How teamwork is at the heart of great achievement at KatieB Kids

At Katie B Kids we agree with Mattie Stepanek that when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved. But what makes a great team? And how do we support collaborative working?

Firstly, in our nursery we work hard to ensure that everyone understands what our company expectations and standards are, and we get everyone involved with ideas for how we can deliver to these and always aim for the highest standards. To do this well, we know that open communication is really important, and our staff must feel safe asking for help – more on this later!

Secondly, we recognise that to attract fantastic individuals, it is essential that we place a high value on inclusivity. It is the diversity of our team that makes us stronger, supports our growth and impacts positively upon the outcomes for our children. Innovation stems from the ability to utilise different perspectives in approaching and finding solutions. By bringing together individuals with diverse skills, different cultural backgrounds, and life experiences, we benefit from fresh perspectives that drive our creativity and we are equipped to offer the best service for our children. 

So, it is the strength of each individual at KatieB makes our great team, but to make the dream work, we need super teamwork! And to help us to achieve this at KatieB Kids we have enlisted the expertise of Doctor Nick Buckley, who specialises in mindfulness for the workplace. Working with us since 2018, Nick has taught us all the basics – slowing down, breathing, the art of creating a gap in-between the situation and your reaction and reflection too. With ongoing support each month, the aim is to build our self-awareness and resilience, in a fast-paced world that sometimes is a bit like a merry-go-round that you can’t hop off!

So how does mindfulness help our staff hop, skip, and jump into nursery every day?

The car broke down, your partner forgot to take care of an urgent errand, the kids left their lunchboxes at home, and you can’t find the letter to call the doctor back. You then go into work and the next eight hours involves a room full of babies, toddlers, and pre-school children who will spend all day dropping things, making mess, exploring their social boundaries, and perhaps testing your patience at times. Here at KatieB, Mindfulness is our superpower and is having a positive effect on not only our staff retention but on productivity, happiness, and capabilities too.

We know that in the 21st century people are finding life in general tough. We hear on the news about the rising crisis in mental health and part of our role as an employer is to support where we can. Monthly mindfulness isn’t teaching our staff how to do their jobs or how to look after children. Mindfulness gives us the back-office function – the ability to learn about ourselves, our boundaries, others’ boundaries, reactions, triggers, coping mechanisms and the ability to reflect – on how our behaviour, language and attitude affects ourselves, colleagues and our young charges. Mindfulness is here at KatieB to take us strongly into the future as a resilient workforce, an empathetic workforce, and a place where you are supported.

In the ideal world we’d all hop, skip, and jump into the nursery just like our little ones do, but if something’s gone wrong, annoys us, upset us or has tipped us off kilter that day, knowing how to dampen down the ‘crisis’, be rational and move forward is key.

A note about language

We often use big words to talk about much smaller issues; nightmare, crisis, anxiety, dreading, disaster – but if we address the language we use and make it appropriate to the situation, then the situation itself has a more manageable label. A nightmare could just be annoying, a crisis is usually something that’s gone wrong that we haven’t got time to sort out and anxiety is often mistaken for temporary worry. Not much in everyday life needs to be dreaded or classed as a disaster! Forgetting to pay for the kids’ school dinners, dropping your keys in a puddle and leaving your phone behind don’t add up to a nightmare morning. It probably wasn’t awful, and it definitely doesn’t mean it will be ‘one of those days’ – because it’s now in the past and the day could be brilliant if you allow the negative thoughts out and the positive ones in.

We all bring our lives to work sometimes – the stress, the anxiety, worry and the occasional bad mood too, but when your role has the added responsibility to model behaviour and social cues to young children, leaving your homelife at the door on the bumblebee coat hook is essential – but how do you do it?

Getting over things more quickly - and moving on – just like our children do!

We don’t function at the same capacity each day – sometimes we are very motivated and sometimes, something may have happened that takes our focus away, leaves us vulnerable and even a bit snappy. By recognising how we feel ourselves we can be more aware of others too. It’s important to communicate our feelings with each other, and to recognise how we each feel as we come into work.

We’ve all had workplace misunderstandings – someone said or did something that upset someone else but all that was needed was a quick question, to avoid the stewing, the worrying, the analysing, because often, the way we ‘take things’ or interpret them is the problem, not what’s actually happened. Mindfulness helps us to get over things more quickly and move on – just like our children do! They can have a big squabble with another child or even a parent but once it’s resolved, it’s over – they don’t usually bear a grudge and mindfulness encourages us too, as adults, to resolve and move on – a great technique for the workplace!

In practice, our team can support each other by creating a gap in-between what’s happened and our response. We might step away, or a colleague may step in, and it’s this ability to see what needs to happen than makes such a difference. We take a moment to think, assess and then decide on what to do next, which falls outside of the common knee-jerk reaction that can lead to more difficult situations. Rather than let any challenging situation fester, we acknowledge it and offer help. Perhaps that person needs support, so can we arrange the work tasks so that they have a less challenging day, or do we just need them to know that we are aware and that a change in behaviour is OK – we can support each other, knowing that this support will be here for us on our off day too.

Could you work with us?

It’s thanks to our incredibly talented team at KatieB Kids that we achieve exceptional standards in early years education. Together with our wonderful children they are our daytime family.   

If you share our values and our passion for early years education, whatever your background, you too could find a family in our nursery.

When looking for the ‘perfect’ candidate to join our team, we love to see: 

-        Experience in working within a Reggio Emilia setting or within a setting that values child choice and offers a play based creative curriculum. 

-        Someone who is confident to support children to explore, investigate and experiment through a range of innovative and creative open-ended activities and hands on play.

-        Someone willing to listen to the voice of all children and to give children the time to explore their feelings, ideas, and theories.

-        A full and relevant qualification in early years education. 

-        A certificate of higher education in psychology, child development, education or similar. 

-        A drive to embrace a career within early years with a commitment to professional development. 

-        Passion for creative arts and performance. 

Want to be part of the KatieB family?

We’d love to hear from you!