Building a Culture of Support and Trust: Strategies for People Leaders

“ We really depend on our center directors and our district leaders who are the local leadership to really be there. And again, we’re a relationship business. So that doesn’t mean be there and come into a center for an hour. It means literally sitting alongside teachers and center directors talking to them about what they need, when they need it, how they need it.  Those little moments where our leaders are supporting their team and that kind of is really so critical to our culture of engagement.”

Jess Harrah is the Chief People Officer at KinderCare, a leading provider in early childhood and school-age education and care. Jess and host Nicole Alvino discuss KinderCare’s commitment to supporting its 35,000 employees and nearly 200,000 working families nationwide. They explore the importance of employee engagement, the impact of offering childcare benefits, and the strategies KinderCare implements to maintain a positive work culture.

“One of the things that we do and started almost 13 years ago now at KinderCare is we measure employee engagement. We have a close partnership with Gallup, so it is really important for us to hear from our team, and that is our teachers, our center directors. We do that annually through a survey and then we action on it.”

• The importance of employee engagement and support
• Work-life integration and flexibility
• Authentic leadership and transparency

“Now what we’re seeing is a lot more of our teachers who maybe wanna work 20 hours, maybe 15 hours, they may be going back to school. This may be a job for them that works well with their family responsibilities. And so really thinking about how we meet our team and our workforce where they are.”