A strong mission and vision serve as the foundation of any successful child care center. Your staff and customers’ experience is influenced by your mission and vision from their first interaction with you. These guiding principles help decision-making, aligning staff, and communicating the center’s values to customers. Here’s how you can ensure that your staff and customers not only understand your mission and vision but also live by them.
Aligning Your Staff With Your Mission and Vision
The first step is to make sure your staff fully embraces the mission and vision you have outlined for your child care center. They are the ones who will be embodying these values every day. When interviewing potential staff members, emphasize the center’s mission and vision from the beginning. Ask if their personal moral values align with the center’s and seek candidates who not only meet your outlined requirements but demonstrate a passion for your core values.
Incorporate your mission and vision into new hire training and your regularly scheduled staff training sessions. Use real-life examples to show how these values can apply to their daily work and interactions with families and children. This will reinforce the importance of staying aligned with the center’s goals and provide opportunities for a group discussion on how you can further support them as they exhibit these values. Encourage your staff to share feedback about the mission and vision to create a sense of ownership and create new opportunities for integrating them into daily operations.
Effectively Communicate Your Mission and Vision
Communicating it to parents and customers is essential once your staff are committed to your mission and vision. Display your values in your child care center, whether in the lobby, each classroom, website, or other digital channels like social media, email footers, etc. This can be in the form of posters, banners, or even a digital display. When parents have the opportunity to read and see these values each day, they will become part of the culture.
Just as you introduce new staff to your mission and vision, offer a similar experience for parents. Include it in onboarding paperwork or verbally explain how it will benefit their child’s experience. Mention it during routine parent-teacher conferences and include it in communications like your social media and website. This consistency will build trust and reinforce the message.
Use Technology to Reinforce Your Mission and Vision
Using technology correctly can play a significant role in ensuring your mission and vision are communicated effectively and consistently. For staff, using something like a child care management software that offers communication tools and places to upload things like a digital handbook, will allow them to reference it at any time. For parents, use a parent app or portal that enhances their onboarding and allows them to see the values in action.
Make sure your child care center’s website is updated with blogs and testimonials and communicates what you are all about. Demonstrate how your values are being applied in practical ways with things like highlighting success stories of children in your care or feature a staff member that has won a recognition. Put them on your website and share them on social media for all to see.
Ensuring that your staff and customers understand and embrace your child care center’s mission and vision takes effort, but the benefits are well worth it. When your team is aligned, you better serve the children and families that trust you. When parents see the values in action, it will foster a stronger sense of community. See how Jackrabbit Care can make communicating with your staff and customers even easier by scheduling a personalized demo.
