Deputy helps Child Care Staffing Inc. save up to $100K and provide staff in preschools and daycare across NYC

Based in Brooklyn, Child Care Staffing Inc. recruits and dispatches experienced substitute teachers to preschools, day care centres, and other early child care providers throughout NYC.

They bring exceptional educational professionals and childcare centres together to provide the best learning environment for children to thrive and grow.

Their Staffing Manager, Marlene Rossi, has been in the industry for 10 years. She says that she is so familiar with her clients by now that, when they call to urgently request a substitute teacher, she instantly knows the right person for the job based on the organisation. That just comes naturally with experience.

“On weekdays, it’s very hectic in the mornings. Between 6 and 8 am is the hardest time for us. That’s when our clients have staff calling out…Everyone is making those last-minute, emergency calls in the morning.”

On top of the usual call outs, so many businesses are feeling the strain of ongoing staff shortages. There is a huge need for temporary staff, and covering those requests is no easy task.

To make sure they meet the needs of all their clients, Child Care Staffing Inc. needs to stay extremely efficient and make the best use of every hour of employee time.

Naturally, one of Marlene’s biggest challenges is managing countless call outs from preschools and child care centres — usually with just an hour or two before the centre opens.

She notes that, with Deputy, she can simply scroll down a list of available staff on her phone and find the right person.

On top of that, Marlene needs to ensure that their extensive remote workforce gets to all the right locations, at the right times.

If one of their substitute teachers is running late, has an emergency, or is in the wrong place, that doesn’t just cut into their billable hours and revenue — it means a classroom full of kids without a teacher. Meeting their client’s needs is priority number one.

“We really need to ensure the staff are meeting their attendance requirements. And that's something that needs to be monitored constantly because we're all remote, right? They don't see their direct supervisor unless it's in a message from Deputy. So being able to notify them and let them know, your attendance isn't meeting the standards right now, it's important, so they’re not caught by surprise.”

Before her experience with Deputy, Marlene says “I would schedule staff very manually on a piece of paper. It was really archaic.”

She notes that by using Deputy, she can eliminate some of the common mistakes and setbacks that come with old-school pen and paper or spreadsheets.

“Human error is very common. It's human, right? When you use a tool online, it helps you eliminate some of that error. Because if you send a substitute teacher to a location that they're not supposed to be in, you have to pay them. So [by using a tool] you're saving yourself some money…and saving time! Nothing could give you back that time.”

When Child Care Staffing Inc. started looking into different scheduling and timekeeping software, Marlene says it was Deputy’s “ease of use” that really made it stand out.

“Implementing Deputy was really easy. It was a matter of logging in and there you go. Set up your staff and start using it.”

“It was really easy to just add a schedule and send a notification to staff. I believe that's one thing the other companies didn't have — that notification option where staff get instant updates of where they will be working, instead of having to call and email to find out.”

“And it's easy to go through orientation with staff and explain Deputy. No one's flabbergasted or doesn't understand. It's really simple and I think that's what I enjoy about it the most.”

When asked how big of a part Deputy plays in her day, Marlene says, “It's everything for my daily process. It's what gives the staff the schedule. It's what tells me who's where and when and how to pay them…I know if they're not punched in, or if they run late. And they can communicate with me in a one-stop shop. That level of organisation is everything to me.”

Without that tool, she says there simply wouldn’t be enough time in the day to complete all her essential tasks.

“When we started using Deputy 6 years ago, we probably had a roster of 18 subs. We've gone to 100 subs now. One person can’t schedule all that with paper and a pencil…It takes support from an electronic tool.”

When asked to put a dollar value on that efficiency and time saved, Marlene says, without Deputy, they’d probably have to hire 2 more people to manage her workload, which would cost them about $100K a year in salary costs.