When a setting or small group is acquired by a larger provider, staff sometimes fear disappearing into a faceless corporation. There are pros and cons to any working environment, but among the benefits of being in a chain are that many larger groups offer a wider range of career development opportunities and training than smaller providers are able to deliver, and communicating these benefits to new settings in a positive way can help put employees’ minds at rest.
When Ofsted interviewed nursery and pre-school managers employed by nursery groups, 96 per cent said their employer was successful in retaining staff. When asked why people would want to work for their nursery group, managers cited staff benefits, including pay and pension, training opportunities, career progression, working conditions and job satisfaction. Managers mentioned challenges around pay but felt this was a problem faced by the whole sector, not just nursery chains.
‘I never use the word “chain”, which sounds really cold or corporate – we are a family group,’ says Clare Roberts, chief executive of Kids Planet, which has grown from 52 nurseries in May 2021 to 114 at present. ‘There is a mourning period when anyone finds out that they’re leaving the owners they have been with for a long time, but we hope to excite them, and reassure them we don’t do anything that different because we’re all within the EYFS.’
Training
Half of the multiple providers interviewed by Ofsted had their own in-house apprenticeship schemes, which can be promoted as a benefit to new settings joining the group. Many of the nursery managers interviewed said they had access to a large number of online training programmes, and had personal training plans based on their own development needs and professional interests. Tops Nurseries, for example, has more than 100 short online courses available.
Staff joining a larger group after an acquisition will usually undergo an induction process. Kids Planet, for example, has a 14-week integration programme for new settings. The sessions introduce the organisation’s Training Academy, which takes employees through formal qualifications from Level 2 to a Master’s degree, and its internal training department, which delivers training around the company’s policies, procedures and practice.
While training on policies and procedures is mandatory for new joiners, formal qualifications are not, says Roberts. ‘If someone is unqualified, and they’ve worked at the setting for 20 years, we do not come in and say they have to do a Level 3, because that is really unfair,’ she says. ‘But it is important that new people joining our company get the opportunity to be awarded a professional qualification, because what they do is a professional job.’
Tops Day Nurseries’ 36 settings get access to the Aspire Training Team, its sister company, which offers apprenticeships, short courses and qualifications. Induction sessions introduce new settings to Tops’ ethos and values, and every new colleague is provided with a learning journey, consisting of a range of training courses mapped out over the first year of employment. ‘They are done in priority order to make sure that we’re not front-loading massively,’ says Amy Alderson, director of Early Years Audit and Training at Tops Day Nurseries. ‘Colleagues may have had management training before, but Tops has quite a specific ethos, so we are training them on what Tops believes, and what our core principles and values are.’
Smaller settings often welcome these new opportunities as it is increasingly difficult for independent nurseries to fund training. ‘We usually find that settings that have been independent nurseries haven’t had the same level of training opportunities as we provide,’ says Alderson. ‘Staff might be Level 3 qualified, but they haven’t had the opportunity to progress – we’re able, through our apprenticeship levy, to fund colleagues to do their Level 5, which they are usually very excited about.’
Specialisms
Groups often highlight both increased opportunities for internal promotion and the chance to specialise in a particular area, such as SEND or outdoor provision. Kids Planet, for example, has its own outdoor learning qualification.
‘For us, it’s all about identifying rising stars, so we try to fast-track people who have the desire to move on,’ says Roberts. ‘If someone is really capable, you want them to do it as quickly as possible because you don’t want to lose them.’
Tops gives staff the opportunity to join a training programme for room manager, trainee manager or trainee regional manager. ‘One of the big reasons why people are leaving their jobs at the moment is because they’re not seeing that career progression, so that is something we are really promoting with any new acquisitions,’ says Alderson. ‘We want to make it clear that we see our current unqualified and apprentices as our future managers and directors.’
Deployment
Ofsted’s research found that staff who work in a nursery owned by a multiple provider may be deployed to other nurseries in the same group, and this was generally seen as positive by nursery managers. Deployment elsewhere allows staff to enhance knowledge through sharing best practice, provide relief to other practitioners when workload is high, provide greater consistency than using agency staff and enhance a sense of belonging to the multiple provider. However, managers also reported downsides such as the disruption of key person relationships and wellbeing issues both for those deployed and those in the nurseries they have been deployed from.
When a setting is brought into a new group, practitioners’ main concerns tend to be job security, and any potential changes to pay, job roles and conditions. ‘We never change anyone’s pay,’ says Roberts. ‘We have quite broad pay bandings because when you have a large geographical spread, it is impossible to say that salary is all you’re going to pay for that role.’
‘It is daunting when you suddenly find out that your nursery is being sold,’ says Alderson. ‘We tend to go with a mindset of as little change as possible to start with. Usually we are able to offer more competitive salaries, and people tend to be quite surprised about the staff welfare package that we can offer, which includes paying for prescriptions, eye tests and counselling.’
When Tops takes over a new setting, job titles may change but overall roles and responsibilities usually remain the same. ‘Some nurseries have room leads or supervisors but we call them room managers, for example,’ says Alderson. Tops nurseries are generally open on bank holidays, which can be a change for staff, although new acquisitions do not always follow suit.
Alderson and Roberts agree that any changes to existing terms and conditions should be made following a consultation with the setting involved.
Changes to pay and conditions usually depend on the type of acquisition. If a setting is being transferred from one company to another, employees may be protected under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations, meaning pay and terms and conditions will probably stay the same. If the setting closed down and is being reopened by the new employer, employees will have new contracts with new terms and conditions.
‘When we do an acquisition, it isn’t just the bricks and the mortar we are buying, it is the heart and the soul of the nursery, which is the team,’ concludes Roberts. ‘So for me it is really important that we get that part right.’
CASE STUDY: Emma Duffy, area manager, Kids Planet
In 2015, Emma Duffy was acting deputy manager at The Home Day Nursery, one of three settings owned by Liverpool Day Nurseries. When she heard the small group was going to be taken over by Kids Planet, she remembers being excited by the prospect.
‘I looked into Kids Planet and saw it was a family-run business that wanted to grow and develop,’ she says. ‘We had a meeting with Clare Roberts, the chief executive, and she talked straight away about training and development. We talked about different career paths, where we wanted to be, what we wanted to do, and how she intended to grow the business. Two of the area managers then talked about their experiences of their settings being taken over by Kids Planet, and the training they had received.’
Duffy says she knew straight away that she wanted to become an area manager herself, something she would not have had an opportunity to do if she had continued working for such a small group. ‘I would not have been able to progress except maybe to acting manager if someone went on maternity leave,’ she says.
After being taken over, the setting became Kids Planet Crosby, and Duffy quickly became deputy manager then acting manager. She then moved to Kids Planet Fazakerley as manager, moving on to become acting area manager, until four years ago she progressed to area manager, overseeing eight settings.
As part of her career progression, Duffy gained a Level 5 qualification in management, and has taken part in a wide range of training through the Kids Planet Academy on topics including communication and language, SEND, Forest Schools and sensory processing. During the pandemic, she continued both taking part in and delivering CPD online, including gaining a Level 4 qualification in mental health support.
