The relaxation of Covid restrictions, including the withdrawal of free testing on 1 April, does not mean that the pandemic is over. In fact, nurseries are finding that the challenges posed by staff absences are worse than they have ever been.
‘There has been a major impact of staff off with Covid since Christmas,’ says Kelsie Mcintyre, manager of Little Angels nursery and preschool in Uppingham, East Midlands. ‘Last month, we held a training event, and a few days later, everyone who had attended had Covid.’
‘Since the guidance has been relaxed, we have had more staff off with Covid than during the previous two years,’ adds Lucy Whitehead, owner of Rainbow Corner Southsea and Rainbow Corner Windlesham, both in the Home Counties. ‘Recently we had to take the decision to close for the day, which we have never done before.’
Covid challenges
Many nurseries are still asking staff with Covid to stay at home until they test negative for two days in a row, even though this is no longer mandated. ‘We have vulnerable children, and staff who are pregnant – we don’t want to put anyone at risk,’ says Mcintyre.
For nurseries already struggling to recruit, sickness-related absences are often the final straw. Settings have been forced to reduce hours, close rooms, cap occupancy, or even take the decision to operate for four days a week instead of five.
Rainbow Corner stopped taking on new children six months ago. ‘We have been thinking about closing on Fridays, but there are parents who need us – you have to think about the demands of the business versus losing parents,’ says Whitehead.
Staff costs
Agency staff, while expensive, can be a short-term temporary fix, but any manager knows it is a warning sign if any organisation is relying on them too frequently, says James Hempsall, director of consultancy Hempsall’s. Some nurseries are even having trouble getting agency staff, however. ‘I have found that the big chains are block-booking qualified staff for a month at a time,’ says Whitehead.
Hempsall suggests one option is that settings ‘grow their own’ bank, including recently retired practitioners and those who have gone part-time, offering an enhanced rate but still less than agencies would charge. If settings are finding this difficult, they could work in partnership with other settings in a network, building up a joint ‘bank’. This doesn’t happen overnight, it is a medium-term strategy, he says.
Staff costs make up the bulk of a setting’s expenditure, but as a very general rule should not make up more than 75 per cent of it, says Hempsall.
The National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) includes a Staff Cost Calculator in its free Business Zone online business support toolkit (see Further information).
Research by the University of Leeds found the most frequent measure used by nursery managers to stay open and viable during the pandemic was to change staffing levels or employment conditions – almost half (48.9 per cent) either ‘changed staff contract conditions’, ‘permanently cut staff’, or did not renew temporary staff contracts. Changes to staffing were most apparent in decreased numbers of apprentices, which is indicative of a problem for the pipeline of workers coming into the sector.
Ratios
In January, the Government confirmed that early years settings struggling with staff absences due to the pandemic could relax their ratios, ‘where the quality of care and safety and security of children is maintained’, given that Covid was an ‘exceptional circumstance’ as set out in the EYFS. There are concerns that the Government might consider relaxing ratios as a more permanent solution to the early years staffing situation. When this was proposed in the Government’s 2017 More great childcare paper, it was met with strong resistance from the sector.
‘This year, I’ve seen a little more discussion about the change of ratios in the sector,’ says Hempsall. ‘I believe that the sector is more receptive to thinking about changes to ratios. It’s not the single thing that will solve all of the challenges, but why not give the sector greater flexibility? It remains a bugbear that ratios are unequal across the sector; what schools can do is far more flexible than in the PVI sector. That is simply not fair. But we cannot compromise on quality, and that means we also need to support a highly skilled, qualified and rewarded workforce.’
However, many settings have been reluctant to take this step, as they feel it impacts the quality of care offered. ‘Nurseries are working extremely closely to the ratios,’ says Stella Ziolkowski, NDNA director of quality and workforce development. ‘We are seeing staff that were previously supernumerary, such as leaders and managers, working within the ratios due to the inability to recruit both qualified and unqualified staff. Agencies simply don’t have sufficient early years staff on their books to provide backfill.’
Rather than relax adult-to-child ratios, some practitioners support a temporary relaxation of qualified-to-unqualified ratios. ‘I have got apprentices who are more than competent, some put Level 3 practitioners to shame, but I have to keep a 50/50 ratio of qualified to unqualified staff,’ says Whitehead. ‘Of course, you need a certain number of qualified people in the setting, but allowing the business to make its own judgement would ease the pressure.’
A temporary fast-track Level 3 qualification would also help, she says. ‘At the moment it takes three-and-a-half to four years for someone to progress through Level 2 and Level 3.’
Changing patterns
Different working patterns are emerging as a result of the staffing crisis. ‘Practitioners may be working longer hours over fewer days as this helps them to maintain ratios across the week,’ says Ziolkowski. ‘Some nurseries are taking more apprentices and using this as a forward plan in ensuring they have the right levels of qualified staff for the future.’
However, the pandemic has also impacted the way staff want to work. ‘More people are wanting to work part-time, a lot fewer want to work full-time,’ says Whitehead. ‘People want to work 9am to 2pm, or for two days a week.’
While offering flexible hours can be beneficial as it leads to better recruitment and retention, and has a positive impact on staff mental health, settings do need to keep the benefits to the business front of mind, says Hempsall. ‘The success criterion is that the business is supported through those policies.’
Planning for new challenges
Changing demand for childcare is forcing settings to adapt to new occupancy patterns (see box). ‘There is much more demand for part time/sessional hours due to hybrid working,’ says Ziolkowski.
‘We are finding that not many parents are using the 30 hours offer any more,’ says Mcintyre. ‘They may have been made redundant or gone self-employed, and are no longer entitled to it.’ The changes Covid has brought to the early years landscape are likely to affect the sector for many years to come, and nurseries need to ensure they have a plan in place to meet those new challenges.
Practical tips on staff deployment by James Hempsall
The big issue again is change. We must fully understand what has changed, what is changing and anticipate what change might look like in the future. Family life and work has shifted in all sorts of patterns. Families are coming in and out of the targeted offers very fluidly. Couple that with the shifting needs and demands of staff, and every childcare business needs to take a good hard look at what is being offered, how and why.
The direction we were all travelling in before the pandemic has been heavily influenced. In some areas, we have seen settings’ models unchanged and unaffected, in others they have been decimated, and in contrast others are thriving. We must ask why.
I have seen a return to traditional sessional models, that before the pandemic we considered to be on the way out. In other settings, I have noticed how gaps have appeared in the day as parents opt for fewer paid-for hours or days. These gaps place pressure upon routines and require changes in staff deployment, especially the costs they require.
Hard decisions need to be made about how we use staff across the full and partial day, and how we design and deploy new models of delivery to manage our timetables. Ones that tick all four boxes:
- meeting families’ demands and needs
- manageable through available staffing
- delivering quality
- supporting the business to recover and be successful.
Spare time needs to be sold or funded, or the costs need to be minimised or removed so they do not drain the finances further.
Thinking about the longer term needs to start now. I wonder what advantages and opportunities there are ahead should the Government relax the strict criteria we have become so used to while our sector grew and developed and matured.
Ask yourself, if you were allowed to do something differently, what and how could that look like?
FURTHER INFORMATION
- Early Years Business Zone: https://bit.ly/3ja8R1f
