High staff turnover at nursery - is this normal?

[hilbobaggins]

I'd be really grateful for others experience of this. DS is 22 months so in baby room. He has been at nursery since last September and has settled in well so that's good - I'm just surprised at how often the staff seem to leave. Since DS started, the manager and 4 out of 6 of the baby room staff have left. Today my DS's keyworker told me that she's leaving too which upset me because DS is so attached to her. The nursery came under new ownership about 3 months ago and has a new manager and I'm wondering of that has something to do with the high turnover.

I have met one of the replacements and she seems nice. I guess I'm just a bit worried about impact this constant staff churn will have on DS (if any) and if I should be doing something (not quite sure what) about it - it doesn't seem like a very stable environment for the babies, but perhaps this is normal in nurseries? I come from a commercial environment and in my experience constantly losing staff really isn't a good sign.

[MexicanSpringtime]

I'm not an expert on nurseries, but I agree that it is not a good sign to me either.

I am also of the opinion that organisations acquire the personality of the person at the head. I worked in a number of schools as a supply teacher and found that the school that had decent ethical head teachers were the schools that had very little bullying and lovely children and vice versa. I chose my daughter's primary school on that basis and have never regretted it.

[fledermaus]

I think it is normal in poorly managed nurseries with poorly paid/trained staff to be honest - they end up using lots of cheap trainees who move on supply staff, and the good staff leave as soon as something better comes along. Are the staff generally very young too?

In contrast my oldest's nursery baby room, one person had been there almost 10 years and the other even longer than that.

[hilbobaggins]

Thanks for replying, I appreciate it. Some, though not all, of the staff are pretty young. I suspect you're right fledermaus, that they're underpaid and undertrained and using this nursery as a springboard to something better. I'm pretty bummed out by this, and by the lack of communication / explanation by the nursery manager. I might have a look around at other options in our area. Just feel sad for DS as I thought we'd found somewhere he could stay until school but I really don't like this never ending run of new faces!

[TiggyD]

Yes, it's perfectly normal. Most nurseries are not great so you get high turnover. They probably have mostly minimum wage staff and lots of apprentices on about £2.60. Until people start paying for quality nurseries, or they start to get subsidies, it's what they'll stay like.

[nurserychain]

Apart from staff moving on to better positions, the thing to bear in mind with nurseries is that the staff who work in them love children so as a result turnover tends to be high due to pregnancy.

Staff turnover in your nursery may be high lately if you have a new manager and management because perhaps they are finding things wrong with the staff that are leaving. If staff aren't doing their job such as observations/ reports etc and the new management are applying pressure to make sure they do do them correctly in case ofsted stops by, I've seen this as leading to staff leaving as they literally cannot fulfil the job role they are supposed to. So whilst it may look bad that staff are leaving, it may actually be that management are trying to ensure they have the best staff to help your child. Just playing devils advocate...

[TiggyD]

Yup. Good staff leaving = bad. Bad staff leaving = good.

[adsy]

Use a childminder. Theres no staff turnover then!