337: Struggling with Staff Retention? Here’s What Every Childcare Director Needs to Know!

Ever wonder why staff retention feels so hard in childcare? Kate and Carrie get real about it in this episode! They dig into how childcare evolved without much business training built in, leaving many directors figuring out staff management on the fly. Sound familiar? They share practical wisdom on avoiding favoritism, showing appreciation equitably across your entire team, and why positive reinforcement matters for everyone. They also highlight their book "From Overwhelm to I Got This" and their leadership courses.

Thanks for Listening 🎧

• Want to learn more? Check out our book; "From Overwhelmed to I Got This: Guaranteed Success Route to Directing Your Childcare Center" 📖
• Join our Facebook Group for Childcare professionals!
• Join our Podcast Newsletter!
• Want to be a guest on our podcast? Go to our website to learn more.
• Are you looking for director training in Texas? Check out our Texas Director Website for our training and additional resources!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Childcare Conversations with Kate and Carrie. Directors are struggling every single day with staff retention. And we know, because we've been doing this for almost 25 years, that most directors aren't trained in this, Carrie. What is going on?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

I mean, it's just not part of the structure of how early childhood has evolved. It has evolved as here's some ladies, they're going to take care of some babies. Bye. Like it becoming a business was not thought out. It was not planned. It's not like, you know, developing a steel smelting industry, like where there was some thought process. Like childcare went from being unpaid labor done primarily by mothers and grandmothers, and sometimes paid staff in the house to an industry that was outsourced out of the house. And that happened early in the 1900s. So this is a new thing. Like we haven't been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years. We've been doing it for 100 years. And we don't know what we're doing from a business perspective. We have learned what we're doing as far as caring for cohorts of children. We've done research on how children's brains develop and how that's different one-on-one versus in a group. But the business of childcare, the business of running a staff, that's not what anybody thinks about. Except us. I mean, like we do, and we've been teaching people about how to do it for decades. Um, but yeah, I think that's why, is because nobody thought about it before they started doing the business.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Well, you know what's interesting, and and it it's probably totally unrelated, but kind of related. I mean, if you think about that same turn of the century kind of one-room schoolhouse to public education. And we have a lot of public school districts that obviously don't know how to figure out their finances either, right? Like we are constantly in the news seeing school districts that are closing locations or consolidating because, again, they put a school in a place that made sense at the time the school was built. Since then, the neighborhood demographics have changed. They've also probably built additional elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. And so as they've built new ones, they build those new ones bigger. And their concept is, oh, well, since it's bigger, we'll just bust people into it. And now they're busing people instead of that neighborhood component. So I think one of the things that is key when it comes to staff appreciation is understanding that things will change.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Yeah, I mean, we have to we have to think through that piece of it, right? I mean, it it's just, I don't know how to, I don't know how to words right now. I don't know how to words.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Well, that's okay. I can words for you. So um one of the things that we're doing in the last five, the previous five episodes was all about staff appreciation. And we were giving you tips and we were talking about why in the rest of this month our guests are also sharing their tips for staff appreciation. But I think what I really wanted to talk about today is that the leadership skill of managing staff, first of all, you probably weren't necessarily taught that. We know you weren't taught that in any early childhood administration courses you were taking. And if you have that skill, it might be because you learned it someplace else from either another business, or maybe you have a degree in human resources or in communication or communications, you know, adjacent kind of careers.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Or you had a lot of really bad bosses before you got into your current leadership position. Because I think that's where a lot of people learn how to be a good manager is they had cruddy managers before. And they're like, I'm not gonna do that, and I'm not gonna do that, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna text you at 5 a.m. and I'm not gonna this and I'm not gonna also no sexual innuendo. Like, like, I think a lot of how people get to be good people managers is learning what not to do. Um, not for everybody. Some, you know, some do go to classes and learn that way. And it that is a much less painful way.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Well, okay, so speaking of that, I'm going to plug it. So um, Texas Director and Director Success Academy, we do have uh courses on human resources or on staffing management. We have classes on staff retention, on how to onboard. And if you've ever come through any of our child care leadership trainings, we've also got materials there. And the book, Carrie, we have been teaching out of this same basic textbook since 2002. Is there anything in there?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yes, there is. Um, we talk about um, so it's our book from overwhelmed to I got this. That book has a decent amount of information on how to manage staff. It talks about um some of the federal laws um that impact it, um, but also that whole management by walking around thing that we talked about a couple episodes ago, or was it last episode? I don't know. Uh, but we've talked about it before and how to communicate effectively. So there's stuff in the communications section, there's stuff in staffing, there is stuff in the budgeting section, like it's sprinkled throughout the book because managing your staff happens throughout your job of leading a program, whether you're an owner or whether you're a director or a regional manager. So if you have never had any training in it and you're like, I don't know if I want to take a class, even if it is from the wonderful Kate and Carrie, start with the book and then go from there. If you are more like, oh, can how long are these classes? We have 10-hour classes, we have 50-hour classes, which is a collection of 10-hour classes, um in HR. Well, we don't call it HR because that has specific terms, staff management. Um, because we're not getting you an HR certification here. We're helping you to be able to manage a team because whether you're a director or an owner, yeah, you've got to manage a team. And you can have an HR person that doesn't take away your need to be able to manage a team.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

