Nursery Chains: Award Winners - Looking to the future

With almost two decades of running a multimillion-pound childcare business behind her, chief executive officer of Kids Allowed Jennie Johnson is turning her thoughts to the more altruistic side of the business. The family-owned, Manchester-based group, which has won the prestigious Nursery Group of the Year award for the second time in three years at the Nursery WorldAwards, has not only started a targeted campaign to attract elder volunteers to the workforce but has also committed to removing all single-use plastics by 2020.

‘I’ve had a few wake-up calls over the past couple of years,’ Ms Johnson says. ‘Firstly, the passing of my mother-in-law, who used to volunteer in the baby room for Kids Allowed, prompted me to reflect on how we could further engage more with the older generation as I saw how it benefited both her and the team, as well as babies in the room. And secondly, after realising that each year we poured about 7,500kg of glitter down the sink and every day we threw away, on average, 1,500 plastic yogurt pots, one for each child, I decided to take a close look at how we could become more sustainable.’