As 2025 roars into full swing, one voice from the sector is echoing loud and clear…BURN OUT! Lets not dilly dally around this point – rather face it head on and begin to employ our collective thought away from problem identification and into helpful problem solving.
In order to get those creative problem-solving juices flowing, here’s a few interesting points to consider:
- The latest workforce survey (2021) identifies that approximately 60% of our sector have less than six years’ experience working with children, with average tenure at a service being just 3.6 years. (2021 ECEC National Workforce Census).
- Trainees with no experience working with children are now an increasingly prominent avenue for recruiting educators.
- We all know about that severe workforce shortage! We’re all wearing multiple hats every day.
- The paperwork keeps piling up! Chatter in our sector forums reflects the feeling of overwhelm at all the additional work expected to ‘meet the regs’.
Just looking at these few dot points, I’m feeling anxious and stressed! Fear not, fellow leaders, the answer to ditching those ‘educational leader checklists’ (what are those anyway?) lies in quality area 4.
Hold up – what has quality area 4 got to do with ‘Educational Program and Practice’?
Everything. As an Educational Leader, much of my role over these past three years has been focusing on Quality Area 4. While that may seem a little strange to some, neuroscience proves that educational outcomes for children are dependent on the emotional state of the people caring for and educating them, so for me, focusing on the wellbeing of the team makes logical sense.
Let’s unpack.
Refocusing Our Focus:
- “You can’t pour from an empty cup”.
- “If you are in a state of high tension, high stress, you cannot help a child in that state, so it starts with you” Stuart Shankar, 2018.
What ever way you prefer to hear it, those who are caring for children are the key to the outcomes of the children they are caring for. Therefore, the wellbeing of educators as individuals, small teams and whole teams is a critical factor in the success of each individual early learning service. It seems, therefore, that focusing on crafting and maintaining an organisational culture of wellbeing is a key strategy to address the rise of burnout and dissatisfaction within our sector.
What is a ‘Culture of Wellbeing’ and How Do We Build One?
According to Forbes Magazine (2019), a ‘workplace culture consists of unwritten rules about what it really means to be an employee of that company…. Simply put, workplace cultures tacitly communicate ‘how things are done around here’ (REF How to build a culture of employee wellbeing – Jim Purcell, Forbes Magazine, June 25, 2019).
When employers purposefully plan for and execute the foundations of wellbeing as a core element of organisational culture, we see wellbeing move beyond “R U OK day” to become cemented as part of the organisational DNA. You can feel it when you enter a building. You can see it in the everyday interactions not only of the team but also between educators, children and families. This means that each individual service has its own culture, (and can change that culture) regardless of their ownership hierarchy – it’s the team on the ground, not in the head office that can shape the culture at YOUR service.
So, How Do We Build a Culture of Wellbeing?
Taking a line from the famous Pantene shampoo ad (1990’s for those old enough to remember it!) “it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen” gives us a hint that culture takes time, effort, focus and determination to change. It’s not a static destination, rather constantly changing target which needs daily adjusting. There is also not ‘one way’ to build a culture of wellbeing, primarily because ‘wellbeing’ means different things to different people, is heavily culturally influenced and shaped by context.
Helpfully, the EYLFV2 has gifted the sector with the term ‘place-based pedagogy’, empowering services to sculpt their organisational identity around their unique contexts – their teams, their families, children, wider community and surrounds. So ‘wellbeing’ can be shaped uniquely for your service, regardless of if you’re part of a chain, a stand-alone kindergarten/preschool, a family day care provider or a not-for-profit community run entity.
In preparation for this article, I proposed a reflective question to the team at my early learning service – a stand alone not-for-profit in rural Victoria.
“What does a culture of wellbeing look / sound / feel like?”
Here’s what they had to say: In the name of placed-based pedagogy, I’d wager that different teams have different ideas about what makes up ‘wellbeing’. P.S. “Snake Removal” is not related to this reflection, though I’d argue it certainly helps wellbeing!
How did we build do we strive for a culture of wellbeing?
If building a positive organisational culture was a straightforward process, more services would have achieved it! So rather than claiming we have built a culture of wellbeing, lets state that we continue to strive for it… culture is, after all, dynamic.
These examples are from one service in Victoria, where I am the Educational Leader. We know there will be aspects of these examples that everyone can borrow and make their own…and sharing these helps to fill my Mastery Cup so go ahead – borrow away!
The Director-Ed Leader Relationships is Key
Research by Sirah and Manni (2008), identifies the working relationships between the Director and Educational Leader at any service directly drives outcomes for children. In particular:
- The ability for Director and Ed Leader to have trust in each other, to reflect at a high level and have honest, difficult conversations together and work towards a common goal.
