Top tips: Ensuring staff know and understand your policies
On average, early years settings have over 100 policies in place that set out the setting’s practice. Policies are underpinned by legislation and should reflect a setting’s daily practice. Read our top tips on how you can ensure all staff know and understand your policies.
Top tips for ensuring staff know and understand your policies
- Review your policies and determine which ones are a priority for new staff to know and understand, for example, your safeguarding policy may be sent to new starters prior to their employment – with knowledge checks of their understanding during induction and probation periods
- Use your induction period to introduce key policies and have regular checks of understanding
- Enable new employees to meet staff with key responsibilities, e.g. your designated safeguarding lead person, to discuss the policy, to help bring the words in the policy to life with examples in practice
- Use staff and individual meetings with members of your team to focus on specific policies to assess staff understanding
- Create scenarios or quizzes to test staff knowledge to provide different ways of assessing knowledge and understanding
- Ensure policies clearly link to daily practice. Invite staff to input when updating a policy, to help ensure it reflects practice and supports staff to feel involved and engaged in shaping policies
- Make policies easily accessible, such as having digital and hard copies available
- Create an annual review plan, ensuring policies are relevant to what is happening, e.g. reviewing your sun cream policy at the start of summer.
NDNA products to support you with this tip
Disclaimer: Activities with children must always be risk assessed, including for allergies or choking. Children must always have adequate supervision. Resources and materials must always be appropriate for children’s age and stage of development.
