Kuwait University

College of Business Administration

American Nursery

Fatimah Hamad Sayah

Have you ever thought of life without nurseries? working parents would’ve been

lost without them, nurseries play such a big role in our life, the majority of families depend

on them nowadays, and they are considered as a second home in for our children, and they

are expected to be educational and beneficial so that kids can spend their spare time in a

healthy way, they are expected to give every kid their attention as much as in their homes,

also, they are expected to take care of avoiding infections and providing a clean place, kids

are the most important generation in societies, they are our future doctors and teachers so

they must take a good care of them, because of the fact that any mistreatment can affect their

function, nurseries cover the majority of important memories in our lives, it must be good

memories or otherwise it can be a bad experience, that’s why nurseries must be connected

continuously with every parents, on the other hand, nurseries must take into consideration its

financial decisions, it must be able to follow nursery trends, like a trip or its own decorations

or its educational material because this is considered as a major challenge, furthermore,

nurseries are a very healthy environment, it must be able to solve economic issues in a

rational way and it needs to create a safe plan in case of tragedies like the curfew.

Company Background:

American Nursery was established in 2018, it is a small Kuwaiti business, the

business still has one branch and it's located in Jaber Al- Ahmad area, with a staff member of

10 teachers and 5 assistances and 1 driver, also they chose a very noticeable location which is

in the entrance of Block 7 with a bright painting so they would be very noticeable by the kids

and their parents, and the company started numerous marathons during the opening year for

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the families in the block so that they can be known in the area, adding, the nursery didn’t stop

with marathons they also provided kids with Mutiple activities, in addition, the nursery aim to

create a healthy environment for kids in order to grow in, and making sure kids are well

educated and in a special way, in addition to this, they work to make it as their second home,

using a well-trained staff members from the state of California that they are not only

specialized in creating a different material but, in the matter of fact, they focus on building a

good English habits on children ages between 1 to 6 year/old kids that live near the nursery,

furthermore, the nursery has 9 different classes that are designed specifically for kids in order

to play and learn at the same time, the classes consists of 4 different levels, Toddlers, Pre-

KG, KG1 and KG2. And every class has 8 kids so that they can focus individually, with a

cost of 1350 K.D for every kid per year, meaning a total of 97200 K.D per year, that covers

12 moths rent and any maintenance and trips and health care, also covers the salaries for the

10 teachers and 5 assistance and the driver for 1 year in total.

The Pandemic:

On February 2020, Kuwait’s government started a lockdown, which was a huge

concern for the nursery, they stopped working immediately, but they still had expenses to

cover, from rent to the salaries for the staff members, the pandemic stopped any source of

income, and all of the kids were banned from attending any nursery, and owners were

panicking, also a lot of nurseries stopped its business, nearly about a 100 out of 500 official

nurseries announced its bankruptcy in the middle of the pandemic1 , in addition to this, the

nursery can pay for six months in case of a tragedy like COVID-19, in the matter of fact that

they received payment of registration on September the year before and it was the last time

they received the registration fees that covers a whole year, so, since the pandemic started on

February they will only be able to pay six months after in the lockdown, so, after the six

1
https://youtu.be/A2h_YhukP1Y

3
months the owner started to pay the rent from his own pocket, in fact, the nursery doesn’t pay

back the paid courses, due to their policy, so this actually helps during the six months,

although this may be true but after the six months the nursery couldn’t handle the same

method and couldn’t pay the same salaries in the event that if the lockdown would still

remain the same in the near future.

The decision making and effectiveness;

Since the pandemic has started, the nursery made a Microsoft Teams channel to

connect with the children so that the kids don’t stay the whole pandemic with no material to

learn, but it was very exhausting for the teachers since they are too young and some of them

can't focus for more than five minutes, and it was hard for them to create ideas for kids

through the MS teams since kids want physical activities so it was boring for the kids to

focus, so the kids couldn’t manage to learn well and parents weren't pleased about the idea

and complained about it may be not very sufficient idea for kids to stay very long on iPad and

laptops very long, on the other hand, the company couldn’t handle the payment of the same

salary after the six months, so they fired 3 staff members, which was the driver and two of the

assistances, since they didn’t need the driver anymore and the ministry of health wasn’t clear

about any breakthrough and they don’t need the services of many assistances anymore, also,

they made the staff to sign a contract of cutting the wages in half against their will, and never

make it up for them which can be a big deal for them since they came all the way from the

states not to gain half of the salary they agreed to and it can affect them being productive

since they started to work online.

My Recommendations;

Since it is a nursery, it depends very much on the connection between the teachers

and the kids, and they need to learn stuff in a fun way, so this means they should’ve made a

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short educational series and make it fun at the same time so they can watch every day

because movies always grab children’s attention, also making it on an exclusive website of

their own, so parents can subscribe by adding fees to the channel, actors may be from staff

members so that they can work together and this could be very helpful during the curfew, on

the other hands, the staff members should have retroactive pay, “ retro pay is a compensation

owed to an employee for work performed in a previous period”2 , meaning that employees are

promised to be paid after the pandemic by add on their regular pay checks, which can relieve

the company from salaries obligation during the curfew and focus on the material that they

can create, and avoid the layoff since they don’t have to pay the salary during the pandemic,

to make sure the staff are secured mentally in this company, because “ there are very real

impacts to employee retention, employee satisfaction and employee productivity when

employees are stressed about financial issues in their lives”3 , meaning that employees

shouldn’t have been fired in the first place so that they can create a good working team for

the nursery and that can make them productive and enjoy the work and this is only when they

are secured financially and mentally.

In Conclusion:

As a result, nurseries are a very healthy environment, it must be able to solve

economic issues in a rational way and it needs to create a safe plan in case of tragedies like

the curfew, because working families can't manage without nurseries to hold their children,

nurseries are expected to be beneficial and educational and safe for our children, it takes a

huge part of children memories so nurseries must take care of them mentally and physically,
2
https://blog.namely.com/retro-pay-101-payroll-lessons-from-the-government-shutdown#:~:text=retro
%20pay%20is%20compensation%20owed%20to%20an%20employee%20for%20work%20performed%20in
%20a%20previous%20pay%20period.

3
https://www.futureofbusinessandtech.com/employee-well-being/the-business-case-for-having-financially-
secure-employees/#:~:text=there%20are%20very%20real%20impacts%20to%20employee%20retention%2C
%20employee%20satisfaction%2C%20and%20employee%20productivity%20when%20employees%20are
%20stressed%20about%20%E2%80%94%20and%20thereby%20distracted%20by%20%E2%80%94%20financial
%20issues%20in%20their%20lives

5
American Nursery is more likely to be called a youthful project, the team members were very

positive through the pandemic and happy to work in Kuwait so it reflected positively in the

kids classes, the pandemic was like a bad weather on a beach day, they didn’t expected it to

happen and didn’t prepare for it properly, although they didn’t close the nursery, despite the

suffering they tolerated with the pandemic at the end, and worked online but it wasn’t

effective at all, but instead, I offered making an online material to cope with children

mentality during the curfew to make up for the classes and educate them safely at home, and

opened about stopping the layoff, but instead, use the retro pay to make up for the wages

later after the pandemic to make sure they are secured mentally and physically, and to make a

good working team in the nursery, “ it's better to have a great team than a team of greats”.