- The length of time the Ed Leader and Director have worked together (i.e. staff retention)
- The higher the level of qualification they hold, the better the outcomes for children.
As educational leader, a strong focus on maintaining and strengthening the working relationships with my director has been critical to sculping our organisational culture.
The Phoenix Cups® – A Framework for Understanding Ourselves and Each Other Better
The introduction of the Phoenix Cups® Framework at my service in 2016, began our understanding of human behaviour as a driver to meet our basic human life needs of Safety, Mastery, Connection, Freedom and Fun. While we began this journey to better understand children’s behaviour, the real magic happened once we applied this framework to ourselves. The framework provided a shared language from which we could address our individual wellbeing needs without fear of judgement or dismissal, and better understand the actions of our colleagues in the process…. The running joke is “don’t ask Linda to organise breaks for you, she forgets to take them!” (tiny Safety Cup®).
As I have learned more about myself through the Phoenix Cups® lens, I have identified habits that, in the past, I have been highly criticized for, but now understand is my way of meeting my need for Mastery. I have a small Connection Cup® so often forget the formalities of greetings etc. Providing myself the mantra of “Mastery Cup® mode, does not friends make” has helped me to think intentionally about taking the time to check in with colleagues, say good morning (!!) and remain present during conversations. This in turn, continues to make me a better leader.
With ongoing PD, coaching and mentoring, this framework has significantly improved our respectful relationships as a team and in turn, towards children.
Respect Trumps Harmony (Rachel Robertson, 2019)
In her keynote address at the ECA Conference 2019 (Leading from the Edge), Rachel Robertson spoke about leadership and team culture. “Respect trumps harmony” refers to the importance of having difficult conversations – to bring issues to the open and tackle them head on. This takes time, perseverance and guidance to develop this skill and we’re still working on it. The closer we move towards understanding each other (via Cups), the better we are at being reflective and having those hard conversations…so respect is beginning to trump harmony.
“No Triangles” (Rachel Robertson)
It means, I don’t talk to Sally about an issue I have with Samantha – rather I go directly to Samantha with it. This one has taken a significant focus to shift… and you can bet it rears its ugly head every so often, so we hold each other to account.
Sometimes, that means coming back to Rachel’s keynote address, rewatching it as a team and recommitting to ‘no triangles’.
“A leader is someone who sees something that needs doing, and does it” (Rachel Robertson)
Leadership is innate – it’s an action, not a person. The organisational structure at my service is fairly flat. That means, while some of us have specific responsibilities, we’re all able to be leaders in ways that works for our unique strengths and Cups profiles. As our organisational culture moves towards respect and understanding, I’m finding everyday examples of beautiful leadership emerge. Whether it’s someone taking the initiative to clear blackberry off the back fence, organise items to be dropped to the Men’s Shed for repair, lending a helping hand to other teams when needed or identifying opportunities to get ahead on planning (YES, get ahead!), these examples prove leadership is indeed an action.
Ongoing Wellbeing Training with Phoenix Support for Educators
Research around professional learning has shown that, for learning to be effective, we need constant training in the same skill (Leonard and Woodland, 2002). Over the years we’ve revisited the Educator Wellbeing workshops with Christopher Phoenix alongside other Phoenix PD’s and ongoing coaching. Having a deep understanding of our unhelpful thinking strategies further supports our strive for a culture of wellbeing. As we all know, some days are HARD y’all! The knowledge of unhelpful thinking strategies has been critical to steering our organisational culture away from negativity-and-issues mode and back into solutions-to-overcome-these-issues mode!
Phew! That’s a lot just to get started with…but wait, there’s more (if you dare to read!)
Every decision I make as Ed Leader has the team wellbeing at the forefront. This includes the expectations of planning, paperwork, critical reflection and pedagogical style. Here’s how quality area 1 (educational program and practice) is informed by quality area 4 (staffing arrangements)
Science Informs Decisions…
Neuroscience informs us that the quality of human relationships (connection) in the early years is critical to children’s lifelong outcomes, and if caregivers are in a state of high stress, they cannot help others in that state. Let’s keep that in mind as we explore further.
A Sector Wide Workforce Crisis
National Quality Standard 4.1.2 Every effort is made for children to experience continuity of educators at the service.
Within our workforce crisis, this quality area takes on a broader meaning. It’s no longer about continuity within a team, it’s continuity of the team. We had to find ways to take the pressure off the teams, to simplify the programming and paperwork, hold on to our educators and help them to shine.
