Calling all nursery owners/staff - quick question

[StillSquiffy]

I work in an organisation with 15,000 staff who live all over the UK and am wrestling with the idea of how I help my staff with the problem of flexibility over the opening hours of nurseries. Currently most nurseries seem to open 8-6 or perhaps 7 in the evening, and I have many staff who struggle with these hours - not least because we often have to meet client deadlines and can't just leave at 5 or 5.30.

The traditional answer is of course to go down the nanny or childminder route, but I was wondering if there would be an appetite for nursery owners to offer evening babysitting, and at what rate this would become a sensible proposition? I would imagine that if this were doable it would have to be on the basis that the nursery owner is notified of the need for extra hours by - say - 3pm (the owner would then instructr whichever member of staff was on the standby rota to step in and do this 'overtime') and that the nursery would then keep the child beyond closing time. I imagine the cost would be a minimum of at least £10 per hour per child (given that you could never guarantee that there would ever be more than 1 child requiring the service). Of course the child in question would have to be a regular attendee of the nursery already.

One of the advantages of course would be that as a firm my company would then recommend these nurseries to their new mothers, and it is possible that the firm could potentially pay for this service upfront itself using perhaps childcare or bank transfers so that the nurseries would receive the money straight away. I know that many parents (myself included) make informal arrangements with nursery staff for out-of-hours care, but I am looking for something that can be guaranteed, and with very little notice.

I would be interested in your views and am canvassing some of the big nursery chains about this as well. I think the issues might be:

1. Cost (but at what cost would it work?)
2. Ofsted requirements - do they need managers on site as well as staff? Are there any restrictions stopping this from happening?
3. Economies of scale (ie would work only if at least say 4 employees from the same firm had children attending same nursery, otherwise the faff element would outweigh the revenue benefits)

Thoughts?

hi

really quick post as popping out:

In theory a good idea but.....you will need at least two staff at any one time, one of which level 3 (more depending on numbers)

Ofsted registration would be need to be altered to reflect a later closing time

Depending on pick up time arrangements for extra meals would be needed

Nursery staff tend to work a longish day anyway and many would not want to to extra (even at charging £10 an hour) - as extra costs would be taken out of this (heating, food,insurance).

Good luck with it and would be interested to hear how it goes.

Not a nursery owner, but picking up on dribbleface's points,

(a) at most/many nurseries staff are already working 10-hour shifts, so you're looking at putting staff who have just worked that shift in charge of small children for another several (how many are you envisaging?) hours.

(b) small pre-school-age children are likely to have a bedtime between 7 and 8. How's that going to work out - practically, I suppose all children of employees of your company would have to attend nursery with a full set of pyjamas and night things every day in case it was decided by 3pm that your company wanted the parents to work late, but then the children would be going to sleep at nursery and then have to be taken home asleep, presumably?

(c) £10 an hour seems unfeasibly low given that, as dribbleface says, there would need to be two members of staff plus overhead costs

(d) were you envisaging any kind of on call allowance/payment given that nursery staff would be unable to make any plans for their evening?

(e) administering this if you are using small independent nurseries all over the country would presumably be a nightmare. Conversely, as a parent I would not send a dog I was fond of to the example of a big chain nursery near me, no matter how strongly my employer recommended it.

The need for 2 staff would possibly only really be feasible then for the larger chains, I guess (and I have to admit that I'm not a fan of them). Cost of £25 per hour sounds more like the cost that would be incurred (which is not outside the realms of possibility in terms of what I am thinking of)

Food and nightwear are easy enough to fix (I imagine nurseries would keep a small stock of jimjams rather like they usually keep a small stock of clothes for 'accidents')

Staff working more than 10 hours would be an issue for UK working times regs possibly (especially their need to take a break between shifts) but otherwise I imagine it is do-able (I don't in any way argue that it is fun being a nursery worker. My current nanny found it very tough going when she worked in a nursery setting, but she says she thinks that plenty of the staff she knew would be happy to do this if the price is right)

Admin-wise, where I work we already run a piece of software that records what every member of staff is doing, by the half hour, and we use this to automatically charge out costs to our own clients (of which there are thousands), so I imagine we already have the admin capability on our side (to automatically pay as staff book the service on our system). And if the idea looks like it might fly I would imagine we would link in with our own childcare voucher providor to ease admin. It would of course mean admin on the side of the owners.

