ChildHR revolutionises people management for Little Saints Early Learning Centres

Little Saints Early Learning Centres are multi-site child care providers based in Gippsland in eastern Victoria. With market undersupply in the child care industry in the region, Little Saints seized an opportunity to expand and have significantly grown their footprint across outer Melbourne, the Latrobe Valley and West Gippsland. They now operate centres in Pakenham, Moe, Traralgon and Drouin, caring for children from six weeks to six years in Early Learning Centre’s, Kindergarten and children 6 years to 12 years in vacation care.

As suburban development in Melbourne’s outer east continues to grow, Little Saints recognised that there will continue to be greater numbers of children needing care than there are places, and plan to open two further centres by the end of 2020 to help address this market need.

With staff numbers growing, Little Saints realised they needed help from ChildHR to more effectively manage their HR administration across the expanding business.

Administration and compliance needs increased as the company’s operations expanded

Little Saints has experienced an exciting period of change, expanding their services within the Gippsland community and creating new jobs for local child care workers. The number of staff increased to over 100 across the four locations, and that will continue to grow with more locations to come.

However, with new jobs and new people came the ever-increasing challenge of many more hours of HR paperwork, onboarding and ongoing staff management. Before using ChildHR, Little Saints relied on paper documents and filing systems to manage their people, and the more they expanded the more difficult this became to do well.

In December 2018, with the fourth centre soon to open and paper files scattered across the different locations, Little Saints Operations Manager, Kate Nye, realised they urgently needed to digitise their HR processes and find more efficient ways of working across multiple sites.

Growth demanded change, and ChildHR’s tailored technology was the HR management platform Little Saints needed

Australia’s only childcare-specific HR system, ChildHR is a best practice ‘by the industry for the industry’ platform, consolidating staff management into one secure, cloud-based solution with industry-specific legally compliant documents. The technology is transforming the way early learning service providers implement employment law and people management through streamlined documentation and consistent processes.

In January 2019 Kate Nye took advantage of ChildHR’s 30-day trial and it didn’t take long for her to get excited about how ChildHR would revolutionise people management across the Little Saints workforce.

“We trialed the platform at one of our centres. Within a couple of weeks it became obvious we should dive in,” says Kate.

One of the most significant benefits of ChildHR to Little Saints is the ability to keep central records of all HR paperwork and the versatility of being able to access it anywhere from the cloud. Time savings have had a major impact on the business, such as reducing new staff onboarding from at least an hour down to 20 minutes and reducing the need to commute between the four centres.

Improvements in staff accountability and efficiency have been a ‘massive plus for Little Saints, with employees now able to upload their own forms, files, and documents, and update their profile and sign documents on a phone or tablet. Simplified reporting provides the ability to keep track of staff policy compliance with an online ‘paper trail’, and the platform caters for multiple business locations on the one system.

ChildHR delivered productivity and accountability improvements for Little Saints

Kate Nye sums up the benefits of ChildHR: “Accessibility and accountability!”

A range of important certifications and qualifications apply to the Australian early learning sector, with significant penalties and implications for those who fail to meet requirements. ChildHR has enabled Little Saints to greatly reduce their risk of non-compliance by reducing the human error and providing a clear process for staff onboarding and management, including confirmation of the required education qualifications.

Other benefits of ChildHR as Little Saints grows

Kate sees ChildHR growing alongside the expansion of Little Saints.

“As we add new centres and more staff, the challenges of managing multiple sites and people is eased by already having ChildHR in place. Each time we open a new site, we don’t need to reinvent our processes. The platform is already on,” Kate says.

The system has also helped Little Saints highlight the importance of compliance with employees, reduced ‘paperwork stress’ and ultimately given staff more time to care for children.

Discover how ChildHR makes it easy for you to focus on what matters

Streamline your HR practices, ensure you’re compliant and free up your team to focus on the delivery of quality child care within your business. Talk to us today about how you can enjoy the benefits of a system designed to support child care teams – just like Little Saints did.

Ask us about our 30 day FREE trial.

Learn more about ChildHR here or talk to one of our Customer Relationship Partners on

1300 410 340 for further information