Is your waiting List working for you, or are you working for it? ## Do you have a waiting list at your nursery? If so, you’re not alone - waiting lists are now a fact of life for many early years settings across the UK. But an increasing number of nursery owners and managers we speak to at Nuuri are asking a different question: Is our waiting list actually helping us, or quietly creating more work than it should? For something designed to manage demand, waiting lists often introduce a hidden layer of complexity:

• Phone calls from parents asking for updates.
• Repeated emails to answer the same questions.
• Spreadsheets that feel out of date as soon as they’re opened.

What starts as a simple list can quickly turn into a significant administrative burden.

The reality of managing nursery waiting lists

Most nurseries still manage their childcare waiting lists using spreadsheets or basic internal systems. On paper, this works. In practice, it creates several challenges:

• Parents stay on waiting lists long after their plans change.
• Nurseries struggle to know which enquiries are still “live”.
• Staff are interrupted by frequent calls asking for progress updates.
• Communication becomes inconsistent and reactive.

Over time, this affects more than admin efficiency. It impacts staff workload, parent confidence, and the overall experience families have before their child even joins the setting.

Parent communication is the real pressure point

The core issue isn’t demand - it’s communication. Parents understand that places are limited. What they find difficult is uncertainty. When there’s no clear or regular communication, anxiety increases and follow-ups become more frequent. For nursery teams, this means spending valuable time away from childcare responding to individual enquiries instead of focusing on children, staff, and daily operations. In an already stretched sector, this kind of admin pressure is increasingly unsustainable.

Why waiting lists need a more modern approach

Other industries facing high demand - from healthcare to housing - have already moved towards automated, proactive communication. Early years is beginning to follow the same path. The goal isn’t to remove the human touch. It’s to ensure parents feel informed and reassured without requiring constant manual input from nursery staff. This is where automation, used carefully, can play a powerful role.

Automating waiting list communication without changing existing systems

At Nuuri, we’ve seen first-hand how much time nurseries spend managing waiting list communication. Our new WhatsApp Waiting List Tool was built to address this exact pain point while fitting neatly into the way nurseries already work:

• Import parent details directly from their existing waiting list.
• Automatically send a WhatsApp welcome message when a family is added.
• Automatically send a monthly WhatsApp check-in asking parents to confirm if they still wish to remain on the waiting list (Yes / No).
• Keep waiting lists accurate by removing inactive or outdated entries.
• Share newsletters and helpful advice content with parents throughout their waiting list journey.

The result is clearer communication for parents and significantly less manual admin for nursery teams.

Why WhatsApp works for nursery communication

WhatsApp has become one of the most effective communication channels for parents. Messages are opened quickly, read promptly, and feel more personal than email - without requiring staff to be constantly available. For nurseries, this means:

• fewer inbound phone calls,
• clear expectations set early with parents,
• consistent, professional messaging at scale, and importantly, parents feel acknowledged even when a place isn’t immediately available.

Cleaner data, calmer teams, better parent experience

One of the most common frustrations nursery managers report to Nuuri is uncertainty around their waiting list data. Monthly confirmations help ensure waiting lists reflect reality - not historic enquiries. Nursery teams gain confidence in their numbers; parents feel kept in the loop; conversations become calmer and more constructive. It’s a small operational change but one that can have a meaningful impact on workload, accuracy, and parent relationships.

Rethinking the role of the waiting list

Waiting lists aren’t going away. Demand for childcare remains high; pressure on nursery teams continues to grow. but how waiting lists are managed - and communicated - is evolving.

• By automating routine communication and focusing on transparency, nurseries can turn waiting lists from a source of daily friction into a more supportive, professional, and manageable process for everyone involved.

• For more information, please contact [email protected].