I am sure there is an appetite on our side - mothers are able to take time off in lieu after working late, so we try to operate flexibility both ways. I am trying to look at ways of reducing the costs to mums here by loading some of it diectly onto the firm itself so that flexibility pays and both parties are happy. At the moment staff have to hire nannies and this is crazy expensive at a time when some key staff are still only half way up the career ladder (without the earnings to offset the costs). But I really don't know how much I could push this idea out into the nurseries themselves, and whether there is enough incentive on both sides to make some of this fly.

This is something that we are looking at at the moment, we have a hospital close who are looking for similar, yes 2 members of staff have to be on site, however most nurseries have adequate sleep / quiet rooms already in place, perhaps a nursery that is reg'd for overnight care may be the way forward. We do a staff shift system so it is possible to operate longer hours in terms of staff. Cost wise I would look more in the region of £30 per hour as a min, as a supervisor would be on site as well as a practitioner, overhead costs etc.

what about the kids?

(i am saying this as a mum who happily used nurseries btw... but come on, kids need to go home and go to bed. if your employees really need to be that flexible then they have to go down the nanny route or preferably the other parent takes over. it's the only way.

Expecting staff to stay later after working 10 hr shifts is cheap slavery. £10. Ph is not enough. Lots of nursery staff have kids to care for and other responsibilities in the evenings.

Plus there is the extra expense to the nursery to registered with ofsted for night care (not to mention loads more rules, regulations and inspections )

Also, a 3pm notice the same day as care required is not enough. You'd need at least 3-4 days notice. Sorry to sqy but I can't imagine nursery staff being over joyed at the prospect of working nights as well as days. Insurance would also be very high

I would never send dd to a night nursey.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this idea - as a working mother of two.

If you put in place this sort of system, then it becomes much easier to pressure parents into working late and leaving their children in the care of the nursery for longer days (not saying you would do this, but employers in general might). How is this good for the children?

You can easily imagine a situation where the employer provides this service, and then parents are denied promotion/advancement or generally disadvantaged if they refuse to work late on a frequent basis. And before you know it, work life balance is screwed.

I do understand that sometimes it's necessary for people to work overtime, am in that sort of business myself, but if it's happening so often that an organisation needs to put these sorts of arrangements in place, then it strikes me that possibly the problem lies with the organisation's planning and resources systems. Fixing this shouldn't mean the children losing out the most.

Just my two cents.

StillSquiffy

How much research have you done with the parents (in most cases, I'd have to say, mothers) who are your target group here? What I mean is: what do they currently do when late working is required? Do they simply say they can't, does the other parent take over, do they have to stay till the last possible minute then run to get their child before the nursery closes? Would they want an alternative like this?

Have to say I am with the posters just above, though I believe your intentions are good, especially in terms of the company taking on more of the burden of the cost of childcare. But perhaps it isn't ideal, in a number of ways, that the solution is seen to be making the kids fit in with the demands of work all the time, rather than the other way around.

I agree with WhatFresh entirely. I have also sent / send my children to Nursery but think that this would discourage work/life balance.

yes WhatFresh has put it perfectly.

