Recruitment and Selection Strategies for Australian Childcare Centers

This report delves into the critical aspects of recruitment and selection within the Australian childcare industry. It identifies key challenges such as restricted availability of qualified educators, monetary constraints leading to lower wages, and unfavorable working conditions that contribute to high employee turnover. The report also highlights issues related to labour supply and demand, demographic changes, and diversity within childcare settings. To address these challenges, the report recommends several strategies, including fostering cooperation with universities and colleges, offering competitive monetary benefits, providing comprehensive training and professional development opportunities, and implementing improved workplace practices to enhance employee engagement and growth. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of proactive measures in recruitment and selection to ensure the sustainability and quality of care within the early childhood education sector.

RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
Childhood Education and Care

Executive summary:
Recruitment is the process that deals with advertising about the job vacancies and selection is the
process of short listing the candidates. Most of the industries in Australia these days are facing
the issues of recruitment of selection (Chaneta, 2014). There are some common issues that act as
the challenges for those industries such as diversity, demography, labour supply and demands
differences, unskilled labour etc. thus, these organizations or the industries need to take some
initiatives in order to improve their strategies so that they can recruit and retain the employees
with them.
Table of Contents

Introduction:...............................................................................................................................................1
Recruitment and selection:.........................................................................................................................2
Key challenges faced by the company in recruitment:................................................................................2
Recommended strategies............................................................................................................................4
Conclusion:..................................................................................................................................................5
References:..................................................................................................................................................5
Introduction:
There are various child care centres that are operating in Australia for the education and care of
children. This industry is very big in Australia and is made up for a noble cause of giving basic

education and care to the children of the country at very low fees. This is reason why the
industry operates and work with low cost budget and thus the results of this is high employee
turnover in the industry (McGraw, 2011). The companies or the centres like Umina child care
centre, cuddles child care centre etc. are facing the recruitment issues.
This is the report that focuses on various aspects of recruitment and selection issues that this
industry is facing in Australia. This industry has been selected for this study because it is the
industry that is facing many issues in recruitment and selection (Keep & James, 2010). Even the
employees who enters the industry as per their will find it difficult to continue their jobs. Every 5
out of 12 teachers in the centres wants to leave their job as they feel that they can earn better in
another industry with less efforts and with same qualifications.
The report initiates with the discussion of the industry and the recruitment issues faced by the
same. The later part of the report provides some recommended strategies that cam be
implemented at the workplace to recruit and retain the employees in the company (Morrissey &
Warner, 2011).
Recruitment and selection:
Both these functions are very essential part of human resource management system of any of the
company. Recruitment is the positive process while selection is the negative process. This is
because recruitment invites may people to apply for the job while selection is the process of
rejecting the irrelevant people whose profile does not match with the requirement of the job
(Arora, Scott, Bhole, Do, Schwarz & Blinkhorn, 2011). There are companies which are
outsourcing these functions from the third party and various other strategies are being
implemented by the companies these days so that they can improve the quality and the quantity
of workforce at their company.

Key challenges faced by the company in recruitment:
Centre characteristics: quality is the biggest factors that affect the recruitment and selection of
the employees at the workplace. Education and Early Childhood educators need to be highly
trained in order to get the jobs with quality academic skills and background. This is the industry
that deals with child care which needs to be of high quality thus the graduates are not eligible for
applying for such jobs (Grace & Trudgett, 2012). This results in restricted availability of the
quality workforce in the market for becoming Education and Early Childhood educator.
Monetary framework: As far as the wages in this industry of Education and Early Childhood
centres are considered, it has been analysed that they provide less wages to the highly qualified
workers as compared to other industries. This restricts the people to enter this industry. This also
increases the employee turnover when the workers or the employees in this industry realize that
their peer is getting more wages in other industries with same qualifications (Sulaiman, Othman,
Perumal & Hussin, 2013). As most of the centres in this industry are non-profit organizations
thus they have to keep the fees for the children very low and the first and the foremost cost
cutting strategy of the centre is to reduce the salary and wages of the educators. It is a very big
challenge for the companies in the Education and Early Childhood education industry to retain
and hire the employees who are qualified with high quality academic background.
Training and professional development: it is required by the Early Childhood Education and
centre to provide quality education ad care to the children. This requires them to hire the
employees who are qualified enough to provide great and quality service. This makes them to
hire the trained employees and this is also challenge for these companies or centres to hire such
trained employees. It is required by the employees to have certificate issues in early childhood
education and this limits the amount of people who can apply for the job vacancy (Jones, Hadley
& Johnstone, 2017).
Working condition: it has been analysed that the working environment at the early childhood
care centres are very negative in nature. This is because of the rigid working hours, job
insecurity, less motivation at the workplace and less wages as compared to other industry. This
increase the employee turnover rate of the centres as the centre fails to motivate and retain the
employees with them (Shaheen, 2016). As the working condition of these centres is not very

