No matter the size of your child care center, there are always different roles requiring different responsibilities and strengths. Whether you are looking to grow, improve the quality and reputation of your business or simply reduce your personal workload, you will need to choose candidates carefully for these different roles and responsibilities.
This will help ensure you get value from your hires and avoid wasting valuable time, effort and money hiring new staff when a previous hire doesn’t work out.
Although you will likely hire from outside into each one of your roles at some point, you may also have the opportunity to promote from within. One of the best times to promote from within is when a position opens up that is not at the entry-level and there are quality candidates within your center that qualify for such a promotion.
But why should you promote from within rather than sort through a pile of resumes from qualified candidates? If you’ve ever sorted through a pile of resumes, you may already have your answer!
A recent study published in the Wall Street Journal shows another benefit of internal promotion: research shows that external hires often make 18% more money, while being 61% more likely to be fired from their new role than internally promoted employees.
In addition, internal hiring avoids orientation and training, while making it easier to maintain the culture you have fostered at your childcare center. Of course, knowing when someone is ready to be promoted and take on more responsibility is the key to success and leveraging the advantage of being able to get to know your employees before choosing them for a role is the real advantage here.
Let’s take a look at five signs that show an employee at your child care center could ready for a promotion.
1. Upholds High Standards
These are employees who have proven they can do their current job and carry out its responsibilities to the highest standard. It is important to see that staff members can do a lesser role well before knowing that they’re ready to move up the ladder. If they can’t manage the stress of their current roles, or misuse the power or privileges in the roles they have, these issues will likely only increase in a higher role.
2. Encompasses Company DNA
Make sure that they are fully in tune with the culture, mindset and goals that you have built your center’s reputation around. The best thing about promoting from within is that you already have an idea who the person is and what he or she stands for.
It is important to protect the DNA and culture of your center and this is a great way to allow for continuity. Making sure that any staff you promote is a stellar example of the team culture you’re trying to build, and also avoids sending mixed messages to the rest of your staff and your clients.
3. Succeeds With Additional Responsibility
If you notice a team member who often takes care of his or her role without requiring help, and is willing to take on more than the job entails, this is a sure sign of potential promotion material. A great way to see if employees would be a good fit is to give them additional responsibilities which they would use in their new role, and see how they handle them.
Think of this as a test of whether they handle additional responsibilities well. Do they complain when they have to do something slightly above their current role? If they are willing to pick up more responsibility successfully without complaining, they likely are ready to be promoted.
4. Is a Team Player
As a child care center leader, it’s important to encourage all employees to be leaders. And anyone who is promoted must have good leadership qualities.
Those in leadership must be able to have authority over others, take on responsibility and look out for the best of the team and the center as a whole. They cannot only be worried about their own careers or even just their own responsibilities.
Staff who are ready for promotion should show that they are willing to take on whatever is necessary for the benefit of the child care center, and must be willing to help out others while still successfully accomplishing their own tasks.
5. Is Likeable
This may sound like a frill, but there’s no doubt that it’s very important trait in child care. Are they friendly with children and parents? Are they liked by the majority of the current staff and families at your child care center?
Of course, we all have different personalities and are not always going to be best friends with everyone. But if the majority of people in your center have an issue with an individual, it should pose red flags when looking to promote that person.
Even if a staff member is capable and hardworking, that person may be better staying in the current role if he or she struggles to get along with people.
You don’t need to be an extrovert to be likeable, but many traits that lead to likability are assets in any management role.
Need Help Engaging Your Staff?
There are many benefits to promoting from within your child care center as you open new classrooms or fill new positions. It can be a great way to give employees the opportunity they deserve while limiting the time and money spent on training new employees.
As a child care leader, think about ways to prepare your team to be promoted. Keep a list of five or six people who might be ready, or will be ready soon, for a promotion. Invest in them and their personal and professional growth as much as you can.
Engaging and managing staff doesn’t need to be difficult.
With Procare Solutions, child care centers can easily keep track of staff information, including availability/scheduling, immunization records, background checks and additional details of employment.
This makes it easy to build a network of qualified child care providers that can be accessed to fill full-time roles, or to substitute for a full-time staff member who is sick or absent. Procare also helps streamline staff management activities, such as time cards, payroll and calculating benefit hours.
Child care administrators can use the Procare child care app to communicate directly with staff members about scheduling changes, new policies and procedures or initiatives to improve operations and safety at the center.
Want to learn more about how Procare can help your child care center manage hiring and staffing?
