With the advent of the Right to Disconnect accurate rostering in ECEC is a priority task.
Every early childhood education and care (ECEC) leader is familiar with the frustrating experience of painstakingly creating a roster which is compliant, takes the needs of each staff member into account, and has adequate ‘wriggle room’ for anything unforeseen, only to have it fall to bits when a working with children check expires, an educator calls in sick, and the attention of the service leader is needed to support with a newly enrolled child.
All of a sudden, the meticulously prepared roster is ‘out the window’ leaving the service leader with little choice but to spend many hours, often before or after closing, contacting non working staff to try and ‘fill the gaps’ in the roster.
With the advent of the Right to Disconnect legislation, however, many leaders are becoming much more mindful about what outside of hours contact looks like.
The legislation is clear that workers now have the right to refuse to read or respond to work-related calls, texts and emails outside their working hours, unless that refusal is unreasonable.
While some in the ECEC sector argue that contact to fill open shifts is reasonable, the legislation is as yet untested, and so the line of what is considered to be reasonable or unreasonable is not yet clear.
The Fair Work Commission says what will matter in making a determination about the Right to Disconnect is whether the refusal is unreasonable, rather than whether the attempted contact is unreasonable.
Among the things that will determine whether a refusal is unreasonable are the employee’s role, their personal circumstances, the method and reason for the contact, how much disruption it causes them and whether they are compensated for being available or for working additional hours.
For the ECEC sector, with its volatile shift patterns, and high exposure to children’s illnesses increasing the chance that professionals will become sick with little notice, coupled with early starting times, and finishing times outside of the traditional ‘9 to 5’ the Right to Disconnect is being watched closely.
Specialist tools can support
As competition for qualified staff intensifies with more ECEC services opening across the country, and with legislation such as the Right to Disconnect providing enhanced focus on the employee experience, many providers are seeking ways to differentiate, and offer a more premium employee journey for their teams, seeking out tools and providers to help.
“A number of our clients have had their teams comment on life before and after Daitum,” Spokesperson said, “and it’s always gratifying to hear not only about how much stress and pressure has been lifted from the shoulders of leaders, but also about how much more smooth daily operations are.”
Daitum’s rostering for Childcare platform supports leaders not only to create rosters which are in compliance with relevant laws and regulations, but which also take into account the individual preferences of staff, along with their availability and shift pattern preferences, all in a fraction of the time it would take a leader to compile manually.
Rostering is a task which is tedious and time consuming for many ECEC leaders, and one which is often completed without any formal training or support. While building a compliant roster is vitally important, it’s a task which takes leaders away from what they do best – building relationships with staff and families, and supporting their teams to thrive.
When the carefully compiled roster is ‘thrown off’ by sickness or other circumstances, it can be complex to untangle, but thankfully Daitum’s solutions are able to look at a large number of potential solutions by looking at planned child attendance, child arrival times, staff availability and qualifications, break requirements and programming time, pivoting quickly to respond to any unforeseen circumstances and suggest optimised solutions.
In a time where ECEC leaders, and the staff in their teams, are being made increasingly aware of the Right to Disconnect outside of working hours, supporting them with tools such as Daitum’s Rostering for Childcare platform makes sense from an operational perspective.
Learn More
Learn more about Daitum’s rostering solutions for childcare and the benefits it is creating for leading ECECs here.
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