In your business, you’re entrusted with people’s most prized possessions – their children. As a childcare facility, you must build trust and loyalty with your customers to get them to keep coming back. One way to build trust and loyalty is through transparency.
Transparency comes in many forms, sometimes honesty and sometimes showcasing everyday activities.
- Provide behavior insights.
Your facility can see children without bias in a way parents can’t while also seeing children in a social setting, which parents might not have as much exposure to. This enables your teachers to spot behavioral traits that hinder a child’s social and emotional development. Sharing these behaviors and interactions with parents to provide awareness for them can help parents encourage and nurture the child alongside the teacher. These professional insights provide transparency into a child’s day.
- Share playground accidents.
Children explore their limits and test their boundaries. As they learn, they’re bound to have accidents in which you have to send them home with scraped knees or bruises. Before a parent notices and asks the child at home about what happened, share the incident with parents at pickup or via messaging right after the accident. This makes it clear you aren’t trying to cover anything up and no negligence took place. Openness and honesty create transparency with parents and families.
- Alert parents to new fears.
A sudden change in a child can be a sign of something larger. Be sure to share new fears and meltdowns with parents. This might provide insights for you too. Perhaps a child was injured on the playground and that’s why they don’t want to go outside during recess or maybe there’s bullying from another child. Be sure to discuss these changes in behavior or interests with parents to ensure they are partners in their childcare.
- Allow time at pick up and drop off for feedback.
So far, we’ve shared ways for you to be transparent with parents about a child’s activities but be sure that this is two-way communication by giving parents a chance to share their feelings as well. This can be one-on-one during pick up or drop off or via quarterly surveys that allow parents to be anonymous. There may be a problem with a teacher or other student in the classroom that you’re unaware of that is hindering that family’s experience, which hurts trust and loyalty. Open up the conversation regularly with parents and caregivers to ensure satisfaction.
- Showcase the activities children enjoy.
Perhaps the best way to create transparency is to share and showcase classroom activities. Precious moments of children learning or drawing a picture can help parents feel connected to their child’s childcare experience. It enables them to engage in their child’s learning and know the value they’re getting from your childcare facility. A great way to do this is to use childcare management software like iCare Software. This makes sending messages and photos easy for teachers throughout the day and provides transparency into a child’s education.
Transparency comes down to regular and open communication from both parties, so start talking with parents about ways you can improve and what they would like to hear more about to ensure the long-term success of your childcare facility.