You know, that is a great point. And why don't we touch on that just a tad? Okay. So here's what um I want to really have us talk about is that sometimes leadership is way more than um who you hire or who you manage. Appreciation is way more than who you hire and who you manage. And sometimes that tip of, you know, what is the one thing that you remember from having that bad manager really is what makes you into being a good manager. So, Carrie, what is something from a bad manager that you experienced at one point in time that kind of has framed your um we I know we talked about the book that inspired you and and the walking around philosophy, but what about just, you know, did you have a boss that that didn't show appreciation well that you learned something from?

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Well, the first thing that popped into my head was sexual harassment. Um, and so I don't sexually harass any of my staff. Um I never have because that was something that I had from a previous boss. Um other things I had um uh managers who it was very clear when they were assigning schedules that they had personal preferences. Um, and so they had preferential treatment. Um, and since it was the same boss that did the sexual harassment, I think it had something to do with who responded in what way uh to those overtures. Um I also had bosses who yelled.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Okay, so I had good bosses. I had a lot of good bosses. Let's talk about those two. The volume of a manager or how you come across. So again, not that every staff person's gonna be awesome, and you absolutely have to have difficult conversations with staff at different times. So your volume, right? So the yelling or not yelling, um, especially in early child care, right? If you are yelling in front of coworkers, in front of children or in front of parents, that's never gonna be a good thing. And you also brought up another one, which is that preferential treatment. And that I know we have seen in early childhood. And sometimes it's because we've hired a family member or a friend and we want them to be able to work when you're working, or maybe you you know these two staff get along really, really well. So they're always gonna be on shift together. Now, how does a how does a new director or somebody who's new to managing staff, how can they look at maybe objectively, whether or not they are showing some preferential treatment and why that is something to be aware of that maybe you're doing when it comes to staff appreciation?

SPEAKER_02 10:16

I mean, I think reframing anytime you've got a conflict and go, okay, if this was, you know, uh Suleyn and uh Susan, I don't know, they're all S's today. Um, so if Sou Lynn was the one bringing the question, would I respond differently than I responded when Susan asked? Because Su Lynn is your favorite. Would you have responded differently if she'd brought you that question? And so having in your head, like, I'm not saying you can't have people you like better than other people. There are people I don't like a whole lot that I've had to work with sometimes for decades. And hey, but um, you know, you can know that you have an easier time working with person A than person B, but you cannot give them better treatment because you get along with them better. That's not fair, and that's not just because I'm a middle child, that's also legal. Like legally, it's not okay to treat the person that you get along with better than the person you don't get along with. That's discrimination. Um, and it it's not one of the big seven discrimination, but if they can show that you showed preferential treatment to other employees, you can end up being party to a lawsuit, which is not fun times. So you've got to occasionally, when you're having, especially if you're having an emotional response to something that was brought to you or a behavior you saw, um positive or negative, think about would I have this same reaction if it was another member of staff? I think that, ooh, my emotions have been triggered. Let me do a quick audit, I think is a a good habit to get into. I mean, it it's a pain in the neck, and life would be easier if we didn't have to do it. But unfortunately, we are illogical beings and we need to check on that occasionally because we don't want to get into trouble and we don't want to treat people unfairly.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Absolutely. So we are not in any way, shape, or form trying to scare you when it comes to staff appreciation. We just want you to remember that you can't do something for some staff and not do something for other staff. So if you are an organization that celebrates birthdays or work aversaries or any of those things, you have to remember to do that for everybody. And you have to set a budget, and you have to set a budget that you can afford so that you can do it for everybody. Because if you are doing something different, even if it's based on position, uh you can't do something different for your lead teacher than you might do for an assistant teacher, or something that you might do for a director uh versus um maybe your van driver for your school age programs, right? So um you can't do it based on part-time versus full-time. Like you have to have the appreciation of quality across the board. Now, you have to be able to document this in some way. So I know that one of the very first things we talked about was understanding how people like to be appreciated. Well, if you're like, but you told me that some people don't like gifts and some people do, and that some people like quality time. You still have to kind of have an idea how much money things are costing. So if you are spending$20 on, you know, movie tickets with some people and$5 on candy for other people, that may come across as preferential treatment. Would you say, Carrie? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

