Staff training within nurseries: learning and development for all ages

When you’re running a busy nursery, online training is a time-saving and cost effective solution. However, it is important to understand the variety and quality of online training courses, and to thoroughly consider the most appropriate training solutions for your employees and nursery setting.

In this article, we’re going to look at the importance of knowledge growth, recognising training gaps and how, when training engages frontline professionals, it can transform practices.

Knowledge translates into real world actions

Nurseries, as with all care and educational establishments, aim to make sure that children get the best possible start in life and are hugely important in the development of a child. Children can thrive when front-line practitioners are fully engaged with their job role and when employees feel clear about what is required of them individually, on an ongoing basis. Therefore, it is crucial that your employees are not just trained to the required level initially, but that their learning and development journeys are continued throughout their careers.

Strive for outstanding practice

Learning and development is relevant to all members of staff within a nursery – everyone has a responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of the children in their care. By providing training that makes a real, measureable impact and empowering your colleagues to improve their skills, children will benefit from the best care and learning, helping them to reach their potential.

For anyone caring directly for a child, it is important they are kept up to speed and are able to access high-quality training resources that can make a real difference on the ground. You can reach people very quickly with online training and, providing the quality and engagement is right, you can start changing lives with immediate effect.

Refresh your training standards and working culture

Reviewing training standards and understanding the impact they are, or aren’t, making should be a priority for all nurseries. Many do not take the time to review this and to find out what other training options there are available for them.

When front-line staff are provided with the tools they need to do their jobs effectively, a culture of engagement is created. It is imperative that learning and development strategies evolve and engage employees, whilst being tailored to address specific needs or company learning outcomes. Individuals should feel connected to their organisation and their job role.

Some of our top tips are:

Keep your content fresh and up-to-date.
Ensure your training is available in the right format for the right platform – is phone, tablet-based or learning management system (LMS) access more important to your users?
Change your training approach to ensure you capture the evolving culture and recognise different employee training needs.
Review and analyse what you have – not just through using a feedback form, but by collating results and tracking. This is the only way to prove what is working – and having a supporting e-learning technology, such as Enable LMS or Enable Audit, will provide meaningful data to support your business decisions.

Ultimately, the objective is to ensure your employees are simply not rushing through vital training as quickly as they can, to the point where they are disengaged. Staff training must be more than a tick-box solution and it delivers the best results when it's relevant, engaging and memorable.

The use of visual aids, graphics and games is widespread across many e-learning providers and it is a clear way of helping to embed the behavioural change needed or the learning outcomes desired in people who learn in vastly different ways.

Here at Virtual College, we are dedicated to focusing on learners and their learning outcomes. In every project, our focus is on delivering a superior experience by putting your learners first. We use a variety of methods to get people engaged, motivated and eager to put their newfound knowledge and skills into practice.