HR Planning & Infrastructure

People are the main resource that ECEC employers have for delivering services. Planning how your organization will meet its current and future HR needs and how people will be supported and nurtured within your organization is critical for success. Organizations need to develop strategic HR goals that are aligned with the overall organizational vision, mission, values and objectives. HR planning is a complex, growing area of HR. 

Much of the content in this section is conceptual. It is designed to help centres determine the required human resources to best meet their needs. This section also provides tools to help plan for the future. Understanding the demographics of the organization’s workforce is very important for HR planning. For example, what is the average age of the early childhood educators in your centre?  A younger workforce is probably looking for more training and development. An older workforce may be looking for more flexibility at work. If the executive director is 61 years old and is thinking about retirement, is there anyone on staff who has the leadership skills to be promoted to the ED role?  In other words, what are the human resources strategies to ensure minimal risk to centre staff and children served?


In this section:

A note about terminology and the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector:

Throughout the HR Toolkit, the term “organization” is used to denote any type of child care centre – nonprofit, public or for-profit. Sometimes the words “centre” “agency” or “facility” are also used. Several sections relate and refer to “boards of directors”. Boards of directors are typically found in nonprofit or public early childhood education and care programs. They are not typical in sole-proprietor, for-profit child care centres.


Thank you to the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector for sharing the content of their extensive HR Toolkit. This was a tremendous resource upon which the CCHRSC's ECEC-specific toolkit was built.