How to Take Back Control of Your Day.
Running a nursery is rewarding, but there’s no denying it can be chaotic. Whether you’re managing a single setting or overseeing multiple nurseries, your day is filled with shifting priorities. From staffing to safeguarding, curriculum planning to compliance, nursery leaders and managers are all facing the same challenge – there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
Here’s the good news: organisation in nursery leadership and management doesn’t mean doing more. It means doing the right things in a way that works for you. And with a few simple strategies and the right tools, you can turn daily chaos into calm, give yourself room to lead, and even make space for a cup of tea while it’s still hot.
We’ve pulled together some practical tips on how to structure your time and streamline your setting, with a little help from our nursery management software.
Audit Your Time and Delegate Strategically
Before you can get on top of things, it’s worth taking a step back. Where is your time going? What’s taking longer than it should? What could someone else do just as well?
Try keeping a quick diary for a week. You might notice you’re spending too much time on things like staff rotas, parent messages, or chasing paperwork. These are all important, but they’re also great places to start streamlining. You can also use this log to give feedback to whoever you report to about what takes the most time.
Once you know what’s eating your time, you can start putting systems in place to take some of the weight off your shoulders.
It’s also easy to fall into the trap of doing everything yourself, especially when you care deeply about the quality of your setting. But empowering your team and trusting your systems is key to sustainable leadership.
Strong leadership doesn’t mean doing it all yourself. Share tasks with trusted team members, especially room leaders and admin staff. Everyone benefits when responsibilities are shared.
Plan Your Week in Advance with Time Blocks
Multitasking might feel productive, but in reality, it slows you down. Take a short time each Monday morning to look ahead to where your pinch points are and which tasks you can group together. A clear weekly view helps you avoid unnecessary stress, tools like Trello Boards or Notion can be really helpful to map out your week, visualise deadlines, and keep everything in one place for easier planning.
Batch similar tasks together, like handling emails in one go, put aside one afternoon a week dedicated to staffing and scheduling, and review performance and compliance reports at set times. It reduces distractions and helps you work more efficiently.
Regular team check-ins, whether it’s a quick morning stand-up or a weekly review give staff space to share updates and raise concerns. When your team is part of the planning process, they’re more likely to follow through and feel ownership over the routines in place.
With eyworks you can schedule observations, automate daily logs, and access reports across your nurseries, all in one place, so your time blocks are more productive.
Streamline or Automate Repetitive Processes
Automation doesn’t mean losing that personal feel, it just means working smarter. It can handle tasks like invoicing, daily reports, and tracking development, giving you more time to focus on what really matters: mentoring staff, engaging families, and improving outcomes for children.
eyworks lets you automate key nursery processes without sacrificing quality, including:
• Smart billing and fee collection
• Parent communication tools that keep families in the loop
• Real-time child development tracking and assessments
Automation with eyworks is thoughtful, efficient, and easy to use across single or multiple settings.
Let Tech Take the Strain, So You Don’t Have To
When you’re juggling multiple systems or relying on paper processes, it’s easy to lose time. If you’re still battling paperwork, it’s time to go fully digital. With tools like eyworks nursery management software, you can bring registers, invoices, learning journeys and staff rotas into one simple system. That means less duplication and fewer mistakes.
By bringing everything into one central system, you’ll save hours of time – and a whole lot of stress. eyworks lets you manage:
• Registers and attendance
• Staff rotas and availability
• Observations and learning journeys
• Parent messaging
• Fee tracking
• Safeguarding records
No more digging through files or trying to remember where you saved that spreadsheet. Everything you need is at your fingertips whenever you need it.
Protect Your Time and Build Sustainable Routines
Organisation in nursery leadership and management can be relentless. But without boundaries, even the most passionate manager or owner can hit a wall. Nursery life isn’t predictable, so eyworks is cloud-based and accessible from any device, anytime, anywhere, so you (and your team) can manage on your terms, whether you’re at the nursery, on the go, or checking in across sites.
Your time is precious, so let’s protect it. Make it a priority to set working hours that work for you and your team, switch off notifications outside of key windows, and use tech that supports flexible, mobile-friendly working.
Ready to Take Back Your Day?
You don’t need a cape to be a nursery superhero. You just need a bit of support, a solid plan, and tools that work with you, not against you.
At eyworks, we’re here to make nursery life easier, smoother, and more manageable so you can spend less time juggling and more time leading.
Book a free demo to see how we can help you save time, stay organised, and keep your nursery running like a dream.