To address the concerns and give fuller context:

The organisation fully supports flexible working and the mums in this organisation can generally choose whatever combination of hours they like. However there are some roles in the organisation where client demand means that there is a huge ebb and flow of work - you may be crazy busy one week and not have any work to do the next. Where this doesn't suit the mume then we move them off to roles where the work is more predictable, but lots of mums want to stay doing the jobs they have always done - this ebb and flo work is actually very exciting and lots of the work gets reported in the press as it happens, so the roles really are at the 'coalface'. Those mums who want to stay in this area of work have always had to have nannies, which is fine when you can hire live-in nannies with this flexibility. I have done a similar role and have loved it because one week I am racing round doing fab work, and the next week I am at home, taking the kids to school, or taking my DD out for the day, just the two of us (because one of the consequences of working late is time off in lieu afterwards).

The problem is that this only works when the mums can afford nannies. If they can't, then at the moment they have to switch to less exciting work for a period which can be frustrating for them (and also means they don't get the luxury of taking days to spend with their kids, they just get the ability to clock off at 4pm or whenever, guaranteed). Given that the cost of a nanny (including tax element) now stands at £36k pa, we are finding that some people struggle to pay this - even though we uplift the base of their salaries by 20% for 12 months for each child to help them out.

So, far from trying to flog the staff to within an inch of their lives and totally disrupt their work-life balance, we are trying to improve their lot, keep them on the jobs they love, and reduce the personal cost to them of childcare. At £30 per hour we can probably pay for it ourselves on ther behalf (and still let them take full time off in lieu). There is not a single aspect of this that is looking at giving a benefit to the firm - we are trying to find a way of keeping staff on the jobs they love, in a way that doesn't cripple them financially by forcing them to hire nannies they can ill afford at that atge of their careers. We are finding that mums are 'giving up' because they are not interested in the less exciting work, but they cannot make the books balance financially because of the cost of flexible childcare. So I am looking at all possible solutions to this, of which this is one. I am for example also looking at aiming to spread the cost of nannies over a mums' career (eg by meeting the nanny cost at the time they may be earning relatively low salaries, and reclaiming part of it later, should they be promoted to a much higher earning level further on in their careers). this is very much being driven by requests from parents, not trying to enslave the staff.

What WhatFreshHellIsThis said.

Also, I know that my own dd1 would have reacted VERY badly to unexpected changes in routine. She went to nursery happily, but she knew she would be picked up after her tea and come home. My dd2 is at nursery now but is breastfed before bed so she has to be home in time for that, other reasons to get her home notwithstanding.

Nurseries, their staff and parents are all able to be flexible to a degree, but many small children are not.

If the childcare arrangement is a nanny at home then the child's routine is still adhered to.

I may be looking at it from a skewed perspective as this sort of working arrangement wouldn't suit me or my daughters, but I think it'd be a nightmare to administer, expensive to run and horrible for a lot of the children involved.

OP I think your idea of subsidising the cost of a nanny up front and reclaiming it later might be a better route to go down. Obviously it would throw up its own problems like tying employees in to the company, enforcing what is effectively a loan etc. It is great that you are trying to retain talent and help working parents but I am not convinced this is the right way to do it.

An alternative might be on-site nursery facilities, so children come to work with parents. They would have to be really good facilities though, built with longer hours in mind. Still not sure it is ideal - longer hours within nursery is just not great imo.

The previous post that stands out for me the most here is the one about small children who need to go to bed. It is tough enough to expect someone who is 4 or under to go to nursery all day, without also then doing supper and pyjamas (what about bath?) at nursery rather than home.

It doesn't balance out for a small child on a week to week basis like it does for adults - they are unlikely to cope with a week of late nights at nursery being offset by a week of early pickups.

Are you only flexible for mums, then, stillsquiffy? Or do you allow dads to be flexible as well?

Dads too, and (roll of drums) even those without kids.

Appreciate all responses. Am trying to sort out as many options as possible. The on-site nursery unfortunately doesn't work because when staff are crazy-busy they are usually at client site, and office may be in the opposite direction to home for staff.

Having the evening care provided at the nursery won't work - for many of the reasons already highlighted.

