Q: How flexible is your setting?
'My setting is very new - we have only been open for six weeks, and we feel that we have to be flexible to attract parents. There are probably ten other nurseries within five miles of our setting, so there is a lot of competition.'
'At the beginning of the year we decided to start offering shorter days to parents, instead of just the standard morning or afternoon sessions or the full-time hours that we were offering before. The shorter day option has proved popular with parents, but I have to say that it is not as profitable for us.'
'A lot of our parents want childcare for around 16 hours to fit in with the childcare element of the Working Tax Credit, so we have been trying to develop our service around that.'
'We are flexible to a degree. However, we had to change things slightly as we found that we would be full in the mornings but that no-one wanted to put their children in for the afternoons.'
'We aren't flexible. It's all about supply and demand at the end of the day! In our towns, demand outweighs supply. However, if it was the other way round, being flexible would be a great way to attract and retain parents.
'At the end of the day, you are running a business, and you need to know exactly how much you are bringing into your business on a monthly basis. If being flexible is having a negative effect on your business, don't do it! However, if it is your unique selling point and it brings people into your nursery, go for it!'
'We only offer half-day or full-day sessions to parents. We have had a lot of enquiries from parents who only want to take up the free entitlement, but we do not offer that here because we cannot fit it in with our ratios.'
'We offer flexi-time, whereby we block out a full-time place for a child but we charge the parents a minimum of 21 hours, even if they don't use them, which ensures we actually get something back for holding a full-time place.
'Some weeks the children may only attend for one morning but then the following week the child could attend full-time. We offer a multitude of different sessions, including drop-in sessions, school days, full-time, morning sessions, and one-hour sessions.'
'Our setting is very flexible. We offer all ranges of schedules and there is no restriction on the number of hours that a child can attend for. If a parent only wants one day a week that is fine, although we do keep in mind what will benefit the child. We are open from 7am to 7pm from Monday to Friday. We offer full days, half days, drop-in sessions for parents who want occasional extra days, and an after-school club and holiday club, which is helpful when the children have older siblings. We also work with a babysitting agency who can pick children up from the nursery and continue the care at home, or who can look after the child when he or she is sick and cannot attend nursery.'
'Our setting is part of the 15-hour free entitlement pilot scheme, so we have an obligation to try to be flexible. We ask parents what they are looking for and then see if we can fit around that. However, we have a handful of parents who think this means that they can stipulate exactly what hours they want - for example, they will tell us they want one hour one day and then two hours the next. We have to explain to them that it does not work like that, because we are running a business and we have overheads to meet.'
Q: What are the benefits of offering a flexible service to parents?
'Some parents have enrolled their children at our setting because their previous nursery was not flexible, so it is definitely a selling point for us.'
'We do benefit from offering parents flexibility. For example, there are two primary schools with nursery classes attached close to our setting but they only offer morning sessions, so we get a lot of business from parents who work full-time and don't want to have to move their child around.'
'I believe we are the most flexible nursery in our area, and our flexi-time option is definitely our unique selling point. It's difficult and it can be frustrating to do, but it's not unmanageable. However, it also means we will never be fully occupied.'
'Flexibility is a great selling point for us. It gives parents peace of mind, because they know we will try to help them as much as possible. It means that parents are less stressed, and the children are happy and content as well.'
'I think that providing a flexible service can have benefits for the children. For example, about 30 per cent of our children attend for just the 15-hour free entitlement. These children tend to come from deprived areas and we do notice that the children make progress while they are with us.'
Q: What are the drawbacks?
'Being flexible does have its disadvantages, so we are trying to get the balance right. At the moment we have a couple of parents whose children attend the nursery on Tuesdays and Wednesdays one week but Thursdays and Fridays the following week. However, once the number of children at nursery starts to grow, this could mean they are taking places that full-time children may have had.'
'Flexibility can mean that staff ratios become complicated, so we have invested in software that helps us to forecast how many children will be coming in and when. It will also help us with invoicing.'
'It can get quite complicated with staff ratios, but we do have quite a few part-time members of staff and so we try to use those members of staff to cover the times when parents want flexibility. It can get quite complicated when drawing up rotas, but we have some software that helps with this.'
'Working out the staffing arrangements can be a nightmare, but when you have been doing it for a long time it gets easier. The senior staff members work out their own rota for their room, which I then transfer to my master copy. We ask for parents to provide us with their schedule one month in advance.'
'Some days are much quieter in the nursery, but that has never been a major issue. It balances out with parents who want occasional extra days here and there. Sometimes it is difficult for the staff, who work on a shift system - no-one ever wants to work the late shift!'
AN EXPERT'S VIEW
Anna Hanks, managing director of CJ Associates Training
So how flexible is flexible? With the Government urging settings to implement a 'flexible offer' for the 15-hour entitlement, it is often hard to know where to draw the line when trying to offer flexible childcare.
Traditionally, full day-care settings have always managed to offer a more flexible approach, as they are not so tightly bound by 'session' times, with children able to attend full or half days or a mixture of the two. However, it is often hard to juggle the varying needs of parents with issues such as staff ratios and rotas.
A good starting point would be to survey parents to find out exactly what sort of flexibility they would need, for example due to varying shift patterns. If parents accessing your setting seem to need part-time places rather than full-time, then these could be pieced together to make up a fulltime place.
The danger lies where settings, especially those just opening, offer a variety of days and hours - then, when places become more in demand, they find themselves with parts of the week that they cannot fill and have to turn away parents wanting full-time places. The most important thing is to remember that you are running a business and have to maximise your occupancy wherever possible. So how can this balance with being flexible and meeting parents needs?
Some things to consider would be:
- Investing in a good nursery management system, which would enable both occupancy and staffing levels to be seen at a glance.
- Operating a two-tier charging system, with full-time and regular places being at a cheaper rate than ad hoc places. You could make it clear that you are happy to offer ad hoc places but only if there are places available within staffing levels.
- If there is a high demand for term-time or school hours places, could you employ some part-time staff to cover these hours? Is there a demand for after-school care in you area that could match these school hours places?
Whatever you decide is the best thing for your setting, make sure your policy on offering flexible places is clear and consistent. For example, if you were offering flexible places for the first six months of opening to encourage parents in, make sure you make this clear to parents that this offer will have to be revised as occupancy increases.
As a parent, I greatly appreciate my daughter's nursery being flexible. I am sure that the fact that they have the best reputation in the local area is due in some part to their flexible attitude to parents!