Introducing Future Flyers Nursery
Future Flyers is a growing day nursery delivering high-quality childcare based in Stoke-on-Trent with a strong focus on inspiring the next generation through creative play and interactive learning.
The management team at Future Flyers were passionate about their vision and values and had an ambition to scale further, all while creating a consistent, nurturing environment for both children and the staff who support them.
As with any fast-growing team, the Future Flyers’ leadership team began receiving informal feedback on issues with their culture. Paired with a high staff turnover rate this became a priority action for the business and they undertook a Cultiv8tiv assessment to gain honest, data-backed insight into their team’s experience with their workplace culture.
Industry Challenges and Cultural Context
Future Flyers operates in a sector where staff recruitment and retention are challenging. The nature of the work – emotionally and physically demanding – requires a culture of support, development, and trust.
A unique challenge for the industry is high staff turnover, with early years providers seeing a 21% turnover rate on average. With a shortage of full time staff in the sector (more than three-quarters of early years settings were cited as struggling to recruit staff) there are ample opportunities for employees to find other roles elsewhere.
Founder Ben Sorrill recognised that he had to act on the informal feedback he’d heard amongst team members and make changes to his organisational culture if he wanted to reverse this industry trend and keep his team together, reducing the stress, burden and financial implications of continually recruiting new staff.
Ben knew that his culture change project couldn’t be based on informal, anecdotal evidence and that he needed clear and data-driven insight into his team before he made any policy changes that affected staff.
Surfacing Insight and Driving Conversation with Cultiv8tiv
The Future Flyers’ leadership team knew they had to reassure staff that their feedback was completely anonymous, especially with previous informal comments that some staff may not have felt completely confident sharing their feelings openly in day-to-day settings.
The Cultiv8tiv assessment revealed some issues with workloads, as well as some logistical and practical points about the setup of feedback, appraisals and how management used technology in the nursery.
These insights gave Ben and his team a structured way to have open, honest conversations with the management team at the nursery and ensured that a difficult conversation was backed up by data and clear insight.
By seeing the data visualised and themes clearly drawn out, it became easier to engage in dialogue and plan changes across all levels of the organisation.
Turning Insights into Action
Future Flyers used their Cultiv8tiv culture assessment to guide some practical steps that would drive up motivation:
- Employing a cleaner and other ancillary workers to take an unwanted tasks off of their staff at the end of a long working day
- Helping ease the burden of unexpected staff leave with the use of additional agency workers and the building of part-time support
- Investing in recruitment, training and development to ensure that there was enough capacity at management level to run regular appraisals and feedback sessions with every employee
For the leadership team, the process was about more than data – it was about creating a moment of reflection and a foundation for deeper conversations. As a result the leadership team already feel that the culture and the general feeling of happiness and wellbeing in the team have improved and, crucially, staff turnover has significantly improved.
Client Testimonial
On the Cultiv8tiv process and the report outputs Ben Sorrill, Founder of Future Flyers nursery, said:
“The Cultiv8tiv assessment armed me with all the facts and data I needed to talk to my management team. I was able to present staff’s opinions and feelings as facts without any personal bias. This enabled us to work on practical changes for our team that have made them happier at work and, most importantly, has stopped the high levels of staff turnover we were seeing previously.
“I was sceptical about how an AI powered assessment would help us but it’s been brilliant for us, especially with the excellent additional support we’ve received from the Cultiv8tiv team. At the prices of a Cultiv8tiv assessment this really is a no brainer for organisations who want to assess and improve their workplace culture.”
Looking Forward
Ben and the team at Future Flyers are already making changes based on their Cultiv8tiv assessment. With the right insights and a growing culture of open communication, they are laying strong foundations for growth that reflects their values and supports every team member.
By embedding culture into their business strategy, Future Flyers is ensuring their settings are not only great places for children – but for the people who care for them too.