Communication methods in home daycare operations

Virtual Workplace and Communications

My current workplace is a home daycare agency whose principal responsibility is the daytime care of infants and children while their parents are working. Generally, we conduct communications continually and through all common means, including in person, telephone, and e-mail exchanges. Naturally, we must have the capability of contacting parents immediately in case of emergencies involving their children. Parents also need to be able to contact us for scheduling, as well as for many other types of routine and non-routine purposes. For that reason, we maintain the necessary information to contact our customers through every possible means and we provide them the opportunity to select their preferred mode of communication and to specify their preferred hierarchy of communications medium for both emergency and routine communications.

Face-to-face Communications

Because childcare is such an incredibly important and personal service, all parties involved expect to meet in person to discuss their respective concerns. We would never accept a new child without first interviewing that child's parents or caretakers about their expectations and the specific needs of the child. Likewise, we understand that parents feel the same way and would never entrust the care of their children to us without first taking a look at the facilities and daily operations and also meeting the individuals who will be taking care of their children.

Because most of our parents have very hectic schedules, we understand that they may not necessarily have the opportunity to spend more than a few minutes talking to us in person when they drop off or pickup their children. Therefore, we often provide them with a written narrative, especially if there is anything notable about their child's care. We also encourage parents to ask questions and express concerns although we hope that they understand that we may be very busy during pickup and drop-off times.

Email Communications

The use of email has been tremendously influential in our industry just as it has throughout society since approximately the turn of the 21st century. When we first installed a computer system in 1995, it was strictly used to maintain information, financial records, employment information, and to generate printed material. We upgraded to Internet connectivity and email capabilities in 1997 but email was not used that often for direct communication with clients. We constructed our website in 1998 and at that time, we provided a contact us link that was initially intended to be use primarily by prospective clients.

Almost immediately, we noticed that some of our clients started using that link to contact us for routine communications. At that time, most of our e-mail exchanges came from clients' business computer systems because while many professional businesses had already implemented Internet connectivity, comparatively fewer private individuals and families had yet moved to computer communications at home. In between 1999 and 2000, we noticed a dramatic increase in the use of email for routine communications and inquiries from our existing clients and we upgraded our network system to be able to handle the increased volume of email communications.

Now that email communication has become the primary means of communication besides the cellular telephone, we have changed many of our procedures to make sure that we exploit that medium to its full potential. We provide our customers with an electronic email newsletter and we frequently use email to provide supplemental information as necessary. We also give our clients the option of receiving their billing information online only, for which we give a nominal discount to support the global environment and because it would reduce our overhead if we could gradually convince all of our clients to go paperless. Communication via email offers instantaneous transmission of critical information in a format that also allows us to delay responding to routine exchanges. That is tremendously helpful to us in comparison to telephonic communications because they require a real-time response whether the nature of the communication is critical or merely routine.