Slow
Teaching and learning are more like a beautiful slow waltz with both partners moving in step - away from each other then closer together - than a high energy aerobics class.
The concept of slowing down our pedagogy to enable time to be with children, to be unhurried and to enjoy each other, fit well within our Safety-and-Connection-Cup strong team. While administrative tasks have still increased over the years, we’ve tried to take the approach that if one thing is added, something must drop to cater for this addition. Having the freedom to move more slowly, to work towards children’s individual rhythms and prioritise relationships over paperwork has helped to foster positive relationships and wellbeing across the board.
National Quality Standard 4.1.1 The organisation of educators across the service supports children's learning and development.
Simple
Simplifying planning, programming and administrative tasks has taken stress off the team, enabling them to feel empowered and fill their sense of Mastery as autonomous teams.
Removing team leaders (or rather, making everyone a team leader) further enables a full Mastery Cup® as teams manage their day’s collaboratively, working towards their own strengths, in a manner which suits them and the children in their care. Self-managing break times helps to support teams to fill their Safety Cups as needed, rather than waiting for a break cover. It also means the teams can work around the needs of the children too…ultimately “happy children helps build happier educators”.
This meant going back to the NQS, unpacking the language under quality area 1 and removing all the unnecessary items we’ve done in the past because “it’s always been done that way”. For our team, providing a templated and simple way to plan over a month-long period helped to further slow down our pedagogy which fit with our service philosophy subheading ‘time’.
By making planning a simple and achievable process for the team, I’ve moved my educational leaderships away from ‘compliance check listing’ to ‘professional trust’ which has resulted in less defensive interactions and more reflective discussions. Over the past 4 years, it’s been such as pleasure to see the shift in discussions as we no longer talk compliance, rather high-level reflection.
It fills my Mastery Cup® and enables me to focus on strategic thinking, filling both Freedom and Fun Cups in turn.
(National Quality Standard 4.2.1 – Professional Collaboration)
Supported
To achieve team autonomy, additional staffing has been added to all learning environments. In turn, this has enabled educators to meet the connection needs of children (i.e. Connection Cup®) while simultaneously supporting the team to minimise burnout and empathy fatigue (i.e. operate with fuller Safety and Connection Cups).
We also encourage the team to “bring their baggage with them” knowing that, as human beings, we cannot park our emotional suitcase at the doors we walk through. Having a shared language of the Phoenix Cups® Framework has supported team members to share their state of wellbeing with teams and thus better receive and give support as needed.
National Quality Standard 4.1.1 The organisation of educators across the service supports children's learning and development.
Trauma Informed Leadership
The “Child Safety Arrangements under the NQF” report released by ACECQA in December 2023, states that 2 of 3 children in Australia experience maltreatment before the age of 18. One could calculate then, that 2/3 of our educational teams have experienced some form of childhood trauma. The more I understand the signs of complex trauma and its impact on the brain, the better I am able to move towards trauma informed leadership and therefore make decisions to support individual educators to shine.
The more I learnt about trauma informed practice for children, the more I began to identify the impacts of trauma on our team. As Trent Savill explains, the brain stem can hold deep knowledge of trauma and can be triggered even years later by as much as a smell, sound, a date or a feeling. Smoke for example. The sound of helicopters on hot days, sirens or the sound of tree branches falling can all be triggers for different members of our team who experienced the devastating Black Saturday fires.
In another example having clear access to exits and seating options to see these exits during team meetings can support members of the team who have lived experience of other forms of complex trauma. This simple act enables these team members to fill their Safety Cups enough to be able to focus on the meeting, rather than continually scan for danger.
Monitoring Our Own Cups and the Teams' Cups
This year, in our Reflections of an Educator diaries, my Director and I added a section to every spread when we printed the journals – a Cups check in and Cups filling plan for ourselves and our teams. In doing so, we are keeping check on team wellbeing in the hopes to identify dips and plan interventions if/as needed.
There are no miracle answers!
Sorry to burst any hopeful bubbles! Cultures are built on relationships and relationships take a lot of maintenance! So…
- Is it all roses? No.
- Are there times when the wheels fall off the cart? Absolutely!
- Do we still have niggles. You betchya!
The difference is, we come back to our QIP goal (a culture of wellbeing), reflect again as a team and keeping working at it. As a result, we have good team retention, continuity of care for children and families, autonomy and agency for educators and our outcomes for children keep getting better.
After all, when our Cups are filled or filling, we have a strong sense of wellbeing. If we have a strong sense of wellbeing, we can better support children to experience this too.