Pip: Welcome to the Edifying Early Childhood Workforce Institute — where the work of keeping small humans safe and the work of keeping good staff around turn out to be the same conversation.
Mara: Today's episode comes from Edifying Early Childhood Consultants, and we're digging into the early childhood workforce — specifically what it takes to bring new staff on well and keep them there. Let's start with onboarding.
Early Childhood Workforce
Pip: The central tension here is straightforward: early childhood programs can't afford to treat hiring as a revolving door, because unlike most industries, the stakes of undertrained staff aren't just operational — they're safety mandates.
Mara: The post frames the cost plainly: "Financially, employee turnover can cost up to 150% of the new hire's salary when you consider the cost of re-posting the job, redoing interviews, and so forth."
Pip: And that's before you factor in what high turnover does to the team still standing — communication breaks down, ratios get shaky, and the culture that was supposed to attract good people quietly erodes.
Mara: The piece lays out a structured timeline for addressing this. Onboarding doesn't begin on day one — it begins with the job offer itself, and it runs through everything it takes for a new hire to fully mesh with their department.
Pip: The first thirty days are about orientation — sharing the mission, walking through policies, making sure every new staff member has a folder with written procedures and the forms they actually need. Concrete, not ceremonial.
Mara: Then at ninety days, the focus shifts to checking in — reviewing performance, yes, but also asking employees directly how the organization can support them. The post lists specific empowerment strategies: providing necessary resources, communicating organizational goals clearly, and organizing training programs to build new skills.
Pip: There's something quietly radical about a ninety-day check-in that asks "how can we support you" instead of just "are you hitting your numbers." In early childhood, retaining confident staff isn't a nice-to-have.
Mara: Right — the post is explicit that having qualified staff is not optional in early childhood education. The onboarding system isn't about comfort; it's about consistency, safety, and keeping communication lines open across the whole organization.
Pip: A well-built onboarding process is essentially infrastructure — and infrastructure, once built, keeps paying for itself every time you don't have to restart from zero.
Mara: That idea of building something sustainable carries into everything else these conversations touch on in early childhood workforce development.
Pip: Onboarding as infrastructure — that framing stays with me.
Mara: It should. When the workforce is stable, the children in those rooms are safer. That's the throughline worth carrying into the next episode.