McDonald's and work for 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 at$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. Right. So here we stand, you know, in a 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 uh model. So they were in there and they uh 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. 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 my floor of my pay from eleven fifty to fifteen, what do I do when that grant money runs out? I can't take my staff back to eleven dollars an hour, but I also cannot afford to pay fifteen dollars 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. That gives you just a little bit of percentage left to um, you know, pay your rent, your utilities, growth, repair, replace, things like that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, definitely smaller daycares. Okay, so small to medium daycares are the ones that are going to see that 60, 65% uh 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 um 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 uh to really make a a living on it and pay their people well. In fact, probably a suite number is around a hundred 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 the staff a little bit better. Um, 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 percentages of how many of those are small, medium versus large.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because uh to go back to the point of you know, child care is not easy. It's not an easy industry to work in, whether you're a teacher, uh if you're the cook, if you're um 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. So that these are 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.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Take some orders, flip some burgers, throw some fries out the window, and then go home at the end of the day and they have nothing else to worry about. But if you're in childcare, 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 go into child care.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. I uh I remember talking to a local Sam's club, uh, the manager of a local Sam's club, and uh 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 uh their wages and what they were paying to be able to attract and then the bonuses like we were talking. But they 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, and that's how they're staffing paying$14 to$15 an hour at an entry level. 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. 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. Uh the minimum wage was like 880. It was it was uh and it continued to grow uh up to it was like then it went to 910, then it was 10 10 10, then then it was nine ten forty-five, and then it was ten sixty five.
SPEAKER_02:And so the state kept raising that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. They kept raising the threshold. And what they want to do in Ohio specifically, and they they want to get the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour. And I and here, this is kind of like uh a double-edged sword here. I I love the people that work on our team. I love our our staff members, and I desire for them to have a good job and be paid well and um 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 you know, 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 we homegrown 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. So entry level, if you come in, we we hire you at minimum wage. So what we used to hire at 880 just a few years ago had had to increase every year significantly since the pandemic. And now in Ohio it's 1065, and they're continuing to to want to increase that in by 2026 to 15. Well, 15 is what I'm just now paying our bachelor people. So that and and this has put a tight pinch. Now, where do you get this money to continue to offer this? You uh it it comes out of the bottom line, or you gotta count on government grants, or you got 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_02:Yeah, yeah. The the 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 I participate in this subsidy program with the state, and they say, okay, for every subsidized child, we're gonna pay you X amount for this infant spot. The amount of money that the government pays for that infant spot, the average person that pays for private pay cannot afford that. Right. 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.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02: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 s or you know 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, um, 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 then that child's gone to grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, or a friend, or a private sitter. And then we're losing that that child altogether because the gap between what subsidy pays and what parent pay can pay, we have to comply with. So that it's a it's a very tough, sticky, slippery slope.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and during the pandemic, I know that there had been uh there had been lots of um there had been grants, stabilization grants. I mean, the government showed up uh to help out child care facilities. In fact, there were there was such a decrease, there was a nine percent decrease in child care centers during the pandemic. Over 16,000 centers had to close down due to various reasons. Um, lack of staffing, it was a huge part of that.
