It’s no secret that many Early Education Providers are suffering from an ample shortage of early learning staff. As it stands, there are currently over 8,900 Educator positions being advertised on Seek across the country.

Jobs data indicates the staffing shortage is likely to get worse – do you have a solution in place?

Perhaps it’s time to embrace technological advances and outsourced solutions to support your team and reduce their administrative workload. Allow them to get on with what they do best, and build a team of experienced administrators around you to assist with the day-to-day tasks.

Here our team discuss some of the administrative activities that often consume your time and how we can help to easily reduce their impact on you and your team.

 

1. Answering enquiry calls and emails

Answering and responding to the unrelenting influx of weekly enquiry calls and emails can be a demanding task. On average, it takes 16+ points of contact to convert a new enquiry into a confirmed enrolment – and not all enquiries will eventuate into a centre tour or enrolment as families like to shop around.

It’s time to focus your precious (and limited) time and energy on real enrolment prospects and leave the triaging of new enquiries and answering of questions to a specialised team. Our Enquiry Management teams work in partnership with you as part of your existing centre team to answer ALL your enquiries, connect with your potential new families and convert their enquiries to centre tours – so you only need to focus your energy on those Families that have a real potential to enrol.

With competition increasing, and the average enrolment equating to over $12,000 per year, it’s not an option to let any enquiry fall through the cracks.

 

2. Re-enrolling your families for 2024

The 2023 re-enrolment period is upon us – and with that, comes an intense amount of administration work. Re-enrolling families each year and back-filling those newly created positions is a big process and can also place a huge strain on your centre team and their time.

If you’re looking for an easier way to re-enrol your families for 2024 – we’re here to help. Forming part of your centre team, we can help you:

• Capture your families’ requirements and plot your 2024 rolls – taking into consideration all requested enrolment changes and new sibling enrolments
• Work with your team to transition children, including sending confirmation emails to families
• Constantly communicate with your waitlisted families to fill any newly created positions quickly
• Ensure all families complete a new CWA to ensure you are compliant

This is the perfect example of working smarter, not harder – so what are you waiting for? Touch base with our team today.

 

3. Collating and filing enrolment paperwork

Managing records, incident forms, enrolment paperwork, CWA’s, and attendance – there’s no getting around it, running a Childcare Centre and managing family enrolments comes with a lot of necessary paperwork. It’s time to embrace technological advances and outsourced solutions to reduce your administration burden. As your personal administration team, Enrolment Hub can help to:

• Capture and audit your attendance – rectifying any submission discrepancies that come up
• Enter and file new enrolment form data into your CCMS
• Make changes to any booking, sending a confirmation of the changed enrolment to you and the family
• Walk families through the process of applying for CCS or ACCS to alleviate pressure from your team
• Work with you to ensure the correct information is provided for ACCS and Inclusion Support Subsidy requests to guarantee they are not rejected

 

4. Answering account queries and questions

Child Care Subsidy (CCS) entitlements can be confusing for families – and they will often have questions as their entitlements change. The investigation into discrepancies alone can sometimes take days, so answering account queries and questions is a great task to outsource to an experienced team.

And while you’re at it – why not task this team with managing your debt ledger and fee recovery? Working as your internal Accounts Managers, our Accounts Team will work with families to follow up on overdue fees, develop, and most importantly, maintain family payment plans including collecting manual payments.

 

Looking to the future

To ensure that you have the time (and energy) to nurture relationships with your enrolled families (as well as team members), it’s important to remove tasks from your plate that do not require your special set of skills to complete, things you don’t like doing, or things that someone else could do better.

Looking to the future, decentralisation is going to be the key to success for many Operators and Centre Managers. Outsourcing key business operations (such as Administration Support and Enquiry Management or Debt Management) will allow businesses to thrive into the future.

Why not give us a call here and see how we can help you?

Share