Flexible Working and Flexible Childcare...we're all about the flex!

At FCSS we offer childcare your way to families using our services and work your way flexible models to our team.  

For us flexibility is just what we do, it makes sense, it works for our business model, fits with our values, and solves problems faced by our client group and the wider childcare sector. What’s not to love about that?  

Lots of people would say that in a ratio driven business, with legislation that has to be complied with around numbers of adults to children, flexible working wouldn’t or couldn’t work but it can, and it does and here’s how.   

The childcare sector has really high levels of churn within the workforce, it is a workforce, that despite efforts to increase diversity, is still predominantly made up of young women (who like children). Inevitably a high proportion of people enter the sector, gain qualifications and experience, work for a few years then leave to have their own family. Many want to return to work but the long hours, lack of flexibility and in many cases low pay, means they can’t commit to a full time return. There is a huge capacity gap in the childcare workforce, yet there are loads of qualified, experienced people out there unable to return to the sector because delivery models are just too rigid. That’s a crazy situation and one that we believe flexibility can help to resolve.  

We currently employ 181 people of which: 

• 52 people work a standard week on full time hours, that’s all, just 52 people, about 28% of our team and even those people often do their hours outside normal opening times, work from home when needed and can flex things quite a bit.  

• 63 people work a variety of part time patterns, varying numbers of days/hours they work, some condense hours to work less days and some reduce hours and do a little every day.  

• And we have 66 people working on a flexible availability, as and when model, these colleagues still benefit from holiday pay, pension, life insurance. Perhaps more importantly they have all the opportunities for training and professional development, participate in our colleague engagement programmes, are consulted in our decision making and when they are ready, as their circumstances change, they can increase their hours and if wanted move to a more standard pattern.  

We don’t all need full flexibility all of the time, but we can all benefit from a more open, common sense approach to flexibility. Hence the various hours/patterns we operate, we don’t rule out any pattern, and flexible working can be requested by anyone, in any role within our organisation.  

We use online platforms and catch up sessions for communication and ensure every member of the team has all the info and the tools they need to deliver our services effectively.   

We’ve had a right to disconnect policy since day one of our existence and actively apply it when working. We recognise that flexible working often means working outside standard business hours but agreed the hours that we think it’s acceptable to send business emails, messages etc, and outside those hours we stack comms to send the next working day. 

We don’t want any of our colleagues to miss events like their child’s school concert or their aging parent’s medical appointments. We value diversity within our workforce, recognise that our people have lives outside of work and understand that for a team to be effective and deliver positive outcomes it’s not hours that matter. What matters to us is commitment, shared values, a willingness to learn, and a recognition that just because the way we do something works one year it doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. 

Whilst some of our roles are location based, and have to be, as we need people on site to look after the children we care for, not all of our team have a set work location. Our office based, central support, admin, finance, and marketing colleagues are able to work from home, on the roam, and in some cases from other countries. We do have a Dundee based HQ but our services are spread around the country, therefore we don’t set geographic limitations when recruiting and our current leadership and administrative team colleagues live in Ayrshire, Aberdeenshire, Perth, Dundee, Inverness, and even Portugal. It’s a great way to widen the pool when seeking new team members.  

And we don’t forget the team members who do have a fixed location, we offer opportunities for them to work in our other locations, do paperwork from home where appropriate and work the days and hours that suit them. 

Our digital tool, Caerus, supports flexible working by enabling our team to submit their availability, build, view and manage rotas, and accept additional shifts. 

Our flexible childcare model supports flexible working in organisations beyond our own, empowering parents to work and arrange childcare to fit their unique working hours. It helps support employers to fill workforce vacancies as they have access to potential employees who may otherwise face barriers to returning to work.  

Flexible childcare and flexible working, each individually are great benefits, but when combined create a truly game changing solution for workforce, families, employers, communities and local and national economies. 

Here’s what some of our team and the parents who use our services have to say: 

Service user: “It allows me to only pay for childcare while I'm working for the hours I need, saving me £100+ per month on fees which are not needed. It also allows me to drop my other kids at school before taking him to nursery with its flexibility. It really is a perfect model for working parents and should be implemented in other nurseries / childcare services. 

Team member: “The main things that draw me to this organisation is the flexibility for staff and families, the quality of the groups and the management being flexible with situations and making sure both staff and families are cared for.” 

Learn more about our work at Flexible Childcare Services Scotland.