What happens when nurseries stop relying on agencies.
Real results from nurseries that made the switch to Kalendit — from single-site settings to multi-site groups. Less cost, more control, better outcomes for staff and children.
How Kido unlocked 3× more bank staff bookings across 20 nursery sites.
The challenge
Kido operates 20 nursery sites across the UK. As with most multi-site groups, bank staff management was fragmented — each nursery managed its own pool independently, which meant bank staff were only being deployed within a single site even when capacity existed elsewhere. Managers were spending significant time each week chasing availability, and bank staff were missing out on shifts they would have taken if they’d known about them.
At the same time, unplanned absences were creating pressure on permanent staff and — in some cases — requiring agency bookings at significantly higher rates than comparable direct arrangements. The group needed a way to make their existing bank staff work harder before going external.
How Kalendit helped
Kido began using Kalendit to centralise their bank staff management across all 20 sites. BStaff — the group’s own bank-staff app — allowed their bank staff to see and accept shifts across the group’s sites, something the previous system made impossible. When a shift posted in Clapham went unfilled, bank staff registered in Brixton or Streatham could now see it and respond. The group also gained a single dashboard showing shift coverage, compliance and spend across every site in real time.
Compliance documentation — DBS certificates, qualifications and safeguarding records — moved from a mix of spreadsheets and local files to a centralised, searchable record accessible to group management. Ofsted readiness improved significantly as a result.
The result
Bank staff bookings tripled. The primary driver was visibility: bank staff who previously weren’t getting enough hours found they were being offered shifts across the group, not just at one location. From Kido’s side, this meant fewer external bookings and a measurable reduction in cover costs. The platform also made it significantly easier to onboard new bank staff at scale as the group expanded.
Patterns we see across the sector.
These scenarios reflect the situations nursery managers most commonly bring to Kalendit. Details have been anonymised but the challenges — and the outcomes — are real.
A small nursery managing six bank staff through a WhatsApp group — and still calling agencies.
A single-site nursery with a small, loyal bank staff pool of six people. Cover was managed through a WhatsApp group — the manager would message when a gap came in and wait to see who responded. When nobody was available, or when the response was too slow on a Monday morning, the nursery defaulted to an agency booking at roughly £3 above their standard hourly rate.
The nursery manager and office staff were also regularly stepping onto the floor to cover ratios themselves — meaning management tasks were going undone. They’d had a bad experience with one agency and had largely moved away from agency use, but still had no structured way to manage their bank team or track availability in advance.
The nursery added all six bank staff to BStaff. Shift postings replaced the WhatsApp messages — bank staff received instant push notifications and could accept in one tap. Compliance documents for all six were uploaded to the platform, removing a manually maintained spreadsheet. When bank staff couldn’t cover, the Kalendit wider pool gave them a vetted backup for the first time without needing an agency.
Response times to shift requests dropped from hours to minutes. The manager stopped stepping onto the nursery floor to cover ratios. The WhatsApp group was retired. External agency bookings fell significantly as bank staff were being notified faster and more reliably — meaning they could confirm shifts before their availability changed.
A growing nursery group with 10 sites, each managing their own bank staff — with no visibility across the group.
A group of 10 nurseries, each operating independently when it came to bank staff. There was no shared system — managers at each site had their own local contacts, their own informal processes, and their own way of handling gaps. Bank staff who wanted more hours had no way to pick up shifts at a sister site. Group ops directors had no visibility of cover levels, costs or compliance without calling round.
The result: some bank staff were underutilised while others were overstretched. Some nurseries still used agencies regularly while others had moved away from them. Financial reporting on staffing was inconsistent across the group. A single bank staff member leaving a site took institutional knowledge — availability, reliability, rates — with them.
The group onboarded all 10 nurseries to Kalendit and migrated their 73 bank staff onto the platform. A group-level dashboard gave ops directors a live view of shift coverage and spend across every site. Bank staff could now be deployed across the group — not just at the nursery where they’d originally registered. Financial reporting was consolidated automatically.
Bank staff utilisation increased significantly as previously underused staff began picking up shifts at other sites. Agency spend dropped across the group as internal capacity became visible and deployable. The ops director could see — for the first time — which sites were consistently struggling with cover and which had excess capacity to share. Compliance documentation was standardised and centralised across all 10 nurseries.
Three things that change
when nurseries switch to Kalendit.
Cover costs drop — usually within the first month
The most immediate change is financial. When bank staff are notified faster and more reliably, they confirm before their availability changes — reducing the gaps that previously defaulted to an agency booking. Average cost saving across Kalendit nurseries is around 30%.
Management time gets reclaimed from admin
The WhatsApp spiral at 6:45am — calling round, chasing responses, manually tracking who confirmed — typically adds up to several hours a week per manager. Automating the notification and acceptance process gives that time back. For a multi-site group, the impact compounds across every site.
Compliance stops being a fire to fight
Most nurseries have compliance documentation spread across spreadsheets, email threads and filing cabinets. Centralising it — and getting automatic renewal alerts — removes the anxious scramble when Ofsted visits or an inspector asks for documentation on an educator who worked three months ago.
See what Kalendit could look like
for your nursery group.
Book a 15-minute demo and we’ll walk through your current setup, show you exactly how Kalendit would work for your setting, and put real numbers around what the saving could look like.