The organisation
Harmony Early Education is one of Australia's fastest-growing early childhood education groups, operating 32 centres across Queensland and New South Wales. With more than 1,000 educators and support staff, Harmony is committed to providing exceptional learning environments for children and families — and that commitment starts with looking after the people who make it happen.
The early education sector faces well-documented workforce challenges. Qualified educators are in short supply, competition for talent is fierce, and turnover rates across the industry regularly exceed 30%. For a group like Harmony, where the quality of care depends entirely on the stability and capability of its educators, solving the retention puzzle was not optional. It was existential.
The challenge
Before Prosper, Harmony's employee experience was fragmented. Communication between centres relied on a mix of email, WhatsApp groups and printed materials. Educators at one centre had no visibility of what was happening at others. Policy updates were distributed manually, and tracking who had read and acknowledged critical compliance documents — NQF standards, ACECQA requirements, child protection policies — was a paper-based exercise that consumed hours of administrative time every week.
Performance conversations happened inconsistently. Some centre directors ran regular one-to-ones with their educators. Others, overwhelmed by the daily demands of running a centre, let months pass without a structured development conversation. There was no group-wide framework, no visibility for HR, and no way to identify which educators were thriving, which were struggling, and which were thinking about leaving.
Engagement was unmeasured. Harmony's leadership team knew intuitively that some centres had strong cultures and others were fragile, but they had no data to support intervention or investment. When educators resigned, it often came as a surprise — and the exit interview, if it happened, was too late to change anything.
The cost was staggering. With turnover running above 35%, Harmony was losing more than 350 educators per year. the annual direct cost was significant.
The solution
Harmony implemented Prosper across all 32 centres in a phased rollout that took just four weeks. The platform was configured as a branded mobile app that every educator could access on their phone — no company email address required, no laptop needed, just a simple login code.
Engagement surveys
Harmony runs quarterly engagement surveys and monthly pulse checks through Prosper. Surveys are delivered via push notification, take five minutes to complete, and consistently achieve response rates above 75%. AI-powered comment analysis surfaces themes across all 32 centres within hours of survey close, giving the HR team actionable insights rather than thousands of individual responses to read manually.
The engagement dashboard shows scores by centre, by role, by tenure and by employment type. For the first time, Harmony's leadership can see exactly which centres are strong, which are at risk, and where specific interventions are needed. Engagement trends are tracked over time, and results are shared with centre directors to drive local action plans.
Performance and development
Every centre director now runs structured monthly one-to-ones with their educators using Prosper's performance module. The conversations follow a consistent template: how are you going, what is working well, where can I help, what do you want to learn next. Notes are saved automatically, goals are tracked, and HR has visibility across all 32 centres without chasing individual directors for updates.
Development pathways are mapped per educator. Professional learning goals — whether it is completing a Diploma qualification, specialising in inclusive education, or stepping into a room leader role — are documented and reviewed every month. The conversation has shifted from annual performance reviews that nobody valued to regular development conversations that educators look forward to.
Compliance and document acknowledgement
When Harmony updates a policy, it is pushed to every relevant educator's phone through Prosper with a mandatory acknowledgement. Completion is tracked in real time. The compliance dashboard shows exactly which educators at which centres have outstanding documents. Automated reminders chase non-completions without any manual intervention from managers or administrators.
When an ACECQA assessor visits, Harmony can produce audit-ready compliance evidence in seconds — not hours of rifling through filing cabinets and chasing signatures.
Company hub and communications
Prosper serves as Harmony's branded digital intranet. Educators across all 32 centres share best practice through the news feed, celebrate learning outcomes, and feel connected to the broader Harmony community. Centre directors use targeted communications to reach specific teams, roles or centres with announcements, and read receipts confirm delivery.
The WhatsApp groups are gone. Communication is managed, professional, and archived — with full admin oversight.
Onboarding
New educators receive their onboarding pack digitally through Prosper before their first day. Employment documents, centre handbooks, safety procedures and welcome messages from their director arrive on their phone. Automated 30-day and 90-day check-in surveys capture the new starter's experience while it is fresh, allowing centre directors to intervene early if something is not working.
Recognition and kudos
Early education is a profession where exceptional work happens quietly — a patient interaction with a distressed child, a beautifully planned learning experience, a colleague staying late to help set up for the next day. Before Prosper, these moments were invisible beyond the immediate room. A verbal thank you from a director, if it happened, was private and fleeting.
Prosper's kudos wall changed that. Any educator can recognise a colleague, tag it to one of Harmony's organisational values, and make it visible across all 32 centres. A room leader in Brisbane can see that an educator in Newcastle was celebrated for an outstanding learning program. A new starter can see that their first week was noticed and appreciated by their director.
In two years, Harmony's team has sent more than 6,000 kudos messages. Recognition is no longer something that happens occasionally from the top down. It is a daily, peer-driven cultural practice that reinforces the behaviours Harmony values most — and it has become one of the most-used features on the platform.
Integration with foundU and Tribal Habits
Prosper integrates with Harmony's existing technology stack. foundU handles payroll, rostering and workforce management. Tribal Habits delivers compliance training and professional development courses. Prosper sits in the middle as the daily experience layer — the app educators actually open every shift.
Employee data syncs automatically from foundU into Prosper and Tribal Habits. New starters are set up once. Role changes, location transfers and team updates flow downstream without manual re-keying. Training notifications from Tribal Habits surface in the Prosper app, and engagement data from Prosper informs the HR team's decisions about learning investment.
The results
Within 18 months of implementing Prosper across all centres, Harmony achieved measurable, material results that have fundamentally changed how the organisation operates.
37% reduction in educator turnover. Annual turnover dropped from above 35% to under 22%. This represents approximately 130 fewer resignations per year.
78% engagement score. Harmony's organisation-wide engagement score sits at 78% favourable — well above the sector average. More importantly, the variance between the highest and lowest performing centres has narrowed, indicating that the platform is lifting the floor, not just celebrating the ceiling.
94% compliance completion. Policy acknowledgement rates across all 32 centres consistently exceed 94%, compared to an estimated 60-70% under the previous paper-based system. ACECQA assessment preparation time has been reduced from days to minutes.
100% performance cadence. Every educator across all 32 centres receives a structured one-to-one every month. Before Prosper, fewer than 40% of educators reported having regular development conversations with their director.
"Prosper has completely changed how we connect with our educators. For the first time, we have genuine visibility across all 32 centres — not just compliance data, but how our people actually feel about their work. The engagement insights have given us the confidence to invest in the right places, and the performance framework means every educator gets the development attention they deserve. The impact on retention has been extraordinary."
— Katie Davies, Head of HR, Harmony Early Education
What made the difference
When asked what made the biggest impact, Katie Davies points to three things. First, the mobile-first design meant adoption was immediate. Educators did not need training, a laptop or even a company email address. They downloaded the app, logged in with a code, and everything was there. Second, the AI survey analysis transformed how the HR team operated. Instead of spending weeks reading comments and building spreadsheets, they had themed, prioritised insights within hours. Third, the integration with foundU and Tribal Habits meant there was no data duplication, no manual syncing, and no friction between systems.
But perhaps the most powerful change was cultural. Educators at Harmony now feel seen, heard and invested in. They have a platform that reflects the importance of their work. Recognition is visible. Development conversations happen. Compliance is effortless. And the data shows it — in engagement scores, in retention rates, and in the quality of care that Harmony's children and families experience every day.