About...
As the largest childcare provider in the UK and Ireland, Busy Bees Nurseries provides care across 390 locations. They offer rich learning opportunities in warm, nurturing environments that parents and children love.
per employee
not weeks
Busy Bees
Background check experience
What do you get when you have a global early years provider doing over 4,000 hires a year, without a streamlined hiring and onboarding process?
You get bottlenecks.
Busy Bees Nurseries, one of the UK’s leading early years providers, has over 380 nurseries for children across the country and more around the world.
Thanks to post-COVID demand and increased government funding, Busy Bees was growing quickly. But their hiring couldn’t keep up with the demand for educators.
They needed skilled, qualified workers to meet growing demand across the UK and around the world, and they needed safeguarding procedures to match. But their current process rested on a single set of shoulders: the Nursery Manager.
“From a culture perspective, the Nursery Manager is a pivotal role,” explained Natalie McGuinness, Head of Talent Acquisition. “The environment our children are in and around should be as positive and nurturing as possible — and the person responsible for ensuring this also oversees everything else.”
At an individual nursery level, Nursery Managers were responsible for everything: screening applications, interviewing, extending offers, training and managing staff, dealing with parent enquiries and, of course, caring for children throughout the day. When Busy Bees audited these daily and weekly responsibilities, it became clear that there simply weren’t enough hours in the day.
Background checks added another layer of complexity. Nursery Managers were constantly chasing documents, and because everything happened locally, the Talent Acquisition (TA) team at head office had no visibility. They couldn’t confirm compliance, monitor candidate experience, or identify opportunities to streamline the process.
The previous background checking provider offered limited support. Verification via video calls was increasingly impractical as Busy Bees expanded. Despite processing hundreds of candidates each month, their provider didn’t offer a clear view of the status of checks, timelines, or how to follow up on individual applications. Natalie described the process as “archaic,” with minimal digitisation.
The stakes were high: the biggest risk for Nursery Managers is safeguarding issues. With safeguarding as a top priority, the team knew what needed to be done but often lacked the tools to do it as effectively as they wanted to. The experience highlighted the need for a more modern, scalable solution that could keep pace with Busy Bees’ rapid growth.
Busy Bees needed to overhaul their entire hiring and onboarding process, and background checks had to fit in seamlessly. After building their wishlist, they had four key requirements to meet their original problems:
- The new applicant tracking system (ATS) had to support hiring and onboarding across a large, complicated business.
- From applications to background checks and onboarding, candidate experience had to be top-notch.
- The new system had to make the Nursery Manager’s lives as easy as possible
- The new platform had to show the TA team data and info across the recruiting and checking process
After being introduced to Zinc through Zinc’s partnership with iCIMS — Busy Bee’s new ATS — they knew they’d found what they were looking for: an automated solution that turned the entire process on its head.
Results
Total hiring transformation
When it came to implementing Zinc and iCIMS, “I don’t think it could’ve gone better,” said Natalie. They took a phased approach, onboarding the TA team first and then moving regionally across their different locations.
Today, applicants land straight into iCIMS, giving the TA team full visibility from the start. They review applications and send scheduling links to book in with the Nursery Manager.
After the interview happens, the Nursery Manager sends feedback and the TA team sends the offer letter to successful candidates. After the candidate accepts, they automatically move on to HR onboarding and Zinc background checks. Once checks are done, they can start.
It’s a dramatically simple process compared to before, and it’s taken hours of work — up to 6 hours per successful candidate — off the Nursery Manager’s to-do list.
The Nursery Managers love that the new system got rid of what was holding them back, and gives them more time to dedicate to childcare.
In particular, ID verification is simple and quick, and allows candidates to still get verified in minutes. “The usability of Zinc is so easy and straightforward,” said Natalie, noting that since the Nursery Managers don’t have desk jobs, ease of use is key.
Plus, the central TA team were able to take on a broader range of tasks and have ownership and influence. “The team has higher expectations but they’ve risen to the challenge and love it,” said Natalie.
Seamless iCIMS integration
The integration between iCIMS and Zinc was a major selling point, as they prioritised finding something that was seamless for Nursery Managers.
“Communication all the way through was fantastic, as was the desire to get it over the line,” said Natalie. Zinc worked with the team at Busy Bees to understand the three check packages each nursery needed access to, and set up groups and packages so each Nursery Manager only saw checks relevant to their location.
“Our partnership with Zinc exemplifies the power of collaboration in delivering exceptional value to customers like Busy Bees,” said Matt Sharp, SVP, GTM & GM EMEA at iCIMS.
“By combining our strengths and shared commitment to innovation, we are able to create tailored solutions that drive real business outcomes—helping Busy Bees streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and continue delivering outstanding early years childcare.”
In a recent staff survey, several Nursery Managers spoke positively about the integration between iCIMS and Zinc, as well as the training they got from the team.
“I don’t think it could’ve gone any better,” said Natalie.
Compliance and oversight
Occupancy at Busy Bees nurseries has increased around 10% over the last two years. Now that they cater for more children, they’re also scaling productivity with iCIMS and Zinc to remain compliant.
“Nursery Managers are so grateful for what we’ve done and how we’ve been able streamline these processes. They can give more time to their teams and the children,” said Natalie.
They have the staff they need to provide high-quality care, and their time to offer is down to 9 days from about a month previously. Their current time to onboarding is 12 days, and current turnaround times for checks is just under 10 days.
This means they can attract, interview, and offer in less than a month, in a demanding talent market. They can see where candidates get stuck and nudge them along, and have full end-to-end visibility over the entire process. Every Nursery Manager follows the same process, and they have the tools they need to do their jobs well.
Loved by the world's leading companies
