It takes a village to raise a child – even today the ancient proverb still rings true. As a dedicated provider of early childhood learning, Affinity Education recognisesrecognizes this and is leading the way in developing the young leaders of tomorrow. Guided by its promise to inspire and nurture people to reach their full potential – children and team members alike – Affinity Education set out to find the best way to cultivate its proverbial village.
Connecting the village
Affinity Education’s goal is to significantly build the capability and competence of their 100,000 students and 4,000 team members over the next five years – and they are well on their way. As one of Australia’s leading providers of high quality early education, they own and operate more than 150 education centres across the country.
Operating under a wide variety of childcare brands, their large network of centres is united by two things: the Affinity Way internal culture, and their research-based Lifelong Learning approach to early education. This is no small feat. The Affinity team knows that its power lies in its ability to connect with the right people who will uphold these values. They seek out team members who are skilled and experienced professionals that bring the magic of learning into everything they do.
Indikiduality
There is a core theme that runs through the veins of each Affinity Education centre: indikiduality – the act of celebrating kids for who they are today and also for who they might become. This theme is relevant not just for the little ones, but also for the educators. Affinity Education is devoted to hiring people who are passionate about their own personal and professional growth and encouraging and empowering them to become highly-regarded individuals within the industry.
“They’re really proud of their centres and they always have lots of passion in their role. You can really see that when you go out and visit them,” says Benita Williams, Compliance Manager at Affinity Education.
Nurturing professional connections
Affinity Education’s HR team knew that having a seamless hiring process was of paramount importance when operating a large network of centres. The early childhood learning sector is a unique one – it incorporates both full-time staff and a casual talent pool of people who can step in and fill last-minute staffing gaps.
Affinity’s HR team wanted to create greater efficiencies in their day-to-day recruitment and onboarding processes to make them more effective and user-friendly for everyone – from their candidates and employees to their hiring and area managers. The team set out on a mission to find a recruitment system that provided a more seamless experience for all.
One system, one source of truth
Linda Carroll, Head of People and Culture at Affinity Education was looking for a holistic talent management platform where everything could be streamlined and housed in one place. “We wanted a system that could provide our customers, centre managers and area managers with transparency of where we were at with recruitment processes, and that could also take the place of the onboarding system we had at the time,” she says.
A holistic system with streamlined processes, greater transparency, and more efficient reporting were key features that the team were on the hunt for. They realisedrealized that the PageUp system delivered everything that they were looking for – and more – all from the convenience of a single platform.
“What we set out to achieve was a much more seamless integration between recruitment and onboarding systems that would provide transparency to all end users. We’ve been able to do those things with PageUp,” explains Carroll.
“What we set out to achieve was a much more seamless integration between recruitment and onboarding systems that would provide transparency to all end users. We’ve been able to do those things with PageUp.”
Transparency and a seamless experience
The Affinity Education HR team were working on a tight deadline to make the transition from their old system. PageUp met this with a timely implementation that took just six weeks. Once up and running, the Affinity Education team were empowered by the improved efficiencies of PageUp’s configurable system. “Since implementing PageUp, we have the ability to control the system, to set it up the way we’ve wanted to for it to fit in with our business processes,” says Kate McShane, Employee Relations Manager.
With PageUp providing greater transparency and a more efficient experience for all, Affinity Education’s HR team are celebrating features like being able to streamline actions that were previously arduous and manual. The PageUp Analytics and reporting dashboards have also been a favourite amongst the recruitment team, who can now excel in their roles with access to accurate reporting and analytics.
“From an HR and recruitment perspective, the reporting functionality has been a really big win for us. We’ve been able to get a lot of data which we’ve been able to use to be more strategic in how we manage our recruitment,” says McShane.
Stronger connections
One of Affinity Education’s key cultural values is their focus on strengthening connections. They strive to “be completely connected” and bring out the best in each other through collaboration and cooperation, communicating openly and sharing knowledge and information. With PageUp, Affinity Education can strengthen connections by delivering transparency and efficiencies across the entire recruitment and onboarding process. This ensures they can continue to attract and retain the best people to nurture the next generation of young minds.
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