Making Your Nursery More Effective - Step 6

Welcome back Team Leaders! Are you ready to jump back into making your nursery ministry more effective? I pray that each of you took advantage of our “break”, that you are restored, and ready to go!  This month we are going to focus on setting the correct staff expectations by creating Job Descriptions for your staff and team leaders.  I will provide examples for you to follow, but remember to adapt your job descriptions to match your nursery ministry mission, goals, and expectations. 

It is very important to sit down and review the past 5 steps.  If you have not completed a step, complete it first before moving onto the next step.  Each step is a foundation to the next step.  Building a strong foundation is important.  Review the following steps:

1.       Evaluate your nursery.

2.       Develop a vision and mission statement for your nursery.

3.       Create a Baby Directory Form.

4.       Create a Parent Handbook or Parent Booklet

5.       Create a Nursery Handbook with Policies and Procedures.

Remember, everything you are creating should revolve around your own church’s mission and vision, along with your nursery mission and vision. There should not be any contradictions among the documents.  They need to be consistent, concise, and coincide with one another.  This ensures that the parents and staff know and understand clearly their roles and responsibilities, thus making your nursery ministry more effective!

“Volunteers can’t be successful if they’re not sure what to do.”  Therefore, writing job descriptions is an important step and worth the time and effort.  By writing job descriptions, you will show your staff and parents that you have thought things through, help you figure out what kind of staff you really need, give you something to hand to possible volunteers, gives you something to use for interviews, and it give supervisors something to use in evaluations.  “That’s what job descriptions will do for you-but not until you write them and give them to folks. “

When writing your job descriptions, make sure you make your “code of conduct” clear.  List what you expect from your staff.  This should include, but not limited to, the following:  make sure staff are in agreement with your church’s tenets of faith, must be members or have attended for at least 6 months (or whatever your staff and boards deem appropriate), volunteers making a minimum 6 month commitment, and so on and so forth.  The book “Volunteers That Stick” by Jim Wideman has several things listed and was used by our home church as a guide to creating job descriptions.  Make sure to clearly list and define ALL your expectations and staff responsibilities.  Give each position a job title, list the goal of each position, and list a chain of command. 

“Job descriptions are essential for placing the right people in the right volunteer jobs.”  So, get started Team Leaders! 

Click here for examples of job descriptions.