A child care centre is trusted with the youngest children for long hours. Here is how to select, train, roster and keep the caregivers and teachers that parents rely on.
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Share your requirementsA creche, day care or preschool-style child care centre looks after babies, toddlers and young children while their parents work, often from early morning until evening and through much of the year. The team includes caregivers, teachers or facilitators, helpers, a cook, drivers or attendants if there is transport, and a centre head who deals with parents. Children need constant, attentive supervision, with enough adults present at every hour, including during meals, toilet breaks and the hand-over at either end of the day. Parents judge the centre on whether they trust the adults who hold their child. See also HR for education. What marks HR out here is that trust is the product. Careful selection, clear conduct expectations, honest rostering so that cover is never thin and training in how to handle young children make the centre safe, and keep the people who do tiring, modestly paid work from drifting away.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Helpers are taken on by recommendation and put with children after little checking of background or temperament.
Early arrivals, late pick-ups, meal times and sick children mean fewer adults at the moments when it matters.
How to handle a crying child, a biting incident or a parent's complaint is passed on by example, so practice differs between people.
Caregivers spend long hours on their feet, are paid little for it and leave when a school or another centre offers slightly more.
Basic first aid, hygiene, nap and feeding routines and child development are not taught in a structured way.
A message to the centre head leads to a hurried reply, with no record of what was said or agreed.
Staff catch what the children carry, and leave rules are unclear when many are away together.
Intake peaks at the start of a term and falls away at holidays, so the number of staff needed moves.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Recruitment and Talent Acquisition; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for education, not in general.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a creches and day care centres business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Structured interviews, identity and reference checks and a trial period with close supervision before a caregiver is alone with a group.
What this coversHideStructured interviews, identity and reference checks and a trial period with close supervision before a caregiver is alone with a group. The recruitment process sets the steps.
How adults speak to and handle children, what is not acceptable and how concerns are raised, explained in induction and signed.
What this coversHideHow adults speak to and handle children, what is not acceptable and how concerns are raised, explained in induction and signed. The HR policies hold them.
A rota that shows who is with the children at opening, meals, naps and closing, with named relievers.
What this coversHideA rota that shows who is with the children at opening, meals, naps and closing, with named relievers. The attendance, shift and leave process covers it.
Hygiene, feeding, naps, toileting, first aid and handling a distressed child, taught and refreshed.
What this coversHideHygiene, feeding, naps, toileting, first aid and handling a distressed child, taught and refreshed. The learning and development process holds the plan.
A simple log of the concern, who replied and what was agreed, reviewed by the head.
What this coversHideA simple log of the concern, who replied and what was agreed, reviewed by the head. Communication skills helps staff handle the conversation.
Staffing sized to each term's intake, with agreed terms for seasonal and part-time helpers.
What this coversHideStaffing sized to each term's intake, with agreed terms for seasonal and part-time helpers.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A checked, structured way to choose caregivers before they are alone with children.
Written conduct expectations and a route for raising concerns, explained to every adult.
A rota that keeps enough adults with the children at every hour.
Taught and refreshed routines for hygiene, feeding, first aid and early-years practice.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in education, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Faculty, administrative and support staff leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it within the academic calendar.
7 min readRead article
Candidates who accept and never arrive are usually lost in the silence between offer and joining. What actually causes it, and a contact plan that closes the gap.
8 min readRead article
A laminated notice, an annual drill, and an incident register with three entries in two years. What workplace health and safety looks like when it is real.
7 min readRead article
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
With a structured interview, identity and verified reference checks, a supervised trial and a conversation about attitude to children. Confirm which checks apply to you with a qualified professional.
Plan the rota by time of day, not just by shift, and keep named relievers for sickness. Check the thin moments such as opening, meals and closing.
How adults speak to and handle children, what is never acceptable, how to deal with distress and how to raise a worry about a colleague. Explain them in induction and revisit them.
Pay on time, give rest and sensible hours, recognise good work and show a step to senior caregiver or facilitator. Respect and a path count for a great deal.
Hygiene, feeding and nap routines, first aid, handling a distressed child and basic child development. Which certificates are needed depends on your centre, so confirm that with a qualified professional.
Listen, record what was said, reply within a stated time and note what was agreed. A written trail protects the parent, the child and the staff member.
Size the team to each term's intake, keep a list of trained part-time helpers and agree their terms in advance.
The conversation would cover how caregivers are selected before they are alone with children, when the adults are thinnest across the day, and how parent concerns get recorded. A useful first piece of work is a written conduct expectation and a half-hourly roster for the centre. Scope is agreed in writing afterwards, so you can decide what to take up.
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