What is a toilet talk door?

A toilet talk door is simply a place you can share information with practitioners. It is taken from the old phrase of ‘toilet talk’ simply meaning where everyone uses the toilet and talks to each other whilst they do so. There is no denying this happens and people have nothing better to do whilst they use the toilet than talk or read anything that is in sight. Although you may only have a single toilet and everyone, unfortunately, does not have the time to sit around talking in the toilets, it is still a place that can be used to communicate and share information with one another. 

It can be incredibly difficult to ensure that everyone has been told the same message and that the same information has been passed to everyone especially in larger early years settings and often it can become a case of Chinese whispers with the original message getting lost in translation as it is passed from practitioner to practitioner. Having a toilet talk door can help with this problem.

Why use a toilet talk door?

Some would argue these messages can be passed through a memo or through a staff notice board in the staff room but often a memo will get lost or only circulate through a certain number of people. Often practitioners are too busy to read memos in the room so they will be put down and never read. With many practitioners having a very short amount of time for lunch breaks people often do not want to spend this time reading and checking the staff notice board so again information goes missed or unread. A toilet talk door helps with these issues as

• Most people will need to use the toilet at least once during the day meaning hopefully everyone will see it
• In the bathroom, there are very few distractions so people will often sit and read whatever is on the door right in front of them
• It is a great place to share important upcoming dates such as world book day or other festivals
• It is a useful place to share a policy of the week or month to ensure everyone has read to most up to date version of the policy are aware of exactly what is expected of them
• You can share training or meeting dates this way and then there are no excuses for people not attending