The Easiest Way To Overcome Center Director /Administrator Office Issues

Have you ever hired someone to help you work your front desk systems, and come to find out, that was the worst decision you’ve ever made? Are you currently facing challenges with your current childcare center director?

You like her as a person. You even like the things that she does for your company overall, but she just can’t seem to get organized to get things together for you in a systematic way. Guess what. In today’s blog post, I want to share with you a few ways on how I’ve overcome challenges with my childcare center director.

Here’s a bit of history about me as a childcare business owner. I’ve owned and operated my own childcare business since I was 21 years old. I’ve never had a director or anyone to assist me with front office tasks. I’ve always done those things all by myself.

As my expertise and skill began to grow and I was ready to take my business to the next level, I realized that if I was going to grow and take my business to the next level, I needed to step up to the plate and become a better boss. Many of you face that challenge, as well. It’s pretty easy for you to manage your front office, and sometimes, it’s less hectic to have everything under your control and that you’re in control of everything that happens in your childcare business.

Then at the end of the day, sometimes not having an administrator or an assistant director will hold you back from growing your business and taking it to the next level. This is what I want to talk to you guys about. When I hired a center director, someone to help me with the front office tasks, it enabled me to really take my business to the next level and to succeed in levels that I never thought was possible.

As I began to coach more childcare business owners around the world, I realized that I couldn’t continue operating in one capacity. I had to relinquish the level of a center director so that I could spread my wings and grow more. As a matter of fact, during this time, my nanny agency and my published book had me traveling all around the world, so I needed someone that could help me manage the childcare business that I loved.

When I hired my center director, things were going very well. I used one of my special kits, which is called Hiring and Retaining the Right Early Childhood Director. By doing so, it enabled me to train someone to take my place so that I could focus on more ways to create wealth in my business. Even if you don’t become a coach or travel around the world, having someone in that role will help you focus on more important things to create more wealth in your business.

Lo and behold, I received one of the greatest directors I’ve ever had on my team. She’s been with me for a long while. Having someone with me for a long while does not mean that I didn’t face challenges. These challenges can be overcome. I want to talk to you about how to overcome them in your childcare business.

Along the journey, things began to get really busy for us. Not only did I start coaching more, writing more books, and traveling around the world, I opened up another childcare location. By opening up another childcare location, I had to hire her an assistant, and I also had to hire another front desk person for my second childcare location. That gave her more responsibility, and our brand truly began to grow. We would maintain full enrollment at our locations, and it took having a strong director to help me to do it all.

One challenge that we began to face in our organization was skipping important processes. Could you imagine your phone ringing 50 to 60 times a day, having over 150 parents and children that you tend to every single day, over 35 staff members, school bus runs, food prep, food inventory, classrooms, and all the other things that come along with childcare? Can you imagine having all of that coming at you at one time? Then you have a boss that travels all over the world and is very needy, as well.

 

My center director had all of that coming at her at one time in any given day. I used to remind her all the time, “You cannot afford to drop the ball.” When I tell you what the term ‘drop the ball’ means, you’ll really understand why I would tell my director that. We would deal with things such as children starting without proper orientation. She would sometimes extend services and deals that were expired, and so we sort of ran into a conflict because I didn’t have the right systems in place to keep her current and up to date. I refused to let these challenges stop us.

Then we began to face challenges such as slow payments from parents and financial mismanagement. These things began to take a toll on our relationship as boss and director. I really required so much from her until she said it was just impossible to keep up with it all, especially with two locations. I said, “You know what? I know better. I know there are certain systems I need to put in place.”

I put certain systems in place using my all-new enrollment tracker system. The enrollment tracker system is one of the easiest ways that I’ve used to help monitor my front desk activity, my enrollment, and every single aspect of my business that requires my attention and my input to operate my business more like a CEO. By putting this enrollment tracker in place, it alleviated my director from being responsible for the information and for the activity that took place in my business.

I really wanted to know how many people called my organization and how many people enrolled in my organization every single day. By having the right tracking systems in place, I alleviated confronting her about the information to being able to review information. It was a great task for her because she was able to, then, become more accountable for how many children were enrolled, what enrollment rate was utilized in our business, and she was also able to stay current with our marketing efforts and trends.

By doing so, this helped to alleviate her skipping important processes. Before parents could tour my facility, they had to fill out what we call our parent information cards. That way, I had information that I could track and follow up with clients just in case she wasn’t able to close the deal at that particular time.

As you can tell, by implementing better tools and more systems in my childcare business, it truly helped me to have a relationship with my director that was successful so that she and I could correlate information and meet my company goals and objectives. Since then, she’s become more accountable for her actions as the director because now we have a system in place that is a daily accountability system that helps me manage my front desk and admin team, plus it provides me with a daily report so that I can take that information and make better business decisions.

I’m only writing this blog post so that you can see that sometimes, not having the right tools and the right systems can hold you back from having your director produce and perform on a better level. I would definitely love to see you implement the enrollment tracker system in your childcare business. You can find out more about this tracking system by logging on right now to www.theenrollmenttracker.com.

Until next time, leave your comments below, and let me know how things are happening with you and your center director.