And so give them more candy. Don't just give them$5, give them$20. But also, if it's that quality time piece and it is that you are going out to coffee with the staff member who quality time is how they feel appreciated, go out to coffee because that's roughly equivalent to the$20 in movie tickets. You're not gonna go take them out to a steak dinner. This person gets a steak dinner, and this person gets, you know, their favorite three musketeer bar. I don't think so. That is not equivalent in anyone's mind, and it's going to be perceived as favoritism, and you're gonna lose staff over it. And you could end up in a lot of people. I just I'm not gonna do anything for anybody anymore. Okay. Well, then you're gonna have a hard time keeping staff because you're in a caregiving industry, and even in non-caregiving industries, unless you're only going to hire people with a specific personality trait and specific brain structure, you're gonna have to, you know, do some appreciation. And I don't care what anybody says, everyone wants some kind of appreciation. Some of them say they just want a bigger paycheck, but they're lying to you. It is that is not true. People want to hear or see or feel from you that you appreciate their work. If you want employees that you don't have to appreciate, AI before it becomes sentient. You you can't have, you know, the Arnold Schwarzenegger from the second um Terminator movie. You got to get a Terminator one uh kind of AI. You can't have Terminator 2 kind of AI because Terminator One did not need any positive reinforcement. We need, we need this kind of uh, you know, everybody else needs reinforcement. Your tomato plant needs reinforcement. Come on. We've got to, we've got to give people positive reinforcement for what they're doing, and the tomato plants as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

I know your intention was not to tell me that my staff are plants, but that was kind of funny. Um, so uh yeah, so I mean, a lot of I think the foundation. So in our child care leadership infrastructure framework, for the last 25 years, Carrie and I have been talking about know yourself, know your business, know your program, know your community. And when we talk about knowing yourself, it is knowing your love languages and how do you like to be appreciated. So it seems to make a lot of sense that we would suggest that you do the same thing with your staff. But as you get to know your business, which includes your staff, you will it's your largest expense. Yeah, you better include them. Absolutely, right? So you, you know, knowing your business and knowing your staff absolutely has to be a key foundation of building that strong foundation of leaders, leadership. And hopefully, if you've got any questions, you will reach out to Carrie and I. Uh, let us know.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

And text us in the show, in the show notes. There's a little thing that says text the show. We love it when you guys text the show. It just tickles us. And we read every one of those. So please, if you've got questions, um, reach out to us. We'd love to respond back to you and help you in any way we can, whether it's through conversations, coaching, books, courses. We are here to help you. We are educators first and foremost. And uh hopefully that comes across a little bit in these episodes. So, Kate, you want to do our outro today?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

I'm just gonna tell everybody. We'll see you in a couple of days.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Okay. Talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Thanks for tuning in. We love bringing you real talk and fresh insight from the world of early childhood education. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all of the latest episodes. And if you're planning a conference, training, or special event, Kate and Carrie would love to speak to your audience. You can learn more about their keynote sessions and workshops at kateandcary.com. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Childcare Conversations.