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Expanding Nursery Chain with Urgent Staffing Needs

by: Alex Stanford-Tuck, Tinies Middlesex
01/04/2024

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The Story

Amidst the ever-expanding day nursery market, this new client was in the process of opening three new settings in different London areas. With eight settings already operational across London, the focus had been on acquiring sites and navigating associated challenges in an increasingly competitive market. Now, with building works nearing completion and grand opening days arranged, followed by scheduled opening dates, the focus has shifted to recruitment for these new settings. 

The Challenge

As is the case for all operators, recruitment of experienced and qualified day nursery staff had been a challenge, despite a strong internal recruitment team. With three new settings opening all within weeks of each other, it was key for our client to recruit and establish a strong team to give these new settings the best possible start. The internal team had recruited key staff such as nursery managers and some room leaders, but there was still a need for more level 3 and unqualified staff.

Why Tinies?

Tinies had ably assisted this operator previously on an ad hoc basis with their other settings and the client had been impressed not only by the quality of the staff provided into settings but also by the all-round flexibility of the dedicated Tinies consultant who had been helping them. It was for this reason that the client wanted to work more closely with Tinies going forwards by way of a formal partnership agreement for Tinies to supply both Permanent and Temporary nursery workers as needed.  

The Solution

Once a more formal partnership agreement had been agreed and signed the Tinies consultant assigned had a good understanding of how the other settings in the group operated. Always working closely with the in-house recruiters, gaps were fed through on a weekly basis for the following week and all filled the week before, so the settings had full confidence in their staffing rota for the following week.  

With emergency phones on from 7am to 6pm each day Tinies was always available for last minute sickness requests as well as the usual block bookings with Tinies ensuring the same high quality staff members supplied for continuity.  

The nature of temporary staffing is such that from time to time some would move to other settings in other areas, but with Tinies continuous recruitment drive, there was always high-quality staff with the right qualifications and experience ready to be deployed. There is always a major focus on permanent staff for these settings too and ‘temp to perm’ placements to help settings cut down on the numbers of temporary staff they utilise.      

Having worked with the client for three months now, Tinies have consistently exceeded expectations in terms of the quality of the staff provided and the speed and efficiency at which any issues are resolved. Tinies always have back up staff for last minute sickness days wherever the setting may be. Despite the challenges of permanent recruitment in the childcare market several permanent staff have also now been found with increasing numbers of staff willing to consider temp to perm positions. The relationship goes from strength to strength  

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