Firstly, I love OSHC! There’s no denying that. I love promoting the industry and I love sharing when I find something good with others in the industry. Luckily with Firefly HR, I can help make that happen.
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to get a performance culture and team coach in with our team, Jim Davidson from Performance Culture Australia (PCA). Luckily for us, Jim is also a parent of our OSHC centre and has been for over 8 years. He’s been heavily involved with the school community, our centre and educators over this time.
The sessions we had with Jim made a big impact on me and how I lead our team and I wanted to get this knowledge out to others in the industry.
We are expected to just know what to do as leaders in OSHC with no training, my team has grown from 10 to 28 educators, we have less time in our days but expected to do more than ever before, and I don’t even know how I’m meant to fit it all in when it comes to my team along with everything else that’s expected of us.
Thank you to the 60 OSHC educators that joined us today for the session. Thank you for showing initiative in wanting to seek change and improvement in your teams. Thank you for engaging with each other, sharing stories and providing feedback.
We covered issues such as communication, dedication (not career choice), personality clashes, different beliefs and values, and so much more. Jim also covered how to address these issues and improve our teams.
Jim gives practical advice I know I need to hear, and although I’ve had a few sessions with Jim, today I still wrote another 6 pages of notes. Each time he talks, I take on a different aspect of what I can change for the better.
I’m not going to lie that I don’t find it overwhelming, indeed I do, but since March this year from having Jim in with our team, to now, I feel we have jointly made so many positive changes in the right direction. The most confronting part is although knowing we have a great team, realising we were just functional. We want more than this. We know we do, so we have jointly been working on improving this area and getting the team aligned.
Some changes I’ve made?
– Dividing performance management (reviews) amongst the senior team. Used to take this all onboard myself, it’s a huge change to divide it (hard at first, but positive).
– Complete more frequent reviews and catch ups with educators, made possible by sharing amongst the senior team.
– More frequent weekly senior team meetings.
– Reflecting on and changing roles within the teams to suit educator strengths and interests (changing a generic Senior Educator ‘Admin’ role to an ‘Inclusion and Diversity’ role for an educator very passionate on this area).
– Deeper self-reflection in how I lead the team, communicate and how I can personally improve. I know I can be too nice so have been working on this area as although it is a strength, ‘when a strength is pushed too far, it can become a weakness’ as Jim has told me.
– Reflecting on expectations of educators and not to have the same on each of them, that we are different personality types with varying strengths (and weaknesses).
– Most importantly, I’ve become more confident in what I am doing with our team. I’m more assertive in what I want, our values and beliefs.
And I’m sure there’s so much more, but that’s all just off the top of my head.
If you’d like to find out more on what Jim could do for your team, Jim is looking to run OSHC specific masterclasses, OSHC sessions at your centre with your team, and also has a performance management program to help keep all the data in one spot to help keep track of your team and where they all are at, how they are tracking with their goals, etc (which we are implementing at our centre). He’s flexible as he knows and understands each centre is different.
We had great positive feedback on today’s session from the OSHC educators that attended. I feel although Jim has the knowledge, it’s his positive approach that I engage with the most.
Jim’s email for anyone interested or wants to find out more from him jim@performanceculture.team
Or if you are wanting support with other areas, recruitment, consultancy, etc – get in contact with the Firefly HR team at info@fireflyhr.com.au
More information?
– Check out Jim Davidson’s LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimdavidson3/
– PCA Website: https://performanceculture.com/
– PCA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/performancecultureaustralia/
– Firefly HR Website: https://www.fireflyhr.com.au/
– Firefly HR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fireflyhrOSHC/
