Engaging and working with your team

Overview

The department encourages all services and providers to work closely with and invite the expertise of teachers, educators, and other staff in making changes to programs.

Your staff have deep knowledge of your service and their profession and will have valuable suggestions for how you introduce changes. This knowledge provides a source of collective creativity that you can draw on to implement change in the most effective way possible.

Collective creativity is one of the 3 proven principles for leading change in early childhood education, along with having a strong vision and rationale and maintaining a change narrative. Drawing on the collective creativity of your team is a vital part of working with your team and can lead to innovative change.

When staff are involved in planning and given the opportunity to contribute, it can increase their connection to their work and improve the quality of decisions. Genuinely involving your staff in the change process demonstrates that their experience and expertise is valued.

Early childhood peak bodies can provide resources to support the involvement of all staff, such as manuals, templates, workshops, and webinars. Contact your peak body for advice on what supports are available.

You may need to consider whether changes to staffing arrangements require staff consultation under the relevant industrial instrument (e.g., an enterprise agreement or award covering your service). If relevant, your peak body or industrial representative may be able to provide advice.

Engage early and often

Consider what the changes mean for your staff, including professional and personal impacts. Acknowledge these impacts and explain that you want to make the implementation of the reforms a positive professional experience, and you want to achieve this by working together.

Sector insight – Working together with staff, families, and other stakeholders

When the Three-Year-Old Kindergarten reform was announced, a small single-room early learning centre in a Victorian regional town looked at how they could expand their Three-Year-Old Kindergarten program.

It was important to the service to maximise the educational benefits for children while balancing the needs and preferences of families and staff. They set up a consultation process with all stakeholders, including families, staff, and the local council.

Several options were presented, including having 2 x 7.5-hour sessions or 2 x 6-hour and 1 x 3-hour session per week. Following discussions and feedback from stakeholders, a fortnightly timetable of 5 x 6-hour sessions was adopted, with 2 sessions one week and 3 sessions the following week.

Cycle of engagement

The following cycle can guide you to work together with your team as you implement changes.

Share information.
Ask for input and ideas.
Offer development and support.
Implement and reflect.

As you work through this cycle, use the action plan template to break down the specific tasks you need to do to implement changes at your service.

As you record progress with these tasks, you can use this template to document your narrative of change. Alternatively, you can design your own approach, such as using the minutes of staff meetings to record information, progress, updates and impacts.

Provide your team with relevant information, as early as possible, about how your service is considering introducing Pre-Prep or increasing Three-Year-Old Kindergarten hours, and the options being explored. You could have a series of planning meetings where you share information about:

proposed timeframes for Pre-Prep and Three-Year-Old Kindergarten if scaling up to 15 hours
developing or revisiting your service’s vision and rationale for change
how and when staff can provide input
where to get more information or support.

Communicate face-to-face wherever possible, especially for important messages. Also check that your team understands the changes and impacts, and know they can ask any questions about any concerns they have.

2. Ask for input and ideas

Ask your staff for their views and suggestions about decisions that affect them, and any input they have received from families. It may be helpful to establish points in time to cover key topics where you will come back together for further discussion.

Use the Your guide to information sheets to support your discussions, as they include tips about what to consider when planning for different approaches and questions for reflective discussion.

Respond to concerns and questions promptly and provide clear and accurate information to help your staff understand what’s happening and the reasons for any decisions following their input. Be clear and transparent and follow up with individuals about how they are dealing with the changes.

While you may not be able to act on all input, give staff the opportunity to have their views acknowledged and to be consulted about changes that will affect their work. Regular engagement will empower your team and allow for ongoing reflection on your progress.

Engage with families and your community and seek their insights and perspectives. See the ‘Engaging with families’ section for more information.

3. Offer development and support

Let your team know what support is available and ask them what they need. This may involve professional development, attending information and training sessions or assistance from a mentor. Consider whether whole-of-centre professional development in relation to your change process is an option for your team.

Your Early Childhood Improvement Branch will also be able to connect teachers and educators with their local Early Years Learning Network so that they can benefit from connections between peers and shared learning. Encourage your team to share knowledge and learn from others.

4. Implement and reflect on progress

As your plans progress, keep documenting key points in your change narrative. These do not always have to be through staff meetings, you could have:

focus group discussions
an email for feedback with questions relating to your change process
a Google form or similar, that can provide anonymity if required
a collaborative sticky note board for ideas and feedback
Q&A sessions, facilitated by an external person if appropriate
a trusted team representative who collects views and presents them to your service leadership
an ‘open door’ policy, where you invite staff to provide feedback and ideas directly to you.

Provide regular updates about any changes at every step of your change process, including overviews of feedback received and decisions made if you presented proposals or invited ideas.

Regular discussion and reflective practice will provide a source of feedback and learning about your own leadership approach. It can also help you understand how your team is experiencing the change process so you can adapt your leadership approach, if necessary.

Resources

References

Leadership in Early Childhood, A cultural-historical theory of practice development. Joce Nuttall, Linda Henderson, Elizabeth Wood, Jenny Martin. 2024.

Updated 13 December 2024