Top tip for getting the most out of a reliever!

18 October 2018, by Jitbug

We’ve been accused of sending a horrible reliever to a centre. Yes, that’s right. The Centre Manager was incredibly frustrated with our reliever who seemed to stand around doing nothing waiting for direct instructions. And costing more than her regular staff.

In that Centre Manager’s mind, Jitbug must be just like every other agency out there. Only caring about their profit margins. Surely, they must’ve cut corners when it came to vetting, reference checking, interviewing the candidate, etc. I mean, how hard can it be to remove a bad reliever from your pool so that you are left with only good relievers in your pool?

Well, it turns out it’s not that straight forward.

First, that reliever (let’s just call her Jane) actually had pretty good feedback from another previous centre. So what do you do when you’ve got two conflicting opinions/feedback on the same person?

Maybe our processes aren’t as robust as we thought they were. So we checked our notes on Jane. Her referees had nothing but positive things to say about her. Well, that wasn’t surprising because we wouldn’t have activated her account if it weren’t so.

So we decided we would ask both Centre Managers where Jane received positive and negative feedback. We wanted to fully understand what was going on. But we got nowhere very fast. One Centre Manager said that Jane really engaged with the children, showed initiative and would be very happy to have her back in her Centre again. The other Centre Manager said she just stood around all day and did nothing.

So we asked Jane, to understand how she felt the day went at both the Centres. Jane initially said it was all good and fine. But we pressed further and Jane revealed that she felt more empowered and supported at one Centre and hence felt confident. And at the other Centre, she felt that her every movement was monitored with suspicion and hence felt very uneasy and unsure of her actions.

Now we know what happened. We’re all human beings and we respond differently to our environments. We wouldn’t expect a car to travel across gravel road the same it would along a motorway. Humans are much more unpredictable!

Don’t get us wrong, we are not in any way trying to relinquish our responsibility. We don’t get it right all the time. Wee do appreciate any feedback - from centre managers, room leaders, staff members, relievers - anyone! Any feedback helps us build a better picture of our relievers.

Next time, should you ever stumble upon a horrible reliever from Jitbug, perhaps try to put yourself in their shoes for a moment and consider where they’re coming from. It might make a world of difference. Or maybe not! And in that case, please do let us know asap! =)

PS: Jane is still happily relieving with Jitbug =)