The service where educators are encouraged to spread their wings, even if it means going elsewhere

Community Child Care Association (CCC) recently sat down with members Angie Serwecinska and Natasha Nolan Addison, Monash Children’s Centre (MCC) co-directors with a successful sixteen-year working relationship under their belts. 

At a time when many services are capping enrolments due to staff shortages, Angie and Natasha share an unconventional approach to managing and retaining staff at their 100+ place service, which is consistently rated Exceeding in all seven quality areas.

Amid chronic staff shortages across the sector, Angie and Natasha maintain a steadfast ‘hold on tightly, let go lightly’ approach to staffing. 

“I think some services see staff retention as how do I keep people as long as possible?” Angie began.

“We don’t want to keep people as long as possible – we want to keep people as long as there is mutual interest.” 

MCC applies the same standards to new staff. When Angie and Natasha recruit for educators they invite shortlisted applicants to spend some time at the centre. 

Natasha explains; “The rationale behind this is for us to be able to gather feedback from our teams, but also to provide feedback to applicants and ensure that our centre is a place where they can be happy and grow.”

For the co-directors, an emphasis on challenging and growing staff means everyone is encouraged to bring new ideas. 

“It’s about creating those opportunities,” Natasha said. “When they come to us with an idea, we just say ‘Go for it, have a go’.” 

“Failure, success… it doesn’t really matter… we’d rather people have the opportunity to try things.”

Angie has a self-proclaimed thirst for knowledge and is often inspired by new research – but she’ll always put collaboration first. 

“There’s no point pushing our ideas if our staff aren’t interested or excited by them… We take the position of devil’s advocate and spend more time questioning and trying to dig deep and reflect,” she explained.

Trust and providing the opportunity to try new things go hand in hand,she continued. 

It’s really important we have those trusting relationships with our team, because if and when something unfortunate occurs, we want to be able to work through it together with our team, without judgement and remaining proactive and solution-focused. 

Natasha and Angie’s open-door, ‘go try it’ policy applies to staff thinking about professional development, further study, or even changing careers.

“Staff openly tell us, ‘I’m thinking about studying psychology, or nutrition, or my Bachelor in Early Childhood’, and I think because we are so supportive, they don’t hesitate to have these conversations with us. As Natasha has always said, we’d rather have someone good for a year, than someone ordinary for fifty,” Angie explained. 

Natasha recalls some excellent staff leaving for ‘bigger and better things.’

“That’s a feel-good moment because they’re able to go and spread their wings, transferring their learnings and knowledge into other disciplines.”

Ensuring staff leave on a positive note means MCC grows useful networks. 

“For example, we’ve had staff members move to working as lecturers, consultants, social workers, primary teachers, inclusion aids, business owners and more, and we continue to maintain those connections and lean on them for professional development opportunities,” Angie said. 

Angie and Natasha have advocated to their board of directors for study leave for staff and a high professional development budget that includes travel and accommodation for far-off conferences. 

“We do what we can to support the professional growth of our people – this can also include setting up mentor-mentee relationships, particularly with new staff who might be graduates, or in new roles. We see all of this as a vital investment not only in our staff but ultimately to ensure the best outcomes for the children in our care,” Natasha added. 

Reflecting on the balance between supporting and managing, Angie tells us, “Work has to be a good place to go… so we’re in a space that is warm and nurturing. But we do have to balance that with being centre managers because we are running a business employing people and answerable to government bodies and our board of directors.”

Monash Children’s Centre (MCC) is a member of Community Child Care Association (CCC). 

This article was originally published in CCC’s member magazine, Roundtable, and has been reshared here with permission. 

Find out more about CCC membership here.