GoodStart Early Learning
3.8 out of 5 stars.
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GoodStart Early Learning Employee Reviews

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Location
Australia331 reviews

Ratings by category

3.6Work–Life Balance
3.5Pay & Benefits
3.5Job Security & Advancement
3.4Management
3.6Culture

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Was an alright place but lack of staff

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It was great for a year but then all of the staff that had been there for a long time had up and left even before then we were struggling to get staff and casuals get blamed when they cover another staff members break when that staff member was late so I think they need more professional staff

Pros

High pay, staff are nice

Cons

Lack of staff
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Fun working environment

Productive and fun workplace. Multicultural workplace. Work together as a team. Friendly environment.Management easy to talk to. It’s like a family.

Pros

Uniform allocation

Cons

Rotating shifts
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A challenging place.

The staff are very clicky and it's more about who you know than what you know.It's hard to get promoted if you are not willing to be part of the inner circle.I am a teacher and wash dishes most of the day and can't get recognised as a teacher within Goodstart. This is why I prefer to stay casual.
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It depends on the centre

Some places are great but others are not. I don’t like there was lots of documentation to do and not enough time to do it. I didn’t like how staff have to pay for resources. There are great, hard working and passionate educators but management doesn’t help and favouritism is very big. We were always over ratio and unable to get casual staff. Goodstart have a lot of good values & principles, I wish that they put into practice.

Pros

Get to work and make a difference in children’s lives

Cons

Being outside when it is hot, Documentation, take work home regularly, Parents are very fussy and will pester you for a missing sock
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Unfortunate bad experience

A lot of nastiness, lack of support from upper management, gossip, no room for career progression.Upper management does not take on board feedback about the service you work at not do they support any chance of career progression and training. You’re left to find it yourself. Staff are bullied and belittled by others within the service and people get thrown under the bus for falsified accusations. Some staff repeatedly doing excessive overtime, lack of relief staff.Such a shame really when you love what you do as your career but lack support from the ones you need it from the most.

Pros

Wages

Cons

Long hours, poor work life balance, bullying, lack of upper management support
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Horrible place

Horrible place to work for. I was a casual and gossiped about by staff behind my back. They never went to lunch on time and blamed me for being late. I couldn’t leave fast enough.

Pros

Nothing

Cons

Everything
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All about accreditation

Don't work here if you don't have to. Working with children should be a beautiful thing, but Goodstart sucks out every bit of joy. It's not about the children, it's about making the documentation look good, it's about staff politics, about getting an exceeding rating, about churning out story-park observations. No support from leaders or director who are all on high horses without people skills. Won't let you think for yourself, only take their orders from area managers who don't work with children any more. Just more work piled on you. Disheartened staff unless you are in the inner circle. Expect to take work home unless you enjoy staring at an iPad when you should be educating children. Such a sad state the childcare situation in this country, brought about by a flawed accreditation system. This place needs to get it's priorities in order.

Pros

Children

Cons

Everything else
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It is professional and friendly, I am comfortable enough to go back and work for Goodstart early learning in a heartbeat.

The work place culture at Goodstart have this in the bag. The workplace culture is shared values, Also building relationships with families respectfully.

Pros

Breaks, annual.

Cons

Hours can change
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Micro managed environment

My experience was not so cheerful. Daily hours were to short for me to complete my job, didn't get paid overtime. Management did not handle situations professionally. Staff were very stressed out and didn't follow policy or procedures 100% the time. A toxic environment to work in.

Pros

Discounted childcare

Cons

Unrealistic expectations
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Stress isn't worth the good times

The environment is extremely stressful as they operate under the roof and so you're constantly out of ratio and overwhelmed. at the start of the pandemic when we had only essential workers children it was fine but jobkeeper meant that our workers stayed home on the couch and got paid. Once all children were allowed back ratios weren't adhered to and the job sucked

Pros

Mostly staff are great

Cons

NEVER get out on time which sucks when you catch the bus to work
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The staff were friendly

In regards to the work load programming as well as daily cleaning tasks had to be well coordinated in line with accreditation practices to ensure the centre was up to standard

Pros

Close to home

Cons

Long hours heavy work load
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High stress, low morale, poorly managed.

