Early Years Recruitment: Why Choosing the Right People Matters
At Tommies Childcare, our nursery teams are at the heart of everything we do.
For children, nursery life is not just about the rooms, resources, routines, and activities. It is about the people they build relationships with each day. The familiar adults who greet them in the morning. The practitioners who notice when they need reassurance. The team that supports their play, comforts them through big feelings, and helps them grow in confidence.
That is why early years recruitment matters so much.
When you are choosing a nursery, you are also choosing the people who will care for your child. You need to feel confident that those people are safe, suitable, well-supported, and genuinely passionate about early years education.
Having been part of the early years sector since 1998, we understand how important it is to recruit, support, and retain high-quality staff. We also understand that parents deserve honesty about the staffing challenges nurseries and pre-schools are facing across the UK.
Here we’ll explore the recruitment challenges nurseries and pre-schools face, our internal recruitment processes, and how we support and retain our staff.
Recruitment challenges across the early years sector
Early years recruitment has been challenging for several years.
Demand for childcare continues to grow, particularly as more families access funded early years education. At the same time, many providers are finding it harder to attract and retain qualified practitioners with the right skills, knowledge, and experience.
This is not because early years work is unimportant. Quite the opposite.
Working in early education is highly skilled, emotionally demanding, physically active, and deeply responsible. Practitioners support children’s learning, development, communication, routines, friendships, independence, behaviour, well-being, and safety every day.
Some of the current challenges across the sector include:
- a national shortage of qualified early years professionals
- growing demand for childcare places across the country
- cost-of-living pressures affecting career choices and staff retention
- competition from other education sectors, including schools, offering higher pay or different working patterns
- fewer candidates applying for early years jobs in some locations
- experienced practitioners retiring or leaving the profession
- the need for strong safeguarding knowledge, training, and qualifications
For people beginning a job search in early years, pay, working hours, training, location, career development, and feeling properly supported all matter. For nursery providers, the challenge is not only finding candidates for vacancies but also finding the right people for permanent positions who can build a meaningful career in childcare.
For parents, this matters because consistent, caring teams help children feel safe, settled, and ready to learn.
Recruitment is about more than filling a vacancy
In early years, recruitment cannot simply be about filling a role.
The right person needs to be safe, suitable, caring, patient, observant, and genuinely interested in helping young children develop. They need to understand that early years education is built on relationships, trust, safeguarding, communication, purposeful play, and close partnership with families.
At Tommies, every person we welcome into our team must be suitable for the role and aligned with the values that matter to us as a nursery group.
Our recruitment process includes:
- a careful review of applications and employment history
- a formal interview to assess skills, knowledge, experience, and suitability
- verification of relevant qualifications, such as CACHE or NVQ Level 2 and 3, where applicable
- at least two satisfactory references, including the. mostrecent employer
- exploration of any gaps in employment
- assessment of safeguarding knowledge and understanding
- checks around relevant training, including paediatric first aid and safeguarding certificates, where appropriate
- observation of interactions with children, where this is suitable and practical
Every applicant goes through safer recruitment checks, including:
- enhanced DBS checks
- identity verification
- right to work checks
- qualification verification
- health declarations
These steps take time, but they matter.
When children see the same adults regularly, they begin to feel secure. They learn who will comfort them, who will help them, who understands their routines, and who notices the small things that matter.
This is especially important during settling-in, room transitions, and times when children are learning to manage emotions, friendships, independence, and communication.
In a nursery environment, consistency helps children feel safe enough to explore. It supports their confidence, play, learning, and ability to form positive relationships with others.
That is why staff retention matters as much as recruitment.
The best way to support children is not only to bring the right people into the team, but to help those people feel valued, supported, and able to build a long-term career in the early years.
When agency staff are needed
The subject of agency staff in nurseries can often feel like the elephant in the room. But we’re here to be honest with parents.
Like many nurseries, there may be occasions when agency staff are needed to support safe staffing levels and statutory staff-to-child ratios.
Before turning to agency support, however, we will always look at the options available within Tommies first. This may include:
- support from colleagues across other Tommies nurseries
- our internal Bank Staff and Casual Worker team
- managers and some deputy managers who are supernumerary* and able to step in when needed
*Supernumerary simply means they are primarily office-based staff.
Only when these options have been fully explored do we use external agency staff.
We know that familiar faces matter to children, so where agency support is needed, we aim to use the same agencies and staff wherever possible. This helps create greater consistency for children, families, and our nursery teams.
Agency staff are also expected to have completed appropriate recruitment and safeguarding checks, including enhanced DBS and reference checks, in line with early years requirements.
Supporting and retaining qualified practitioners
Recruiting the right people is only one part of the picture. Supporting and retaining them is just as important.
Since 2018, Tommies has proudly held a 3-Star Best Companies rating (the highest accreditation available), placing us in the World Class Employer category based on employee feedback.
This matters because a strong nursery team does not happen by accident. It comes from creating a working environment where people feel supported, valued, listened to, and able to grow.
We invest in our teams through:
- pay above the National Living Wage for qualified practitioners
- enhanced annual leave, up to 27 days depending on role
- additional leave for good attendance
- financial recognition for long service
- sick pay
- options to buy or sell annual leave
- performance-related pay
- childcare discounts
- enhanced maternity and paternity leave
- comprehensive training programmes
- succession planning and career development opportunities
These things matter because when staff feel supported, they are better able to support children and families.
A practitioner who feels valued is more likely to stay, develop their skills, deepen their knowledge, and build strong relationships with the children in their care.
What parents can ask when choosing a nursery
If you are looking around nurseries for the first time, it is completely reasonable to ask about staffing.
You may want to ask:
- How are staff recruited?
- What safer recruitment checks are completed?
- How are new team members supported?
- How does the nursery help children build relationships with familiar adults?
- What happens if staff are absent?
- Are bank or agency staff used?
- How does the nursery support staff retention and consistency?
- What training do practitioners receive?
- How does the Key Person approach work?
A good nursery should be able to answer these questions clearly and confidently.
At Tommies, our priority will always be to keep children safe and provide the care, education, and relationships they need during their early years.
Recruitment across the sector may be challenging, but our standards remain the same: children deserve warm, capable, carefully chosen people around them.
Because behind every strong nursery experience, there is a team of people making it happen.
And those people help lay the foundations for the next generation.
