The annual staff turnover rate at child care centers is 30% in the U.S. When that turnover includes center directors, administration can become especially stressful. Though turnover is difficult to prevent overnight, there is one thing you can do to help alleviate that stress: Prepare.
Preparation can make your transition between directors more seamless. Especially when you use a child care management system such as Procare, quickly training the new director or Procare administrator on how to use the software is vital to keeping your center running smoothly. Following are some tips for making the transition and training as easy as possible.
Have the Current Director be the Trainer
The current director will know Procare and how to complete the center’s most important functions better than anyone. If the current director can train the new director before he or she leaves, then this aspect of turnover can be easy. If the current director is going to leave before the new director is found and hired, there is also the option of training another administrator. This administrator can use Procare in the director’s absence and then train the new director when they’re hired.
Since every center uses Procare differently, personally passing the information along within the administration keeps everyone on the same page and the administrative tasks running smoothly.
Provide the New Director Notes
If training from the current director is not possible, the next best thing is for the current director to write out what functions they use and how. This may not be as efficient as one-on-one teaching, but this will at least give the new director some ideas of what to do. The current director’s list of the most common things they do in Procare each day, week, and month can include:
- Billing families
- Processing payments
- Emailing statements
- Registering a new family to use the check-in computer
- Importing new families from MyProcare
- Printing employee time cards
- Completing payroll
- Any other tasks your center does frequently
Let The New Director Learn on Our Support Site
We’ve developed a New Director Resource List to answer questions about how to complete common tasks in Procare. For answers to other specific questions, contact Procare Support, or for more in-depth training and consultation, contact our Training Team.
The key thing to remember is to not let your current director go without some preparation on their part. Training a new director or leaving notes for them can save everyone hassle in the future, and keep your administration running without any compromises.
