Tanda & Little Locals Early Learning
Jacek Gajewski founded Little Locals Early Learning with his three business partners and friends in 2015, with the goal of creating a child care experience with a strong focus on hands on learning and community. The Childcare business is still family-owned and operated and now has eight centres in Queensland, with over 250 staff members. The hands-on owners pride themselves on putting families first and making a positive impact in the local community. The centres take advantage of a rich curriculum that teaches children purposeful play, life skills, connection to nature and social learning.
Managing staff across a number of different locations has its challenges. Before using Tanda, Jacek had to complete all rosters and timesheets manually, as well as collect and manage necessary qualifications such as blue card and first aid certifications. Everything had to be filed physically in the office, taking up valuable time which could have been spent managing the business. “On average, our centre managers would spend about four hours each week manually reviewing and entering timesheets into our payroll system”, Jacek says.
Little Locals’ biggest challenges
- Paper-based staff management is a time-consuming process that is prone to errors.
- Rostering needs to be simple and user friendly for staff.
- Managers need to store and track a variety of qualifications and expiry dates.
Keep it central
With so many staff, being able to access multiple systems from one central platform is a major advantage for Little Locals. With Tanda, managers can bring together multiple schedules and align them in one central location, making roster changes simpler. Little Locals Auchenflower Centre Director Sophie Jones believes it allows her to focus on her core job – looking after children. “From day to day, we display our roster on an iPad in the foyer. Every staff member can see where they need to be that day. It frees up more time for management.” Tanda also manages qualifications like blue cards and first aid – and sends the centre automatic notifications when they’re about to expire.
User-friendly staff management
For a workforce management system to be successful, it’s crucial that every staff member can use the platform with ease. Tanda has been designed with ease of use as a priority. New staff can sign up and start receiving shifts in minutes. Casual staff can accept shifts offered by managers with the press of a button. Tanda is designed to make people management easy. “I can recommend Tanda to anyone who has a staffing team,” Sophie says, “it’s very, very easy to use”.
Getting the balance right
Little Locals Early Learning strives to manage more than 100 staff, provide great services and keep its distinct community feel, no matter how large they grow. Here are just a few of the things Tanda does to help achieve these goals.
Tanda's quick and easy to use rostering ensures everyone receives their schedules on time without the headaches and admin previously invovled.
Jacek and the team use Tanda to track and store the key qualifications needed to work in childcare, keeping them up to date when they neat expiry.
Tanda's award templates ensure accurate pay on the Children's Service Award. Allowances, and pay rates all seamlessly flow through to Little Local's payroll software.