If the company ran a sort of agency which provided a 'nanny' to collect the child from nursery and take them back to the child's home... care for them there until the parents got back... that could work. There are far less legal issues with it as well - as childcare between 6pm and 2am is unregulated in England and Wales (Scotland is different, can't remember how it differs though).

The agency staff could be employed by the company on zero hour contracts (or whatever contract type you liked) and in effect be like bank staff. However children and parents will probably like some consistency - so where possible having the same person each time.

Finding people to do the work though could be tricky.

We've looked at that option too and I think the biggest issue is continuity of care - it's one thing for agency babysitters who don't know the kids to turn up at someone's house when they are usually asleep, but quite another to expect the babies to be picked up by strangers and then taken home for baths, etc. Also there would be issues with security because keys/alarm codes would need to be handed out to all and sundry.

It's tough because without an affordable solution mums are giving up on their careers at a vital stage.

Maybe a network of evening 'childminders' might be a solution?

It sounds like you're going to huge lengths to try and find a solution to this, and for this you should be applauded. I didn't mean to make it sound like you wanted to work your staff to death, I was talking more generally about if this sort of night nursery service was widely available, there would be potential for employers to do that.

The thing is, for me here I think there is a huge issue, as you say, of consistency of care. We all know that children thrive on consistency and routine - and whether that consistency is provided by the other parent being able to fill the gap when one is very busy, or grandparents, or a nanny, it is very essential to a child's wellbeing.

You say that the ebb and flow job is very exciting and has huge benefits in terms of personal fulfilment, and I support that wholeheartedly - however, that sort of ebb and flow will not suit small children as well, so whatever solution you find has to provide consistency for the children.

I don't want to sound defeatist, but in some cases (not all) there probably isn't a solution to the problem - if someone doesn't have a partner in a more steady job, or a nanny, or a willing grandparent, then maybe they have to say, actually, I just can't do this job right now. Without wishing to sound preachy, having children does force us to make some choices along the line, not all of them pleasant. And these choices have to involve the whole family's needs, so if Dad is a teacher and is always home by 4pm, then Mum can have a very erratic working life, iyswim.

I'm confused as to how some of the people doing this job can afford nannies and some can't, especially given that you uplift their salaries? Does this mean if they're the sole wage earner they can't but if they are married to someone earning a decent wage they can, for example?

With the best will in the world, I simply cannot imagine a scenario in which I would be happy to let someone I didn't know, no matter how carefully vetted, take my children home and put them to bed. Bedtime is a particularly difficult time, children are tired and clingy and need the security of a routine and a secure relationship with the person putting them to bed - Mummy suddenly not coming because work has got busy and being taken home by a stranger would be pretty upsetting for your average preschooler, especially if it's unexpected.

I guess (thinking aloud) if you could guarantee the same person doing it for each family every time, then the child could get to know them, but I'm not sure how you could work that so it was guaranteed.

Sorry to be very negative - without knowing what the job actually is it's hard to imagine it fully, but I'm struggling to see how it could work. And maybe I'm underestimating childrens' resilience, I might just be a bit precious

I see what you are saying, but that has to be the parents choice, and we are finding the parents are giving up a crucial stage in their career because they don't have enough choices available. and whilst some people are happy to switch out of the 'ebb and flow' work, some struggle with the switch.

It is affordable for some but not others because people have babies at different stages - a relatively junior person (but one we think is going to be brilliant) struggles, but someone 10 years older and established (and earning perhaps twice the salary) has less of an issue. What we are finding is that some women are deliberately delaying having kids in the firm (seriously - we have enough evidence to show a very clear statistical blip so it isn't just anecdotal). That just seems so wrong to us and also it hurts the women as well because although they have the salary when they are older, they also have lots of responsibilities to go with it, and may be having children at a time which is quite challenging in terms of stress - not ideal.

Anyway, thanks everyone for taking time to give this some thought. I've taken all your points on board and will be continuing to look at all options.