PURPLE POST August 2020

Hello everyone and welcome to the August edition of Purple Post.

Update from the People team

We hope that everyone enjoyed their well-deserved extra day’s annual leave in August!

We are very excited to announce that our brand new wellness centre and mental health support page is now LIVE! You can find this in the Parenta people section of the staff intranet. Please go and check it out! It has some helpful hints and tips as well as a section with many links to organisations that can offer support.
Introducing… the NEW Parenta Bot! 

The purpose of the new Parenta Bot is to help website visitors to easily navigate through the Parenta.com website and find the right solution for them. The Bot will introduce itself and then ask a series of automated questions in order to help the website user to find the right Parenta solution faster. The questions have been designed to segment the visitor’s enquiry into four different sections: Training, Software Solutions, Marketing Solutions and Recruitment.

 

The main objective is to make it easier for website visitors to enquire about what solutions we offer and ultimately get leads in faster.


Try it out for yourself! Simply go to the home page on parenta.com and look for the speech bubble in the bottom right corner of your screen.
Reminder - Free COVID-19 Staying Safe Course
Don’t forget that City and Guilds has kindly given us FREE OF CHARGE access to its “COVID-19 – getting ready to return to work and staying safe” course. This is available for all Parenta staff and our learners. All learners will be reminded this week in their monthly newsletter, but please encourage them to take the course. It takes approx. 35 minutes to complete and you will receive a certificate on completion. Here is the link to the course

Zoom company update

A short summary of how our cost structure has changed and where we stand.

A special thanks this month goes to the Training team. The overdue completions have reduced dramatically and we finished the year with less than 20 of the cohort still to complete. Well done, you should be really proud of yourselves! We have saved a lot of cost since March with no office to run, no travelling and of course the awful pay cut that was necessary to enforce. Putting staff on furlough has also allowed us to reduce our costs substantially but of course, we had to make a difficult decision when it came to redundancies. However, we were able to bring a few members of the team back from furlough and we intend to continue to do so in October. 

Nonetheless, our profitability has deteriorated with very few starts, no new completions and virtually no software sales – so the net result is that we’ve been making a loss for a few months now. This is expected to continue for August, but we are anticipating a strong September – with October and November continuing an upward trend. The struggle continues to cover our costs, so the pay cut will, unfortunately, have to stay in place for now but we anticipate (and really really hope) that we can start to reduce it from October. 

Whilst it is still looking tough we believe that 2021 will be strong as the market starts to turn.

As always, a big thank you to all for tuning in to the monthly company updates, particularly those who are still on furlough but remain positive during these difficult times.

Here is the link to our Zoom meeting, held on 17th August:
Password: kC5s7B$c
Don’t forget to use the staff intranet – it’s packed with resources to help our learners and settings
A reminder that all Parenta resources to help our learners and settings can be found here on our intranet, all in one handy place. We publish additional industry expert advice, news articles and crafts in our free magazine and on our blog.

Here are this month’s How to Guides and new additions to the staff intranet:

Entice new customers with the power of testimonials!

The positive endorsements that we receive from our existing customers are not only a great way for giving praise to the individuals or teams concerned, but are used as a valuable marketing tool to attract new customers! 

Please ensure that after every positive interaction you have with a customer you ask them if they would be willing to send in a short testimonial and then follow up with the usual link https://www.parenta.com/testimonial/  

Here are a couple of lovely testimonials received in August from our learners:
Linda (Alexander) was honestly the most helpful assessor - she understood the way I learn and am able to complete assignments and was always available for any help or assistance! She was so warm natured and honestly cared about my course and progress. Couldn’t thank her enough, I feel like without her help I would have fallen really far behind.
Kayla Cooke, Aspire Day Nursery
I think Fiona Spencer was incredible! I have only great things to say about her, she helped me to achieve the most in the quickest time and I’m over the moon! I never thought I’d be able to do it but with Fiona's support I achieved everything I thought I wouldn’t!
Kalie-Ane Sturgess, Children’s 1st

Keep those High Fives coming!

Thanks to all those who have been giving kudos throughout the month – please keep it going, it’s important now more than ever to give each other a deserved ‘pat on the back’. We have a winner for August – Sally Morgan – congratulations Sally! A double celebration as we wish you all the best for your upcoming maternity leave.

Don't forget you can start voting for our September employee of the month already. Keep that Kudos coming and please give recognition for all the hard work our colleagues are doing.
Baby Congrats!

Stacey Stevens’ baby Joshua born on the 31st July.

Welcome to:

  • Lee Rundle
  • Mark Little

Goodbye to:

  • Gemma Mellett
  • Charlotte Keene
  • Melanie Gibson
  • Hayley Colwell
  • Melanie Payne
  • Sam Kane

Parenta Magazine

Our free monthly magazine is packed with news articles and advice pieces - all of which are written to help nursery managers with the efficient running of their settings and to promote the health, happiness and wellbeing of the children in their care. Please do read it and send the magazine link to your contacts.
Read our magazine

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