While extended ‘free’ childcare hours are a welcome boost to many working parents, employers in the childcare sector face an ongoing recruitment crisis and need to plan how best to spread their workforce. Charlotte Hutchings, group chief people officer at the UK’s largest nursery chain Busy Bees, speaks to Jo Faragher about how the business is managing the challenges ahead.
When the government announced it would extend free childcare hours in England to a broader group of children in last year’s budget, this was positively welcomed by working parents, many of whom have had to adjust hours or even give up jobs to juggle their caring responsibilities.
In addition to the 30 hours of free childcare currently enjoyed by 3 to 4-year-olds, from April 2024, working parents of 2-year-olds will be eligible for 15 hours. Then, from September 2024, 15 hours also become available for parents of children 9 months and over.
The Department for Education said it would increase funding to nurseries to cover free hours from £204 million last year to £288 million in 2024. Labour MP Stella Creasy claimed that – despite the increase in funding – this would be asking childcare providers to operate at a loss.
As nurseries and other childcare settings gear up for the first extended group to receive the free hours next month, how they will cover the extra hours financially is just one of the challenges they face.
Research from the Early Education and Childcare Coalition in November suggested the extended childcare provision would require an additional 50,000 childcare professionals to join the sector in 2024 and a further 50,000 in 2025 to meet demand and keep existing places open.
In response, the government has recently launched its ‘Do Something Big’ recruitment campaign to attract more people into early years education, including a trial £1,000 golden hello as a sweetener in five local authorities.
Planning ahead
Charlotte Hutchings, group chief people officer at Busy Bees Nurseries, has been working with her team on the numbers they will need since the extension was announced.
Childcare sector
Nursery workers campaign includes £1,000 ‘golden hello’ trial
But the company was already focusing on staff attraction and retention since Covid shook up the labour market four years ago.
“Coming out of the pandemic, the great resignation really impacted us. Going into 2022 we really started to feel the pinch, so we had to think strategically about forward planning. We were thinking about what the future might look like versus being reactive when vacancies came in,” she says.
Although the Busy Bees brand has been around for about 40 years, a key priority was to build a more compelling employee value proposition. Since Hutchings joined two years ago, she has been involved in reviewing and overhauling the benefits the company offers.
This has included developing new, more family-friendly policies and ensuring staff have access to support tools such as discounts and an employee assistance plan. Busy Bees offers more than 32,000 nursery places at 360 locations in the UK, and employs around 25,000 staff in 10 countries.
“As a big employer we can leverage benefits in a way the smaller players can’t,” she says. “We can’t be complacent because the talent market is so competitive. We’re competing with the likes of Tesco so we have to be as good as we possibly can. We also have the extra barrier to entry of many of our roles requiring a qualification, which creates another layer of challenge.”
New talent pipeline
A core part of this strategy is Busy Bees’ apprenticeship programme. In 2022, the company recruited 530 new apprentices, and added another 200 in 2023. This year, it’s looking to recruit a further 300. Internally, several employees have started on higher level apprenticeships (Busy Bees offers programmes up to Level 7), so in total there are some 1,145 UK colleagues currently on apprenticeship programmes.
Busy Bees is ranked 13th in the Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers, and runs the qualifications through its own education and training business. It pays above the minimum wage for apprentices and also supports trainees in-house to gain the functional skills required to complete their apprenticeship.
Having several role models within the business who have worked their way up from an apprenticeship creates a virtuous circle, Hutchings believes.
“We have a number of people who have done this, for example, two that started with us in centres working with children and have worked their way up, and recently moved into operational director roles. People can either stay on the operational pathway or move into other functions such as HR or finance,” she explains.
Building pride in the profession is crucial, she adds: “The industry needs to improve the view of childcare as a career for an ambitious person – it’s not just babysitting.
“Our employees are the first role models a child has outside of the home, they follow the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) curriculum, create learning experiences and have such a huge impact on people’s lives.”
Apprenticeships account for around 25% of vacancies filled by qualified practitioners, and are not just aimed at school leavers and young people. There are around 60 workers over 50 who are pursuing apprenticeships.
“We’re interested in later-life career changers too,” she adds. “Which is why we’ve improved our menopause support. We want to elongate people’s careers and cater to people who want to do something different.”
Retention challenge
Retaining this pipeline of talent is equally important to bringing in new starters, says Hutchings. Alongside a range of policies, there are wellbeing ambassadors across the business and the company is about to launch a new reward platform.
The industry needs to improve the view of childcare as a career for an ambitious person – it’s not just babysitting.
“We did some analysis and realised we could lose 100 women a year to menopause, so updating our policy on this was important,” she explains. “We wanted to do more than just update our policy, so we partnered with healthcare professionals to provide personalised advice and support for people experiencing menopause symptoms, either themselves or someone else in their home.”
Career support is a central tenet of how Busy Bees ensures its employees thrive. “We’ve done a lot around recruitment and retention but we’re now looking at how we support people to be their best today,” she says.
“This is all about talent development, internal pipelining and leadership development. A key part of retention is whether employees have a career pathway rather than getting them to Level 3 and saying ‘off you go’. Our global mobility also helps us to stand apart.”
And because Busy Bees operates globally, employees have the opportunity to use their skills in different settings across the world.
Every year the company runs its annual international talent exchange programme in Canada, where groups from different countries spend three weeks working in local nurseries and exploring the latest global trends in early years care.
Engagement model
Since she joined the business, Hutchings has revised the HR operating model so there are people and culture business partners who work alongside settings to ensure they have an engagement plan.
This strategy is already bearing fruit. In Busy Bees’ most recent employee survey, its engagement score was 74% (up from 67% in 2022) and participation in the survey was a high 84%.
With challenges still ahead regarding how providers will meet increased demands and cover the extra hours, there is no room for complacency, however.
Tactical moves such as offering joining bonuses in spots where there is a particular need will still need to be part of the strategy, she believes.
“We’ve been working on how many more people we’ll need since the policy was announced and the government campaign is welcome. We’ve improved pay as much as we can and overhauled our benefits.
“We aim to offer a human approach to HR and how we manage people, and make their experience better. We have people here working right up to their 80s, and they’re great role models for our children.”
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
Education sector HR roles on Personnel Today
Browse more HR jobs in education
