PURPLE POST August 2022

A warm welcome to the August edition of Purple Post!

Last month we reflected on what Remarkable looks like and everything we can do to help us achieve the coveted Remarkable status!

This included working on our communication, reputation/external perception, reducing the number of complaints and increasing the number of completions.

This month? Let's look at how us working together has led to some Remarkable improvements across these areas.

Our Journey to Remarkable so far

What Remarkable results! Let's keep this momentum going and be sure to share the following links with other happy customers so we can improve our rating even more.

EXTERNAL LINKS for sharing

We reported last month that the Functional Skills team is growing – well, we now have a full team of FS tutors! Ryan Green joined at the end of August which means we now have 11 tutors in total: 4 English tutors, 4 maths tutors and 3 Specialist Skills tutors. New courses are starting in early September, and there are various starting points throughout the month. Invitations to learners are being sent out early in the month.

Email address: There have been many emails going to the wrong email address for functional skills and ALS, so please ensure that you use the correct email addresses as follows:

fs@parenta.com and als@parenta.com

National Dog Day RESULTS

Best Dressed Dog

Self Care Questionnaire RESULTS

A big “thank you” to everyone who embraced International Self-Care Day in July, for taking an active part in the surveys and for sharing all your self-care activities. At the start of July, we encouraged everyone to think about self-care with a view that even if one person benefited from this exercise it would be worth it.

So, what did we discover?

• 80% of us were doing self-care at the start of July and 28% agreed to try something new, and 85% of us definitely would continue self-care after July

• We all love a good book, being the top self-care activity, so keep supporting those independent book shops too!

• I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy a good movie night (a good disaster movie!?), or a duvet box-set day – nominated the second-best self-care activity

• The main driver for self-care was for relaxation and emotional needs, and the high-ranking activities were walking (and talking), and spending time with friends and family

• Those that do recognise self-care are committed, with 40% doing daily and weekly self-care activities

• Sadly, the biggest barrier to self-care is work commitments and time, at 63% and 60% respectively

What can we take away from self-care July?

In contrast to the main idea that people feel guilty taking time to do self-care, it is the lack of work-life balance and time that stop people taking time out. We can all find time to do things for others, so find time for yourself, even if it is only 10-15 minutes, and reach out to try new things, whether that is a 10-minute guided meditation or a frantic workout at the gym (which can be very therapeutic).

The continuing adventures of the Parenta Bear

Keep those high fives coming!

We have a Kudo winner for August - Tutor Darryll Jones, well done Darryll!

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.

We hear from last month’s winner, Beth Kelly who, as you can read, was thrilled to be Kudos winner!

“My name is Beth and I work as an Early Years tutor in the Central Region Team. I used to work in a small nursery for 8 years doing room leading and third in charge role. I joined Parenta because I have wanted to be a tutor for a long time, and I worked hard to qualify during lockdown. Parenta gave me a chance to grow my development in Early Years to mentor and support my own caseload of learners to motivate and grow their own development, to provide the best childcare for children.

Things I find challenging in my job is to ensure all my ‘to do’s’ get done when I plan for them to as not everything goes to plan as everyone knows, and sometimes other needs may need to be met first. However, I love supporting my learners to their individual needs and seeing them achieve targets and goals in their progression.

I have an amazing support network in my team, especially a small group who go above and beyond to help me when I need it most everyday – Sachia Prince, Darryll Jones, Nic Reed and Kerrie Mitchell-Ross.

The things I love about Parenta is that there is always someone who can answer your questions and support you and everyone is friendly. I also love the flexibility which allows me to work with my daughter’s routine and mum life as a whole. Thank you to everyone who gave me kudos, I honestly couldn’t do my job as well as I do if it wasn’t for them supporting me and giving positive vibes always.”

“I was referred to Parenta by my manager and have recently passed my team leader course. My assessor was a pleasure to work with, we formed a lovely friendship. She always answered my questions and made things very clear. The team at Parenta are very friendly, and made me feel valued. All emails and calls were answered promptly and helped me through any inquiries. I will definitely recommend to others.”

Deniz Ali

“The Parenta customer service team and the website team are amazing. Always polite, friendly & efficient.”

Tiddlers

“Excellent service as always! We highly recommend Parenta for all childcare qualifications. Thank you!”

The Playhouse Nursery

“Parenta is a fantastic company. The team truly want the best for their clients and will put their all in to a high quality service to ensure high quality in the Early Years industry.”

Charlotte Allen

“Inwood Nursery have used the Abacus software from Parenta since 2005 and have never once seen the reason to change. It does everything we wish of it at a very reasonable cost which has not increased in the subsequent 17 years - how many other things can you say that about? Upgrades are regularly made and I do not feel there is a better system on the market. Parenta are regularly in contact just to check that everything is ok and we are happy.

They are always extremely efficient on the very rare occasion something needs attending to and they continue to have my utmost confidence. In 2019 they also built our new website and took over the running and administration of our e-mails and domain name.

I think that constitutes a very content customer.”

Caroline Payne

1.     Don’t forget to use the staff intranet! It is a treasure chest of resources all ready and waiting for you to use.

2.     When sending documents to the Marketing team for creating and/or branding, please ensure that the FINAL version which has been approved and signed off by all relevant parties and line managers – including those from other teams – is sent to the team. Please ensure that the correct data with all the required fields is included as a CSV file. This will avoid re-work and delay in returning the documents back to you.

Thank you!

Resources to help us, our learners, and our settings

A reminder that all Parenta resources can be found here on our staff 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 documents that have been added to the staff intranet:

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 well-being of the children in their care. Please do read it and send the magazine link to your contacts.