"I hope your holidays are wonderful......but I need you
to work until 6:00 on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve." Ouch.
Unfortunately, since we have parents who sometimes have to work those
hours, we sometimes need to as well. The
question becomes how to balance out the needs of the parents with the needs (
or desires) of staff.
Hopefully, your contract with your parents already indicates
the days and/or times that you will be closed, such as Christmas Day, Christmas
Eve after 3:00, etc. You may have
contracted with parents to remain open until 6:00 on Christmas Eve, but if only
3 children will be in care from noon to 6:00, you certainly won't want to staff
as if it were a regular day. Determining
which children will be in care at that time will enable you to staff
appropriately.
The simplest way to
figure out which parents will actually want to use your services during the
typically slow times is to provide them with a survey. Just ask which children will be in care
during what times. (Of course, if you
don't already have that survey created, we have one for you!) You then know how many employees you will
need to have on-site during those times. For the record, I have never had a
parent complain about the survey, as long as they understand that I am planning
to provide care for my entire contracted time, as needed.
Ideally, your staff will have already turned in their time
off requests, or somehow communicated with you if they would prefer to have the
hours during the holidays or if they would prefer to have the time off work. With a little luck, you can match up the
needs with the parents with the needs and desires of staff and make as many
people happy over the holidays as possible.
Of course, as during any time when a lot of parents are off
for vacations, you will probably need to have that discussion about child care
fees during vacations, but that is a discussion for another time for me.
Merry Christmas!
Misty
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