Your staff are the backbone of your childcare business—without a resilient team and an effective recruitment strategy, achieving success will be a challenge.

Staffing is a high stakes game, and poor decisions can ripple through every aspect of your business. High staff turnover or unhappy, unsupported teachers can affect the success of your program, ultimately impacting student growth and making it harder to attract new enrollments in the future. 

In this article, explore how to build the most effective staffing and retention strategies to ensure consistent, reliable care and organizational success. 

The cost of turnover: why retaining your best employees is key

Staff turnover is a costly expense—in fact, it’s a financial burden. Recruiting and training employees is an expensive task, and it’s critical to ensure you’re putting resources into the right people. Beyond the cost, spending time and effort onboarding the wrong people eats into your productivity levels and takes away from other high priority tasks.

If you’re consistently hiring the wrong people, staff morale will take a hit too. Your most trusted employees will likely lose faith in your ability to find the right teachers if turnover rates are high, and as a result, you risk losing them too. As a leader of the business, employees will look to you for confidence that you’re well-staffed, well-resourced, and they have fellow colleagues they can rely on. While hiring the right people is imperative, ongoing support for existing employees is also key.

Tip: The best staff desire small turnaround windows from application to receiving an offer. If the interview and communication process is lengthy, you risk losing solid talent to companies that have a more structured, streamlined hiring process in place. 

Set staff up for success during recruitment

A positive recruitment process will show prospective employees that you’re an organized and thoughtful business leader. It’ll also assist you in weeding out candidates that just aren’t the right fit for you: 

• Clear communication during the recruitment process improves hiring outcomes and ensures you’re hiring staff that are committed to growing their careers along with your business.

• View the hiring process through a wider lens. While you look for full time employees, consider which candidates would be suitable for a substitute pool if they aren’t exactly the right fit.

• Rethink your approach to scheduling and working hours. Many prospective employees might still be balancing finding work with finding care for their children. Are there opportunities to offer flexible work? AM and PM shifts? Think outside of what you’re used to.

Conducting successful interviews

Your interview process should of course feel friendly and professional, but requires structure to attract long-term talent. While a multi-step process can seem like too much (depending on the role), a little extra time to get it right the first time can help with retention. Consider interviewing using the following 3-step process: 

Qualifications-based phone screen

A quick phone screen with potential candidates can help you evaluate if your applicants have the right base qualifications to proceed. You can get a good sense of enthusiasm and industry knowledge during this call. Take the opportunity to discuss the candidate's past experience and find out why they’re looking for a fresh start. This is a good chance to eliminate candidates that are likely unsuitable for your center.

Behavioral-based interview

This in-person interview can dig deeper into the candidate’s ability to handle real-world situations. You can propose hypothetical scenarios or even create an on-site assessment to evaluate their potential.

Culture fit

By now, you should have some clear contenders. Use this final stage to introduce a candidate to your other staff members to see if they will be a good cultural fit. Do they align with your core values? This final stage interaction will help answer these types of questions.

Strategies for better recruiting 

Clearly define your job descriptions

Put some thought and emotion into your job descriptions—and keep them current. While there are tools and new technologies like AI that can help you create these descriptions, consider what makes your company unique. Why does this job matter to a prospective employee? Align your job descriptions with your overall mission.

Advertise the right way

Virtual job boards like Indeed are valuable, but expensive. You don’t need to spend thousands every month to find the right candidate. Think about economical and innovative ways to generate awareness around your program and open roles.

Are there local events you can attend? Are there parents that can assist with word of mouth referrals? Community outreach can help—feel empowered to find the right person, don’t wait for them to find you.

Staffing and retention: Your top organizational priority

The best strategies for hiring and retaining the right staff starts from the top down. If leadership is not clear, focused, and dedicated to making staffing a top organizational priority, your business will continue to face turnover. Beyond hiring the right staff, ensuring current staff are growing and learning as much as they can is also key. Providing learning and development opportunities is one way to invest in growth and retention—that could be upskilling teachers with cross-training initiatives or offering self-guided skill development courses. 

💡 Did you know that 45% of employees will stay at your business longer if they have a clear training and development path?

A stable, motivated workforce depends on the actions of leadership. When leaders prioritize strengthening both recruitment and retention, your child care business will be a trusted source of quality care and you’ll see long term success. This approach is not just an operational necessity, but an investment into your program’s future. The right hires along with a workplace culture that fosters professional development will lead to improved quality of care, a better reputation for your center, enhanced team morale, cost savings, and stronger rates of staff retention. 

To learn more, watch our on-demand webinar with Aleta Mechtel, a veteran childcare operator and Founder of the Teachers of Tomorrow.