WHAT SYSTEMS DO YOU NEED IN YOUR CHILDCARE?

Policies Needed In Your Handbook

Hiring, personnel records, and performance reviews. How does this impact your employee handbook?

Hey there, Jump Start Boss. This is your coach, Andrea Dickerson.

I’ve got a question for you. Are you looking at your employee handbook and trying to figure out what policies need to be updated and which ones need to be added? If you are, I want to give you my behind the scene secrets that come from my eight-week online coaching program titled Jump Start Academy. In my eight-week coaching program, I give you tons of ways to organize and systemize your processes and procedures.

Today, with your employee handbook in mind, I want to talk to you about your hiring, personnel records, and performance reviews and where they all begin when it comes to your employee handbook. A while ago, I used to be so frustrated with my team. I was frustrated with the fact that I was spending money on Indeed.com. I was doing headhunting, job fairs, referrals, and ads. If there was something to be done, I did it, but then I had to take a moment and deal with the results of what I was doing.

During my time of reflection, I began to see how inconsistent I really was with my hiring process and how those policies weren’t documented in any of my procedures. Even if I walked away from my childcare and one of my directors was to find someone that they felt would become a great asset to the team, there was no SOP in place to show them how to bring those team members on. I want you to take a moment and look at your employee handbook. Now, determine if you have your hiring procedures, procedures for your personnel records, or your performance review procedures located inside of your employee handbook.

Let me first clear this up. Employee handbooks are to be a guide to your employees. Of course, we want to deal with the preliminary basic policies, but it should also have procedures available for your team. Now, in this blog, we want to discuss your policies not as much as your procedures.

What is your hiring policy?
What are your policies surrounding your personnel records?
What are your policies surrounding your performance reviews?

When I ask myself these questions, I look at the struggle that I had with securing top-notch teachers. I realized that this was a time for reflection. During this time of reflection, I began to ponder. Do I have my hiring procedures clearly written out or am I just hiring the first person because I’m desperate? Do I have my personnel policies written out clearly as far as how we are to handle and manage our personnel records? Then my next question was, now that I’ve seen that my performance reviews are located in my handbook, is this something that I really have systemized as a part of my daily activities, my schedule for my team, and a part of my company culture? Many childcare business owners struggle with this because they haven’t created a company culture that supports their hiring, personnel records, and performance reviews.

These tasks that are located within your handbook must have policies around how will you hire, when will you hire, and who will you hire.

Policies around your personnel records

What is required in your personnel records? How often do you go through your personnel records? What happens when an employee has documents that are required in their personnel records? Who has access to those personnel records?

Performance reviews

Are your policies clearly written on the performance standards that you’re going to look for in your team? Are your policies clearly written concerning your performance review requirements and expectations for their work within the classrooms?

These things should be clearly listed in your employee handbook as a company policy. If it is your company policy that you are to review your employees’ performance and when this performance will be noted, it is important that this policy is included in your handbook. When I realized my handbook wasn’t thorough enough, I began to add these things within my handbook. I also provided my handbook as a part of my Jump Start Acadamy and Jump Start Blueprint Course programs so that anyone wanting to know how these policies are to look within their handbook, they would have a template. I look forward to working with you and helping you create these type policies in your employee handbook.

If your employee handbook is completely template-based, then you definitely should contact me for a 15-minute Q&A so that I can help you clarify if I’ll be the right coach to help you systematically put custom systems in place for your childcare business. I look forward to you going back into your office, pulling out your employee handbook, and determining whether or not you have policies that coincide with your expectations for hiring, personnel records, and performance reviews. To work with me one on one, click here.