This blog was originally posted on May 3, 2022, and updated on October 16, 2024, with new information.
Supporting teachers and staff in your child care center is something you must do every day. To keep staff happy and make sure they don’t burn out, you must find ways to reduce their stress year-round!
There’s no doubt that staffing shortages are still a problem in daycares and early childhood education programs. The data from the 2024 Child Care Management Software Industry Trends Report from Procare Solutions confirms that staffing shortages are affecting centers in multiple ways:
Let’s look at several tips to help your staff from Dr. Aditi Nerurkar. She’s a Harvard physician, speaker and correspondent whose expertise includes the science of stress, resilience and burnout.
And she’s a mother with a deep appreciation for those who work in child care!
How You Can Help Child Care Employees De-Stress
Dr. Nerurkat said it can be difficult to address stress and mental health issues with employees in a way that respects their sense of personal space and privacy.
Dr. Nerurkar said that instead of saying “I noticed” when beginning a conversation about burnout, begin by asking the employee how he or she is doing and have an open-ended conversation.
“Just assume your employee is struggling,” she said.
She suggested the following five key strategies to lead your child care center:
1: Organizational temperature checks: Do you have a culture of psychological safety? Are you engaging with your employees about mental health?
2: Set up peer and professional counseling groups: Make them free and easy to access. She said peer-to-peer groups especially are important among those in leadership positions who can’t talk with their employees about certain things that are causing stress.
3: Model healthy behavior: As a leader in your organization, minimize the emails you send and respond to in the evenings. Do anything you can to help set the right tone.
4: Validate and normalize the experience: Make sure your employees know they’re not alone in feeling it!
5: Continually try to make employee expectations and organizational culture match: Be consistent and follow through with the culture you’ve established at your child care center.
Dr. Nerurkar encouraged child care providers to make the “Goldilocks principle” part of their lives, which means finding a middle ground between checking out and over-stressing.
She said to minimize burnout, human productivity functions on a curve — on the left is someone who is bored and not engaged with work, and to the right of the curve is someone who is stressed and anxious and can’t focus.
“But there is a sweet spot in the middle of human productivity,” she said.
She also suggested implementing a “stop, breathe and be ” technique, in which you briefly pause every time you do an activity you do several times a day, such as washing hands or turning on a computer.
Such incremental things can have a cumulative effect by the end of the day.
She also suggested adding a small graphic to each room, perhaps a small triangle of dots or a logo, and tell the kids and teachers that each time they see it, they should “stop, breathe and be.”
And while meditation and exercise are great, we only do them once a day. But doing something 20 times a day for a few seconds can have a big effect on resilience and changing our brain chemistry.
Let Procare Help You Solve Staffing Challenges!
Procare gives you the tools you need to grow your daycare enrollment and overcome staffing challenges.
By using daycare software, you can manage child-to-staff ratios while helping your staff do their jobs more easily.
Using software can help centers identify key needs in staffing ratios and compliance, view historical trends reports and determine areas for improvement in hiring and retention processes. And you can reduce your teachers’ stress and lessen the chance of burnout.
With Procare, your child care center can easily keep track of staff information, including availability/scheduling, immunization records, background checks and additional details of employment.
Digital staff clock in/out saves you time and improves the accuracy of your child care business reporting and payroll.
Simplified scheduling and tracking of staff information help you manage staff schedules and records and puts child-to-staff ratios at your fingertips.
Easily build a network of qualified child care providers who can be accessed to fill full-time roles or substitute for a full-time staff member who is absent.
Want to learn how much time and money your child care center could save using Procare while reaping the benefits of less work for your daycare staff? Get a personalized estimate by using our online calculator:
Procare Cost and Time Savings Calculator Automated Payment Processing Cost & Time Savings Calculator Digital Curriculum Cost and Time Savings Calculator
Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s all-in-one child care management software. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*: Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s secure and effortless child care payment processing. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*: Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s classroom management. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*:
* Our data model is based on our experience working with over 100,000 child care centers, before and after school programs and youth organizations since 1992.
Switching to will save you hours and a month!*
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We understand that smaller centers and in-home daycare providers are operating on a tight budget, and that is why we provide all these features for the affordable price of just $25 per month. Let us handle the business of child care so you can get back to caring for your children.
To learn more about Procare home version, click below.
*Please note that the report you see only factors in cost and time savings for the in-home solution features. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative. *Please note that the report you see only factors in cost and time savings for the in-home solution features. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative. *Please note that the classroom management functionality is not available for in-home users. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative.
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Procare Cost and Time Savings Calculator
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