Effective staff attendance and absence management is essential for any busy nursery setting or organisation. First and foremost are your daily staff numbers. Who is on holiday, sick leave or is this a sudden, unexpected staff absence? As your doors open first thing in the morning, you must instantly know your staff numbers for the day. This allows you to quickly calculate if your staff to child ratios are as expected for each of your nursery rooms. In the event of absences, any available staff can possibly be temporarily moved to other rooms or transferred from another setting if required.
Instant attendance tracking isn’t easy in a very busy nursery with a spreadsheet template or paper-based system. It’s very difficult to track and monitor, and important data to assist you, your staff and business can often be missed.
This is where the INM Staff Attendance function can provide numerous benefits for busy nursery manages and owners. As with all other functions in your Interactive Nursery Manager, this is included in your system package at no additional charge.
Apart from a staff member being absent from work, there are of course other important aspects of your business to be considered. As your staff attendance data is automatically linked to payroll, this ensures that actual hours worked and payable are accurately logged and there is less confusion with salary payments. As you know, annual or sickness leave, hours in lieu, additional training hours, medical appointments etc are just some examples of how a staff member’s paid working hours can fluctuate monthly.
Another important consideration is staff health and mental wellbeing. If a pattern of regular lateness or absence is identified, this presents an opportunity to provide assistance and support to help them.
In a busy nursery, tracking staff movement in real time can help to improve productivity management and quality of childcare in your setting. How much time are staff spending in different parts of the nursery? If required, it can also assist you with performance discussions, improvements, and staff annual assessments.
Apart from children, staff and parents accessing your nursery setting, you will occasionally have visitors entering the building. In the best interests of health and safety, visitor details can also be registered in the system. Who they visited and purpose of visit, time they entered and left the building etc.
This very important and essential information will assist you to evacuate the building quickly and safely in the event of an emergency. Your staff attendance function will display exactly where all occupants are located to ensure that everyone is safe and have successfully left the building.