
We are in the full swing of summer and our children and families are finally starting to return as we enter into the post-COVID19 shutdown! With that, now is the time that owners and leadership admin need to spend a little extra time communicating with your staff, making sure they are feeling prepared, confident, and encouraged to return to work in a positive and safe environment.
Owners are more than ready and eager for our children and families to return, but they need to be conscious of the fact that their staff might not be feeling the same way. Staff and teachers could be experiencing a mix of different feelings and emotions – they may be feeling nervous or scared about returning, think it’s too soon to go back to business as usual, or they may not understand what we as owners have been dealing with and experiencing over the past few months – and that’s okay.
To help you ease the stress for your staff around returning to work, I want to give all you owners and leadership admin out there a challenge: I challenge you to try to view returning to work from your staff’s point of view. Slow down, listen to them, help them, encourage them, and do everything that you can to make this a smooth, comfortable transition for them. Although what is comfortable to some may not be for others, as long as you are welcoming them back in a supportive, positive culture, eventually they will all get there.
So how can you ensure that your culture is supportive and positive? To help you with this, I have compiled a list of the five steps that consist of the most important areas to focus on when working towards this.
1. Make a list of all job expectations –
2. Have a welcome-back employee orientation –
3. Train or re-train your staff on their job expectations
4. Reward them for meeting job expectations, living core values, and moving the vision and mission of your company forward –
5. Hold your staff accountable –
And that’s it! If you follow the five steps above, you can ensure that you are doing everything you can to provide a comfortable environment for your returning staff!

If you’re interested in learning more about the Child Care Success Academy™ or how working with our team can be of service to your child care business, we invite you to schedule a free 45-minute Coaching Call with one of our Coaches!