SPEAKER_02:Um that was over 370,000 uh 370,000 jobs were lost in the childcare sector during the pandemic. That's a huge number. That's a lot of lot of daycare workers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So with such a pay low paying wage and and it requires uh so much training and development, how do we continue to um provide a career opportunity for people in this industry that are wanting to be involved in in the child child care industry, but you know, can't afford what they're doing. So with all of that, that is a uh 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. Um 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. Uh in our region, there literally was not a 24-hour care facility in our 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 uh for staffing crisis and for um daycare crisis is you gotta be creative. And so we saw a need and we knew that we wanted to open up a child care 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 um the state of Ohio, and it was a new center grant that they were pumping out. This is after pandemic, so there's still the federal government is still seeing the great desperate need for taking care of child care facilities as well as child care 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. And so we went ahead and applied, 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. You know, 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 con 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 you know better care of them. So we ended up applying for the grant. Uh, there were several thousand people at a center's facilities. It was open to uh any educational facility, applied for this grant, and we were one of the 150 that were chosen for it. And so uh 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 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's 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_02:Yeah, that's been the story from the beginning of time. Even when I worked a normal job and I was making I would 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 was never um even, so to speak. But speaking of daycare deserts, um in 2018 now we're coming from the US, for those of you who are not um here in the US, in the US, uh over fifty uh or over half the country, so fifty percent, was considered daycare deserts. And the problem with that is is and what they call daycare desert basically is any area that uh doesn't have sufficient supply for licensed childcare facilities. The problem with those is is if it's a daycare desert where there's not 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 that 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 childcare so they can actually live there and work in that community where that daycare desert is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 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 rur rural area? I one, like we said, always hire. You never stop. It's worth the investment. We're putting about a thousand dollars a month into hiring.
SPEAKER_02:And um is it 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?
SPEAKER_00: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. 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 uh took the salary requirements up to uh$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$100,000. So, like it literally has eliminated small to medium-sized daycares in 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. So it 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 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 uh 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_02:So what happens when um we're putting all this money into marketing or to you know 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? And this is where we pivot to. Okay. So one of our sponsors for this program is Childcare Virtual Assistance. So what they do, this is one of the companies that we have that helps sponsor this, but we actually offer full backend support for busy daycare owners and administrators so that you can offboard 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 childcare virtualassist.com. That's childcare virtualassist.com. Okay, now that that's out of the way. So what are some things that we can do to combat these struggles?
SPEAKER_00:Well, one hire 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 uh that you hire bodies. We've got to get out of it. Um your people will mo the the people that are star players, okay. So your 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 uh for us, our star player is somebody who has strong communication, who is who has does team collaboration, who's adaptable, who's reliable, and uh who has skilled leadership. And we identify those people through asking questions. And then we also lead with our culture. We have our KC3 culture at our facilities. It's we are a Christian childcare facility that strives for kindness and caring in a creative and clean in a clean environment. 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 um if you're a vile person and cussing people out, that that is a demonstration of your character. That's not professional. So uh I want to make sure that you are emotionally sound person. And so I vet through social media. Secondly, is uh I do a zoom call, I do a 10-minute Zoom call and I lead with culture and with my stars player and I just identify that identify look, these are the things that's important to us. How does that resonate with you? I look at the 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 day. 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, they're there for the mission.
SPEAKER_02: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 so you don't waste an hour of your time?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. 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 the go to the website and it's a whole career page and um on our website as well. But what uh what are your salary requirements? Because if you're gonna come in and and it's 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 I've said, I love you to pieces. This is not gonna be the best fit for you because I only pay this much.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because you don't want to talk them into the position of making less money because they're gonna be unsatisfied and leave eventually.
SPEAKER_00: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. I quit 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 star owner. 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 we lead with that. And then, you know, after that, we bring them in for an interview on site with the administrator. And if they like that and 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 we'll talk more about this in another podcast, but we send them an assessment. And that assessment is for a child care 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. 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. Uh when you're building a a 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 uh your your income. You know, so it's all a domino effect.
SPEAKER_02: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, uh-huh, see what people are saying about your competitors, how much is being paid in that area. Salary.com is a great uh 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. Um, and also consider like what your local markets like. What's the real estate market like? Is it expensive? Is it hard to own a home 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 then compare that to can somebody with two income, because typically people work in daycare, there's a it's a two-income family, can that can you pay them enough to help pay for that that second salary in that family?
SPEAKER_00:You know, another place is and we I've been to often is data.census.gov. That tells you about your local area, you know, the the median pay. It just 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 in the staffing crisis? Uh, we do have to compete with unfortunately the Sam's Clubs. That that's 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? 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's degree lead teachers now. We had started when we first started daycare, we were just hoping to get anybody, right? How do you create a culture? We have all bachelor's 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_02:And you also have to really analyze like 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. 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 were we offering for benefits outside of money? Right. And we tried the bonus program, which did not go over as great as we thought it would.
