Create Your Style Guide

Hey you guys, this is your Coach, Dr. Andrea Dickerson here and welcome to our Coaching Blog.

I’ve got a question for you…

Do you own multiple childcare locations, or you’re looking forward to starting multiple childcare locations and you’re ready to create a powerful training program that is a one and done system?

If so, today’s Systems To The Rescue Childcare Boss Blog is going to help you to be empowered to succeed. The reason why I want to empower you to succeed is because most childcare business owners that open up multiple locations, they don’t think about creating systems that will lead them to having a better orientation process.

Your orientation and onboarding is essential to team members knowing how to work effectively in your classrooms and your orientation systems are effective in retaining good staff so to move forward in that direction, one must think about Big Picture Systems.

Big Picture systems are those that will create sustainability for your program and it will create consistency. If you are looking for ways to consistently pass your inspections or sustain your business then one must have what we call style guides.

Style guides empower your business to have proper setup so that your teachers can follow your layout.

So let me explain to you a little bit more in depth and by the way, if you are a visual/audible person, I want to remind you about my all new training that’s coming out called learnnewsystems.com

Learning new systems is essential for you to think differently and do things differently to take your business to the next level.

All right, so let’s talk more about the style guide process. Your style guide should allow you to style your business in such a way that is duplicated throughout all of your locations. For example, inside of the School Of Systems, we have a style guide for our hand washing sinks. Our style guide for our hand washing sinks is for teachers/adults only. And it is for upkeep and ease of use. Plus it prevents us from having write ups that’s unnecessary.

Therefore, in our sink area, we use an acrylic holder. The acrylic holder carries all the consumable essentials such as the vinyl gloves, the Kleenex and a disinfectant. Now based on your State rules, how you place it and the height in which you place it is essential for you to know and in order to implement this system. Therefore, the framework for this system is what I want you to walk away with.

Therefore, by every sink in our classroom, this system is what we use so that all of our teachers can keep our classrooms in compliance if an item is not placed in its proper place upon an inspection or State visit or walkthrough, now I have proper recourse of action to either retrain this staff or find a replacement. Why? Because my business has big picture systems that should prevent my company from having unnecessary write-ups or could prevent my company from having items just set low in the reach of a child.

So now when you go to your second, third or fourth location, and you follow this style guide above each sink, this acrylic container will have your vinyl gloves, napkins and disinfectant. That system will be implemented throughout all of your locations. Furthermore, now you have a foundation to create your orientation around.

So no matter what location that person goes in, they will be able to see that this is your layout for your classroom. Because if they’re in location one or location three above each sink is this big picture system, which is what we call a style guide that they can follow. Now you’re training an individual through orientation and onboarding, how to follow this big picture system, which in turn trickles all the way down to your business not having write-ups and having the proper setup so that team members can follow.

I hope that I’ve given you some content and information that make you think differently about creating a style guide in your business. If so, please be sure to visit us at our Learn new Systems webinar where we’re going to give you more information around big picture systems.

So be sure to click here to sign up today.

And as always, remember, if you manage the childcare business that you love, you will love the childcare business that you manage.

Create Your Style Guide

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