Problems with staffing which has resulted in low staff morale, stressed staff, aggressive staff and disengaged staff. Centre Office has been poorly run for a long period of time due to resignations, inexperienced 2IC and lack of staff. New Centre Director has never worked for GS before so has a steep learning curve ahead.

Pros

Location

Cons

Poorly managed
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good to work for.

work with great bunch of carers. Dedicated educators and CD. Children are cared for beautifully. Best cook. all round great centre. Lots of resources for staff and children. All cultures catered for. Lots of cultural activities and celebrations.

Pros

people i work with are great. great centre

Cons

To much work past from area leads to CD, ridiculous what CD has to do. They are more business managers than centre.
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Great Professional development opportunities

Great professional development opportunities to up skill your knowledge and professional practice. However, keep in mind this is a large company and too often it isn't about quality it is about the money. Yes it is non-profit but everyone still needs to get paid and budgets need to be available for a variety of things, so it always comes down to money. This means filling rooms (especially preschool because that room makes all the money with the higher ratios) to capacity as much as possible each day. Also not having enough budget hours to get all of the job requirements done each day. The excessive amount of paperwork that overflows (unpaid) into personal life is massive. Upper management don't address feedback from staff. You just get ignored. Glad I got the experience there that I did, but also glad I left and I havent looked back.

Pros

Professional development

Cons

Paperwork, long days, pressure to 'do better', lack of support from upper management.
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professional

I thought it was a good atmosphere to work in and being new to the industry I learnt correct procedures which made it feel like it was a safe place to work in.
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Big company, no heart

This company is about filling places. Had to fight to get the awarded 20 min break and then had to present documents so we would not be asked to do work in that 20min break time. This is a small example of working life at Goodstart

Pros

None that I found

Cons

Not enough allocated time for programming etc
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Bad environment

Would not recommend this company, every centre I worked at was full of nasty gossipy women that talk behind your back instead of helping you to learn and improve.

Pros

None

Cons

Everything
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Terrible company

I don't know how a not for profit company that claims to give all the money back toward resources for children can be so money hungry that we are given next to no budget for childrens toys and educational equipment. We try very hard to entertain and educate our children and they're happy for now, however we are stuck with resources that have been in our centre for over 10 years, we hardly ever get new things for the children to experience! Resources aside, the management clearly don't care about their centres either and it ultimately causes the work environment to become difficult, with directors not receiving assistance for additional staff, logging jobs, etc. It can be very tough working for a company that doesn't care about their employees :( despite all the negative things I've experienced from this company, I have met some incredible people while working here that have made this whole experience worthwhile.

Pros

Make amazing friends

Cons

Management
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Great culture, great educators and management.

Goodstart Willowdale and Gateshead are both amazing centres, with equally amazing educators. Couldnt ask for a better teams to have been a part of!Both centres are driven by quality over quantity and really value their educators.

Pros

Caring educators, not only toward the children but fellow edicators.

Cons

None.
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A terrible and toxic place to work where good, honourable workers are not valued and in fact challenged unfairly.

I had both positive and negative experiences working for this company and I think the only reason they were positive was because I had an amazing boss! Other than when I had her which they did not support or provide assistance to when she was severely short-staffed, any other managers showed no care about the interests of the children and in fact workers were penalised for actually providing the optimum standard of care that they could!!
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Miss working here

I was a maternity cover hire, I enjoyed my time working at Goodstart and it gave me the push to start my career. At times I didn’t feel a part of the team as such, however it was a great learning experience

Pros

Learning experience
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Overall rating

Based on 348 reviews

Ratings by category

3.6 out of 5 stars for Work/Life Balance
3.5 out of 5 stars for Salary/Benefits
3.5 out of 5 stars for Job Security/Advancement
3.4 out of 5 stars for Management
3.6 out of 5 stars for Culture

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