favourable for the employees thus it becomes challenge for the employees to recruit and retain
the employees at the place.
Labour supply and demand: It has been analysed that this is the industry that does not provide
immense growth to the employees working at the centres. This is one of the biggest reasons that
the labour supply in this sector is very low. Demand for the educators in this sector is rising day
by day in Australia but no youth of the country wants to enter the industry where the working
environment is not good and the growth opportunities are not there. This is the industry that
requires qualified workforce but at very low wages which is really difficult to find in this era
where money is the most important factors for which people used to work (White & Friendly,
2012).
Demographic changes and diversity: increase in the social diversity and the demographic
changes such as aging population are the factors that affect the recruitment and retention rate of
the childhood care centres. The diversity in society results in diversity among the children who
are taking admission in the child care centres (Essa, 2012). This result in increasing pressure on
the educators to handle the children with diverse culture and background, it becomes even more
difficult for them to deal with these children. This also requires different types of training
provision the educators and thus it results in demotivation of the workers to work with efficiency
in this industry.
Recommended strategies
There are different strategies that can be implemented by the child care centres in order to attract
the employees and retain them in the organizations:
 Cooperation
 Training
 Growth opportunities
 Better monetary benefits
 Better working environment
Cooperation: collaboration of the early childhood care and education centre with other industries
helps the company to develop better opportunities for the educators who are working in their

education centres (Jovanovic, 2013). To promote the jobs in early childhood education sector, it
is important to collaborate with some of the universities and colleges so that the recruitment can
be done. The collaboration with kindergarten schools also helps in developing the
professionalism in this occupation because this helps in developing greater knowledge among the
children by conducting one of the collaborative activities.
Monetary benefits: everyone works for money. It is one of the major factors that motivate the
workers to perform efficiently. If any of the workers or the employee feels that they are not
getting paid according to their efforts and qualification then it becomes difficult to retail such
employees (Wong, Sumsion & Press, 2012). As this aspect is very crucial in the early education
sector because the employees who are qualified in nature gets lower wages in the industry as
compared to other industry. Providing benefits other than the wages in monetary terms can help
these education centres to retain the employees in the sector.
Training: As discussed that early education and care centres require high quality workforce so
that they can provide high quality services to the children. This requires the employees to be
highly qualified with lots of certification courses. Implementing such courses and training at the
university and college level results in development of the interest among the students towards
this industry. Provision of basic training among the students result in increasing the range of the
candidates eligible to apply for the jobs as they have the training certificates from the college.
Workplace practices and growth opportunities:
Implementation of the best practices at the workplace results in development of growth
opportunities for the employees working at the centre and also provide them better workplace
environment so that they can be retained in the company. Implementing the practices such as
employee engagement programs, recognition and reward program for the employees, growth
opportunities and career path recognition programs etc. needs to be implemented in the company
so as to improve the workplace environment.

Conclusion:
It has been concluded from the report that recruitment and selection are the very important
function of human resource management for any of the company or the industry. As far as the
early childhood education and care industry is considered, it has been analysed that this industry
is facing many recruitment challenges such as demographic and diversity issues, low wages
issues, labour supply issues etc. For facing such challenges, it is required by the companies in the
industry to implement some of the strategies such as managing the working environment of the
companies, developing growth opportunities for the employees, provision of proper training and
education to the educators, provide them fair remuneration etc. Implementing these strategies
help the company to cope with the issues that are developing in the recruitment and selection
process. As it is the important part of the company’s processes so this is the need of hour to take
initiatives in these functions.

References:
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Essa, E. L. (2012). Introduction to early childhood education. Cengage Learning.
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early childhood workers on supporting the engagement of Indigenous families in early
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Jovanovic, J. (2013). Retaining early childcare educators. Gender, Work &
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Keep, E., & James, S. (2010). Recruitment and selection-the great neglected topic.
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Sulaiman, Y., Othman, A. R., Perumal, S., & Hussin, Z. (2013). Escalating the employee job
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