App to ensure staff compliance at childcare business

Team Holiday provides full-day activities to over 65,000 children aged 5–15 every year across Melbourne and greater Victoria. Its programs are suitable for working families or for children who are just looking for fun activities to do during their holiday break. More than 500 carers, including many fully qualified teachers, deliver a safe environment for the children. Activities may include giant slip’n’slides, cooking days, wacky science experiments, sports clinics, bubble-soccer or reptile encounters. Excursions include indoor trampolining and rock-climbing centres, zoos, adventure parks, beaches, ice-rinks and much more.

The business uses the CareMonkey system to streamline onboarding and ensure their 500+ staff have all the qualifications required to provide the important, and compliant, duty of care for the 65,000 children enrolled in its programs.

“The information we collect and store on CareMonkey forms our staff records, which helps us remain compliant within our industry regulations,” said Sam Hoath, founder of Team Holiday. “Emergency contacts, qualifications, personal information and other relevant information about all staff can be collected and available via the app anytime, anywhere.”

Prior to deploying CareMonkey, staff qualifications and certifications were entirely paper based and could easily lapse without the knowledge of Team Holiday or the teaching staff.

Today CareMonkey keeps track of certificate expiry dates and reminds both staff and Team Holiday administration if they are expiring soon so they don’t go to work without them. The app captures a photo of the certificate and these are all checked and confirmed by administration staff. Certificates include vital credentials such as an anaphlyaxis training certificate, first aid certificate, asthma certificate, CPR certificate and lifeguard certification.

“Employee information like certificates and qualifications go out of date,” said Troy Westley, founder of CareMonkey. “CareMonkey is different because it automatically chases people when information is missing or needs updating, to ensure accuracy.

“This process saves HR a lot of time, and we are now seeing CareMonkey used to collect employee information, bank details, collecting and ensuring licences and certificate information don’t expire, sharing policies and training and capturing digital signatures afterwards to ensure employees understand the policy/training. It’s even used by some businesses as an easier way of submitting leave requests,” said Westley.