Building a successful team at your childcare center starts with an effective onboarding process and continues with ongoing training. By preparing your staff, you’re setting them up to handle classroom challenges, communicate effectively with parents, and provide better care for children. When your team members understand expectations and have the tools to meet them, they’re more likely to stay at your school, increasing retention and boosting parent satisfaction.
In this article we’ll dive into some key strategies for building an effective onboarding and training process at your early education center.
Building a Successful Onboarding Process
Create a Welcoming Environment
A welcoming environment starts with making sure your new employee feels valued and comfortable. By introducing your new team member to the rest of the staff, providing lunch on their first day, and setting them up with a mentor, you’re starting the onboarding process off right. Here’s how to have a successful onboarding process:
- Assign a mentor
- Create a welcome kit
- Introduce all staff members
- Set up a lunch or meet-and-greet
- Give custom swag or merchandise from your school
- Develop a Comprehensive Onboarding Checklist
Use our free Onboarding Checklist to ensure you don’t miss a thing during the onboarding process. This covers all important policies, a welcome letter, handbook, account logins, etc.
Assign a Mentor or Buddy
A mentor is a great way to get a new staff member to feel comfortable and help ease the transition. This also allows your team to identify potential leaders as you’re looking to promote and grow. Give these mentors clear expectations and let them know you trust them with this responsibility to be a resource for new hires.
ECE expert, Rachel Supalla, dives into this topic deeper on this free webinar.
Ongoing Training and Professional Development
Continuous improvement and ongoing training are crucial for a successful team. To ensure your team is well-equipped and developing professionally, try these tips:
Schedule Regular Check-Ins
- Encourage open communication to address challenges and provide additional resources as needed.
Host Monthly Training Sessions
- Focus on specific skills like curriculum planning or conflict resolution. Use Kangarootime Educator to quickly pull together expert information on these topics.
Encourage Professional Certifications
- Highlight opportunities for staff to grow in their careers through certifications in early childhood education. This could be attending free webinars or diving into online training courses.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Onboarding and Training
Measuring your efforts is crucial to ensure their effectiveness and be able to build upon them. Use these tips to understand the results of your efforts:
Conduct Surveys and Feedback Sessions
Assess what’s working and areas that need improvement. This could be using a suggestion box or having weekly 1:1’s. STAY interviews are also an effective tool for this process.
Monitor Classroom Performance
Look for signs of engagement, organization, and adherence to training principles. Tools like Kangarootime and Educator can help with this process. You’ll be able to measure photos taken, notes sent, questions asked, etc.
Track Retention Rates
Use retention metrics to measure the long-term success of your onboarding process. Overtime, you’ll be able to see patterns and recognize if your onboarding is effective or not. For other ways to boost your staff retention rates, check out this article.
Effective training and onboarding help your early education team thrive. We hope these tips help you create or improve your current processes to continue improving your school.
