Imagine you’re between two job offers. For the sake of this imaginary scenario, we’ll say both of the jobs are equal in company culture, personal growth opportunities, desired location and pay grade. How do you make your final decision?
For myself, and most others I’ve spoken with, it all comes down to the benefits. Even if one company pays slightly higher but the other offers a better benefit plan, odds are you go with the job that has the best benefits. This brings me to my main point, if benefits are of such importance to most professionals, why would the level of importance be any different in the ECE industry?
One of the main issues you face as an owner/operator of an ECE school is high turnover. On average, the ECE industry experiences a 40% turnover rate. When you factor in recruiting, onboarding, and training each employee turnover costs your school at least $10,000 every time an employee leaves.
Unfortunately, it makes sense. If you were at a low paying job with no benefits and no advancement, would you stay? Odds are, hell no!
When I first started out as an ECE owner about 15 years ago, barely anyone in the industry was offering a healthcare plan for their employees. The situation most of us were finding ourselves in was if we offered healthcare to our staff, we’d nearly go broke trying to cover the cost. In addition, most of our staff would opt-out due to cost anyway. So, the revolving door of staff continued.
Another result of lack of healthcare for ECE employees is high absenteeism. When staff don’t have proper or any healthcare benefits one of two things happen.
- Since they have no primary care doctor, they go to urgent care for something as simple as a cold which will typically cause them to miss an entire day of work since more severe emergencies take precedence over a cold.
- They’ll put off going to the doctor until absolutely necessary and will end up missing multiple days of work recovering from severe sickness.
This not only is a bad situation for the individual but the school as well. When a staff member is unexpectedly absent the school needs to scramble to find replacements to meet the ratio. This also causes a disruption for the children which naturally, the parents do not like.
When I founded Inspire Care 360 5 years ago, I wanted to create solutions that were specific to the ECE industry that would help owners/operators simplify recruiting and retention of staff, build a sustainable culture and create a profitable business that they would be able to re-invest back into their school, staff and the children they serve.
Not having an affordable healthcare plan for ECE schoolteachers was an evident problem that I was intent on solving. To find out how I addressed this issue and the solution IC360 put in place, check out my next blog post tomorrow.
-Tony Dagostino
