What childcare leader doesn’t love a good Google Doc or Excel spreadsheet to log data and document processes.
Unfortunately, spreadsheets work with static ad-hoc data, which makes it impossible to provide any real-time visibility with a lot of overhead to maintain.
Industry insights
We asked some Early Childcare Education leaders how they collect data. Here’s what some revealed:
- The data is only as good as the last time it was updated by my staff.
- I only want my senior staff to see the information analysis, yet I need my staff to contribute to the data. Permissions in my Google Sheets are very hard to manage.
- We scramble to consolidate data for board meetings or licencing visits. It is all there but stored in multiple different locations.
- My regional directors have to capture data, re-enter data, and report the results. It is very time consuming and inefficient
- Teams and Google Sheets/Docs are great but I can’t see the updated trends impacting data as it happens. It is usually after the fact.
- I need real-time visibility to manage my business. I cannot be onsite at all locations.
- Covid has changed how we do audits. No longer can I rely on in person visits to verify data and yet the need for accountability is more important than ever!
- Each week my team needs to know where we are excelling and where we need to improve. This information is vital for staff meetings and reviews.
At 1Place Childcare, we believe every operational task your team performs produces data you can use to manage best practice and compliance.
That’s why we work with data in real-time and provide detailed analysis 24/7 without any additional effort from centre staff.
With data at your fingertips, you can use it to inform your decisions, be inspired and motivated to leverage best practice and compliance to influence decisions and drive change.
Data is everywhere
Despite the frustrations many in the industry have with spreadsheets, using spreadsheets to record what you’ve learnt is a great place to start. Congratulations!
The next step on your journey to use data to make smarter decisions is to step back, and ask yourself:
- How do I capture data today?
- What types of data am I capturing?
- What information am I looking for?
- Who is responsible for the task I am gathering data for?
- Where is it stored?
- How do I analyse the data?
- Who is impacted by or benefits from the data?
- How quickly do we respond to new data?
What data tells us
Once you’ve answered these questions you can begin to put in place some data management processes to help you understand:
- How you are managing best practice.
- Where your potential exposures are for health and safety.
- How quickly you are responding to minimise liabilities and maximise opportunities.
- Where your strengths and weaknesses are.
When we know better, we do better
Early Childhood Business and Leadership Strategist Beth Cannon is among a growing number of industry leaders who recognise the value in gaining insights from data.
Google Sheets for example will always fall short on being a complete project management tool as it doesn’t allow task assignment. While its transparency also opens opportunities for users to create multiple versions of the truth.
When you move your compliance and best practice data and processes to 1Place Childcare, you will:
- Have one source of truth that can be viewed anytime and anywhere.
- Gain real-time up-to-the-minute visibility against your expected standards or licencing guidance.
- Have automated workflows for task assignment, prioritisation and follow up.
- Control the permissions of who sees what data based on their role (teacher vs owner vs regional personnel).
- Monitor completion and quality of routine procedures such as opening, closing, cleaning, safety check whether you are onsite or offsite.
- Manage and monitor the status of tasks and tickets without sticky notes and paper.
- Receive reports in your inbox as frequently as needed – or run them ad hoc.
- Audit the gaps in your best practices using digital dashboards.
- Inspect what you expect with time-date stamped photos to ensure best practice is followed.
- Receive graphics and details to identify trends surrounding incidents and accidents.
Ready to take your spreadsheet data to the next level? Contact 1Place Childcare today for a complementary exploration session.