People & Quality Manager in London

Kido operates 20 nurseries in and around London. We are dedicated to providing the highest quality early years education and care possible. We create magical and engaging learning spaces infused with cutting edge pedagogy which are brought to life by great teachers who nurture and enhance every child’s innate curiosity, creativity and ability to be a lifelong learner. We believe that a combination of free and structured play, an engaging and interactive learning environment, and an abundance of love, care and attention provide the most solid foundation for children in their early years.

We are looking for a fantastic People & Quality Manager who will nurture our people throughout their employee journey by delivering their training and being hands on supporting their career development. We have People & Quality Managers who are instead focussed on getting the quality of care and education just right in their regions. Our People & Quality Managers work closely with our Performance Director, Head of People and our Chief Operations Officer, as a team we look after all elements of nursery operations. Our People & Quality Managers are directly responsible for the effective leadership of Nursery Managers, providing coaching, mentoring and implementing robust action plans and performance management strategies to ensure excellence for our children and families.

This includes role modelling leadership behaviours to positively impact teams engagement and staff retention. The difference between a good and a great nursery almost always boils down to interpersonal dynamics in the nursery and the culture a manager establishes through the way in which they tackle challenging situations. The role involves a lot of time in our nurseries embedding and empowering your teams. There is also the need for you to protect your time for strategy and development work. You will need to embrace managing competing demands effectively and navigating complicated trade-offs.

This is an exciting position for someone to join our training and quality team, someone who is a team player with lots of initiative, resilience and gumption who wants to make an impact in a way that really makes a difference to our people, children and parents.

As one of our People & Quality Managers you will join a team who are committed to making people’s time at work as meaningful and fulfilling as possible, whilst driving the quality and educational delivery in your settings. Working closely with our other People & Quality Managers you will lead and manage your group of nurseries ensuring people, training and quality are at the forefront of our culture.

• Provide exceptional leadership for our nursery management teams who you will line manage. Lead through culture, values, and behaviours, to drive excellence.
• Spend time in every nursery, getting to know the teams so that you can embed best practices and role model from within the rooms.
• Support with the daily operational challenges your teams face by being a hands on problem solver.
• Empower your teams to succeed when you’re not there in person.
• Ensure that teams are staffed and supported every day.
• Take overall responsibility for your region's commercial performance including managing budgets and costs appropriately.
• Ensure that your nurseries are always compliant with the Early Years Statutory Framework and have a sound knowledge and understanding of all early years legislation and guidance.
• Take responsibility for ensuring that all nursery teams are fully compliant with their regulatory training and company inductions.
• Identify training needs, additional requirements and personal development plans including coaching and mentoring for your managers.
• Take a lead role with Ofsted inspections in your nurseries and support inspections across the network.
• Ensure that teaching is in line with the EYFS and that our interactive, engaging Kido curriculum is being delivered to an outstanding level across your nurseries.
• Develop soft skills within nurseries teams, deliver training through staff meetings, interactive workshops, one to one coaching and through actively demonstrating yourself.
• Analyse the nursery's needs and develop inspiring training to further upskill the teams.
• Support our people in their journey towards qualification, aiding our apprentices and EYITT students to achieve “sign off” by collaborating with our Qualification Lead.
• Work closely to ensure that delivery and training needs are aligned across Kido UK.
• Support our nursery teams through safeguarding concerns by advising them on next steps in contacting the appropriate bodies e.g. LADO or MASH.

We believe in innovation and modern thinking. Our success depends on our energized passionate people. We are looking for people who share our vision for early childhood education. You should be Early Years Level 3 qualified, DSL and First Aid trained and have held management positions, preferably for a consistent period of time. You should be a highly resilient, positive influencer with the ability to motivate teams and individuals. This role forms part of our nurseries support hub (head office) and will be predominantly nursery based across 6 of our settings.

• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays, rising to 30 days after 5 years' service
• Your birthday off
• 100% Free Childcare (Subject to availability, T&Cs apply)
• Up to £1000 refer a friend bonus
• Annual performance-related pay increases
• Brilliant career progression opportunities
• Company awards and celebrations
• 5 days of enhanced sick pay
• Early access to pay through the Hastee app
• Perkbox discounts and savings on thousands of retailers
• Your wellbeing matters – we provide not just a confidential employee assistance programme but access to our wellness hub
• Cycle to work scheme
• Electric car scheme

Kido is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children. Kido will ensure that our recruitment procedures meet the standards set out in our safer recruitment policy (available upon request) and our selection criteria prevents unsuitable people from gaining access to children. As part of our commitment to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the children in our care successful candidates are expected to undergo pre-employment checks including an enhanced DBS and barred lists check.