Managing a childcare centre comes with a huge amount of responsibility — not only are you running a business, but you’re being tasked with the difficult job of keeping clients’ children safe and happy.
As a childcare centre manager, you need both excellent soft skills and hard skills to ensure your business keeps running smoothly.
Here are 5 key skills any childcare centre manager should possess:
Communication Skills
First and foremost, if you’re responsible for running a childcare centre, your communication skills need to be second to none.
Not only do you need to communicate effectively with your team, but you also need to communicate in a way that means parents and guardians are completely comfortable leaving their little ones with you.
It’s vital to communicate openly and often with both your team and your clients to ensure that everyone involved feels comfortable being honest with you, and providing useful feedback without hesitation.
Technical Knowledge
Childcare and technology didn’t always go hand in hand. However, as technology has developed at breakneck speed, the industry has adapted alongside it.
Through the use of software and apps, childcare centre managers are now able to minimise the time that they and their team would have previously spent on tedious admin tasks. What’s more, the use of organisational and workflow tech tools mean that fewer mistakes are made due to human error.
This means that modern childcare centre managers need to have the tech skills and abilities that will allow them to implement any new software or app features that will boost their business.
Organisational Skills
This one goes without saying: when you’re trying to run an organisation full of staff, children, and parents, you need to be one step ahead at all times.
Organisational skills and attention to detail are an absolute must. If your organisational systems begin to fall apart, staff and customers will lose trust in you, and the bottom line could take a hit.
It doesn’t matter whether you use a ready-made childcare management software, or you’ve devised your own system, as long as it works for you.
Leadership Skills
If you run a childcare centre, you don’t need us to tell you that childcare can be a seriously tough job.
There are plenty of rewarding moments too, but at times your staff will be stressed and at the end of their tether. When this happens, they’re going to need to lean on you for support and guidance.
As a centre manager, you need to know when to push your staff to achieve more, how to develop your team, and when to simply be a strong support for them.
Business Management Skills
Then there’s the business side of things. Budgeting and forecasting. Recruitment. Complying with various regulations. Marketing and PR. Engaging suppliers. Maintaining records.
These are all skills that can easily be learned through college and university courses, as well as on the job, but it takes effort and tenacity to put them into action when you have a business to run.
For more information on how Kidsoft can help you manage your centre, reach out to us to book a demo.