SPEAKER_00:It did during the pandemic because it's the stabilization grant we were able to give bonuses.
SPEAKER_02:But then look at some things like can you offer life insurance? I mean, sometimes you can offer life insurance for as little as five dollars a month for a staff member, and that's a benefit for them. Um, 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. An IRA match, you know, talk to a financial planner and see if it's 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's gonna participate, especially younger people don't typically take this um as serious as they should. What happens is you find that the middle-aged people, the people that's gonna be with you for a long, long time will take advantage of that, and it's gonna help you as a business owner invest more money into your IRA, but also some of your staff members that want to participate.
SPEAKER_00:For sure. We offered that to our staff, and I'm actually surprised. We we had about 95% participation in that. And when you think 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$15.60 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 well, look,$15 is not a whole lot. They can put more in, 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_02: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. Uh, raises are bonuses based on performance, which we do um something called a 30, 60, 90 day, and during that time period, and then we do semi-annual and annual reviews for uh 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've 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 just it's a training thing that you 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 wanted 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 often. Um flexible scheduling. I know this is tough because we want to say you're gonna work this to this, Monday through Friday, no if, 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. Uh always recognize your staff for positive work attitude. So we always like to say uh praise in public, rebuke in private, 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_00:You know, some of some of y'all have staffing crises, not because you have staff that 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. Uh, 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 of like, well, I'm gonna do what I want because I'm the owner. No, it it 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.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So a lot of it is working on you.
SPEAKER_02: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. Absolutely. 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_00:Absolutely. You weed those out too in the first 90 days through 30, 60, 90, which we'll talk more about. But everybody, everybody in this industry talks about 30, 60, 90.
SPEAKER_02:We're gonna actually, the next episode we're gonna do is gonna be a full 30, 60, 90 day comprehensive overview. So that's something to look forward to. Yep. 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.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So if 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, what What you can't just throw a handbook at them say, here, learn this. This is what I expect. You really got to coach them through what's expected.
SPEAKER_00: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 ha 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. That's common sense. But in other things, you're always intrinsically looking at yourself to how you could be better.
SPEAKER_02: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 um age 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 that media content that they're at.
SPEAKER_00:Which TikTok is major up and coming. And that's something that a lot of us older older been in been in it for a hot minute. Um that that's kind of this is Generation Z, by the way. Generation I didn't know.
SPEAKER_02:I didn't know what generation it was.
SPEAKER_00:Born between oh 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, um, 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 uh right in that generation.
SPEAKER_02:And then I think something else that's key too is if you have good A B 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_00: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, they'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-armed 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. So they're literally coming to me and saying, Oh, they're gonna 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 I want this person to work with us.
SPEAKER_02:And then once you think you've found that perfect candidate and they 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 childcare industry, what's their temperament like? Are they honest? Are 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 close with this crisis and how we can best advert it? What would your final words be as wisdom for somebody?
SPEAKER_00:I would say just as being the human resource director for our companies and learning and being first of all, I'm a people person. I am all about people and caring for people. And I I lead with that. It's in my DNA is 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. When you are an owner, a childcare owner, you become the lead servant. And we always say, like our work, 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. We 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 a deal. You can't afford not to. 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 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 our app for our teachers to get it at all times. 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. If I you know, when I had made a pretty last thing I'm gonna say, I had made a pretty big, pretty big error in QuickBooks one year, and we'll talk a little bit more about it. And it was a pretty significant error.
SPEAKER_02:And actually, we'll we'll tell that story over on childcare virtualassist.com.
SPEAKER_00: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 um, long story short, I immediately I was advising the company based on finances, and um, 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 uh the situation was myself. I was responsible, I did it, I cut my salary in full. Um, so we did have to let a few people go, we had to let a few business uh opportunities go. Um, 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 to and that, you know, we're gonna grow together, we're gonna 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 child care 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_02:Yeah, so um I think that was a great podcast. Uh, if you go to the show notes, um, 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 child care business.