A summer camp or kids activity centre runs art, sport, dance and craft sessions for children during holidays and weekends. It hires many people for a short season, hands them small children, and is judged by parents on safety, fun and who is in charge.
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Share your requirementsA summer camp or kids activity centre fills its rooms and grounds for a few weeks in the holidays, then runs a smaller weekend programme. The core team is small: an owner or manager, a programme lead and a front desk. For the season, it adds instructors for art, dance, sport, craft and science, plus helpers, drivers and kitchen staff. Many instructors are students, artists and freelancers on short engagements. Children range from toddlers to teenagers, in groups, with different needs. Parents drop off in the morning and expect a safe, happy child in the evening, with photos in between. A single lapse, such as a missing child or a rough remark, spreads on parent groups at once. The pressure is to staff up quickly and still keep every adult accountable. For the wider sector view, read HR for education.
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.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in summer camps and kids activity centres. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
The season starts in a few weeks and a hundred children are enrolled. Instructors are chosen quickly with little checking of their past work with children.
Freelance instructors come for a fortnight on a verbal agreement. Pay, hours and conduct are unclear, and they may not show up on the day.
One helper to a big group at a pool or playground is common. A child wanders off or is hurt and no one can say who was responsible.
Students working as helpers are keen but inexperienced. They handle tantrums, toilet trips and injuries with no briefing.
Photos, messages and instant replies are assumed. Staff who answer on personal phones blur privacy and personal boundaries.
Drivers and attendants handle the handover of children. A wrong pick-up or an unchecked attendance list is a serious failure.
Craft days, water days and the final show all bring crowds. Staff work long hours with no break and get cranky with children.
A brilliant science instructor leaves after the season with his activity plans. Next year starts from zero.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Recruitment and Talent Acquisition; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Onboarding and Probation. 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.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
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.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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 summer camps and kids activity centres business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Interview every adult who will be with children, speak to a referee and record the outcome.
Interview every adult who will be with children, speak to a referee and record the outcome. Consider with a qualified professional what checks suit your centre. See the recruitment process.
Days, hours, pay, duties and conduct with children, with a signed copy on file.
Days, hours, pay, duties and conduct with children, with a signed copy on file. See HR documentation.
Fixed ratios for each activity, a head count at every move and a named adult for each group.
Fixed ratios for each activity, a head count at every move and a named adult for each group. See workplace health, safety and wellbeing.
A one-hour briefing on conduct, toilet trips, injuries, who to call and what not to say to parents.
A one-hour briefing on conduct, toilet trips, injuries, who to call and what not to say to parents. The employee onboarding process can carry it.
Who may take photos, which phone parents are messaged from and what is never shared.
Who may take photos, which phone parents are messaged from and what is never shared. This protects children and staff.
Instructors file their plans, materials list and timing in a shared folder, so good ideas return next season.
Instructors file their plans, materials list and timing in a shared folder, so good ideas return next season.
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.
Faster but careful seasonal hiring with reference checks you can defend.
Ratios, head counts and injury routines that protect children and staff.
A short briefing that gets seasonal staff ready on day one.
Simple written engagements for short-term freelancers.
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.
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How a D2C founder can test a performance marketing hire on real work, ignore weak signals such as dashboard screenshots, and run a fair process.
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A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
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A first-week plan for bringing in an outside specialist: what access to give, how to protect client data, and the confidentiality steps to settle on day one.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Start earlier, shortlist by experience with children, speak to referees and insist on a brief conduct session. Speed is no reason to skip the people who will be alone with children.
The dates, hours, pay, activity, who they report to and conduct rules with children. Confirm wording with your adviser. A one-page note is better than none.
It depends on age and activity. Water, outings and toddlers need more eyes. Decide a ratio for each activity and keep to it.
Use a centre phone or group for updates, avoid private chats with parents and share photos only through agreed channels.
Pay fairly and on time, thank them, record their plans and ask them back early. A short email in the autumn works better than a scramble in March.
We would look at how seasonal staff are chosen and briefed, ratios and head counts and how freelancers are engaged. A sensible first job is a one-page instructor engagement note and a day-one briefing. Wider work is scoped after we speak and agreed in writing before it starts.
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