How to Develop a Great Child Care Company Culture

For a long time, the term “company culture” only applied to corporations and massive organizations employing hundreds of people. However, developing a great child care company culture can help you resolve problems even before they occur, giving you more time to focus on running your daycare.

So let’s take a look at simple steps you should follow to create a valuable child care company culture – and stick with it.

 

1^st step: Choose the right values

Make your company culture truly useful by taking a good look at your daycare.

The key questions you have to consider are:

What are your employees like?
What are your customers like?
What are you, the owner, like?

You are not the only one creating the child care company culture in your daycare. It’s your caregivers and your customers, as well.

And in order to establish the right core values, examine the already present behaviors.

Are there things that need changing? In that case, it may be good to integrate those wish list items into your core values.

In creating child care company culture, the most important thing you can do is examine where your daycare center is now and where you want it to be.

Company culture should help you align your day-to-day operations with your long-term vision. For example if you value a highly academic environment, one of your values could be: “Always reaching for the highest in educational standards”. Then, you communicate this and a few other core values to your staff as a blueprint for how you expect everyone to act.

 

2^nd step: Enforce child care company culture the right way

If you want to create a company culture and stick with it, you need to lead by example. There is nothing like good leadership that helps everyone else do their job even better.

If you’ve selected the right core values, that will make the transition easier as it will only highlight the virtues of the daycare. However, others will need more time. To help them, you should create a list of ways you can spread the company culture.

For example, if many staff members are unclear on what your values are, post them in each classroom.

Celebrating successes and investing in your staff are also an amazing way to motivate your employees for adapting to changes too. For example if your value is to achieve the highest in educational standards and you got a special credential recently make sure to celebrate the accomplishment with your employees to reinforce what your company holds dear.

 

3^rd step: Attract new customers with your daycare culture

When it comes to building relationships with parents – the importance of cooperation can’t be underestimated.

Parents, your customers, are a huge part of creating child care company culture.  Even though you may have created guidelines for the culture you want, it’s important to get feedback and keep growing and developing.

You can get their opinion through surveys, and even utilize newsletters to keep them updated and ask for their input.

Your daycare company culture should be appealing to your customers – the parents entrusting their children to you.

What are they getting from your child care company culture? Is it an atmosphere based on responsibility and quality?

If you pride yourself on always taking the extra step to make your daycare more convenient by using features like Hopping In, integrate that into your core values.

Hopping In, which allows you to fill your daycare’s vacant spots, also lets parents book extra time when they need it and, in case of absences, they can drop the unnecessary spots and get a partial refund. It’s also risk-free, as there’s no charge if you’re not earning with Hopping In.

By using software or practices similar to Hopping In, you offer something substantial to parents and make your ‘cooperation’ core value more than an empty word 🙂

 

What’s a great child care company culture?

To put it simply: the culture your child care business needs to thrive.

It may already embody certain values, but coming up with a list of characteristics you want to describe your daycare with can help when you’re buried under so much work that you don’t even have the time to think about child care company culture.

But no matter what you do, remember that it takes time to create a great culture. And despite every other daycare around you, your daycare’s culture only has to work for you and your customers.

Show what makes you different and live by it every day. Then you’ll be on your way to creating a great culture for your child care business.