Being a manager in September ... from the owner

[purplewednesday1]

So, this week in our meeting we talked about the following things:

• We reviewed the job descriptions of staff who had taken on new responsibilities and discussed the outcome of meetings the manager had had with them
• We discussed content of staff training evening to be delivered jointly by owner and manager - owner (me!) will deliver first part of training to help staff understand how the age/stage assessments they make of children impact on the 'in-depth' analysis that is carried out by senior staff in terms of cohort tracking.The manager will present the second half of the training which will be about how she wants the observation carried out and what constitutes a 'good' observation
• We followed up on previous conversations regarding safeguarding to ensure that all actions agreed had been completed.
• We began to discuss our plans for the nursery garden - in case any works need to be planned during the Autumn or Spring terms

New staff are settling into their new rooms and roles - we have agreed to start observations in rooms after October half term to allow all staff to get to know their new children, to settle into the new room routines and to build strong relationships with their key children and their families.

[Mouseketeer]

this all sounds great ....but how do you get 22 staff together for a weekly staff meeting, I had enough trouble getting 6 in at the same time over 7 weeks ! and the thought of what that must cost you :-/

[purplewednesday1]

this all sounds great ....but how do you get 22 staff together for a weekly staff meeting, I had enough trouble getting 6 in at the same time over 7 weeks ! and the thought of what that must cost you :-/

Not a meeting weekly. We have one meeting a month and it alternates between staff meeting and staff training evening. It is contracted that staff attend unless they have attended other twilight training that month. The meetings are unpaid - but we (as a staff) agreed that they would rather attend unpaid but have time paid during the nursery day to to their planning, assessments etc, we also pay staff when they have release time to talk to their assessors if they are doing training, we also have paid breaks during the day and I also pay out of the nursery budget for staff to attend any training they want to and it is written off pro rate in subsequent years whilst the training remains up to date. So, for example, if a member of staff wanted to do a course that cost £250 and it would benefit the nursery I would pay for it and write it off over 3 years or 5 years, depending on what it was.

[Mouseketeer]

ah i presumed from the 'this week' that you did weekly, so if they work say 28 hrs a week you pay 30 hrs say and they'd stay at work to do paperwork for an extra 2 hrs we have to give time during the working day for 'journal' time which isn't to bad at this time of year but does get harder as we go through the year, wonder if I can persuade them it would make sense to do this.

[purplewednesday1]

No, I meet my manager every week so she can 'sound me out' on ideas she has had - I also help her with staff CPD - I do regular staff observations and support her to do her job - having been the manager myself for many years I know how hard it is and as the owner I totally 'get' that sometimes you can't 'see the wood for the trees' and sometimes you need someone to have a moan at - when she does need a moan I'm in the lucky position to be able to take some of the work load off her if there is something more pressing that is taking her attention. I'm lucky, she and I are a good team.

[Mouseketeer]

We are committee run, the chair hasn't even put her head in the door to see how things are since her child moved to school in July :-(

[purplewednesday1]

We are committee run, the chair hasn't even put her head in the door to see how things are since her child moved to school in July :-(

That makes me sad. Although as privately owned we have our own problems but at least as the owner I have a financial interest in making sure the nursery is as good as it possibly can be. I can't imagine not knowing what's going on - I'd go crackers!

[purplewednesday1]

So this week's conversation was interesting - my manager had been to the 30 hours funding meeting with the LA. We're not a pilot area but are in the 'early innovators' group. She was asked if she wanted to sign up to a company that would help with business plans etc for implementing the 30 hours. She felt quite strongly that there was 'hard sell' by the company that were very much of the 'well, if you don't make this work for your parents they'll take their children elsewhere and then you'll lose any money you would have got anyway' - Needless to say she took a very dim view of this ... which is good, she and I are cut from the same cloth I feel!

So, what are we doing at this stage?

We are looking at our fee sheet for this year (the one we're in at the moment which we carefully calculated based on actual costs to us) and we're substituting the predicted hourly rate for the 30 hours in to see what happens to our figures - that will identify for us sessions during the week where the shortfall is too much to manage (so those sessions couldn't be offered) and also sessions where we might have some wiggle room for putting fewer staff on - as we are always have more staff that we need to save some money - this could be at the end of the day maybe when we're doing quieter, table-top activities anyway. I'm not sure what this analysis will throw up .... watch this space!