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Globegarden
Informationen, last update 26.10.2026
Profile
Globegarden is a childcare provider running more than 90 centers and private kindergartens in German-speaking Switzerland, with over 1,000 employees. The first center opened in Zurich on 17 August 2009.
globegarden brings together several brands and legally independent companies under shared quality standards. Centers that join globegarden keep their local identity, their team and their name. They gain access to the education academy, quality management, specialist advice and development opportunities for their staff. The offering on site is as individual as every child and every family.
globegarden is led by a seven-member executive board covering education and pedagogy, operations, finance, strategy, growth and succession solutions, and people and family solutions. Several members have been here for nine to fifteen years and built their careers at globegarden, from their first role through to executive responsibility.
The pedagogical work rests on an early-years curriculum with six areas of learning, deepened in annual training with every member of the teaching staff. What that means day to day is best seen in person — a visit can be arranged at any time.
Facts and figures
| Founded | 2009; first center opened 17 August 2009 |
| Childcare centers and kindergartens | more than 90, German-speaking Switzerland |
| Private kindergartens | 8 (Canton of Zurich) |
| Employees | more than 1,000 |
| Executive board | 7 members |
| Families served | more than 4,000 |
| Children cared for since 2009 | more than 14,000 |
| Average days booked per child and week | 3.5 days |
| Average time a family stays | 5.6 years |
| Bilingual centers | 58 |
| English-speaking staff who are native speakers | more than 90% |
| Apprentices | more than 300 |
| Interns | around 85, each with a guaranteed apprenticeship contract after the probation period |
| Apprentices hired after qualifying | more than 85% (2025) |
| Ownership | 100% family-owned |
What people at globegarden are paid
Pay in childcare is regulated canton by canton and varies widely. globegarden therefore publishes the figures separately, and has done so voluntarily for years.
In the City of Zurich, a qualified childcare professional at globegarden earns CHF 65,741 on average. The minimum wage requirement set by the City of Zurich and the kibesuisse association stands at CHF 56,107 for 2025, converted to a 42-hour week, five weeks of holiday and thirteen monthly salaries. globegarden therefore pays around 17 percent above the mandated minimum. The representative pay study commissioned jointly by the city’s Social Services Department, the Kita-Dialog, kibesuisse and the VPOD union puts the median for the city at CHF 64,426.
In Basel-Stadt, globegarden pays according to the city’s model cost framework: on average around CHF 78,600 gross including the thirteenth month’s salary for a qualified childcare professional, and around CHF 88,800 for staff with tertiary qualifications.
Kindergarten teachers are employed by globegarden on the public salary scales of their canton. After qualifying at the Zurich University of Teacher Education, a kindergarten teacher starts at around CHF 90,000 and progresses annually under the statutory scale.
Grading reflects experience and responsibility, pay is reviewed annually, and further training is free of charge.
Cost-of-living adjustment
In Basel-Stadt, globegarden pays the cost-of-living adjustment to every employee — not only to childcare professionals, but also to administrative staff, cooks, housekeeping staff and hourly-paid relief staff. The benchmark is the adjustment for employees of the Canton of Basel-Stadt, whose salaries are adjusted each 1 January in line with the Basel consumer price index. In the other cantons, inflation is reflected in the annual pay adjustments.
The equal pay analysis required under the Gender Equality Act found no unexplained differences between women and men. → Announcement
How many children there are to each member of staff
At globegarden there are three to four children under 18 months to each member of staff, five to six children between two and four years, and eight in kindergarten. The groups themselves are larger and are run by several members of staff accordingly.
The legal minimum allows more children per member of staff: in the City of Zurich, one qualified professional and one intern suffice for eight infants, the same for twelve children between 18 months and four years, and one teacher for twenty children in kindergarten.
That this holds in daily practice has been measured independently. A study by KPMG, commissioned by the city’s Social Services Department, compared 337 private childcare centers with subsidized places: per childcare place, around half as much again in trained personnel is employed here compared with the average across all other providers, while using fewer interns. → Announcement
Better staffing costs money. That is why the whole market needs higher quality requirements — and a funding model that carries them.
Inspection is not a nuisance. It is the protection parents are owed.
Anyone caring for children has to be open to scrutiny. Every external inspection has therefore been documented in full and evaluated systematically since 2019.
In that time, municipal childcare and kindergarten authorities visited the centers 612 times, 310 of those unannounced — no warning, in the middle of the working day. Together with food safety and labor inspections, that is 767 official inspections across eight cantons. In 2026 there had been 79 by early September.
99 percent of these inspections closed with a rating of good or fairly good. With that many visits, individual findings are part of daily life in any childcare center. That is what supervision is for. Every piece of feedback is documented, acted on and discussed with the team.
globegarden has argued for years that every childcare center in Switzerland should be inspected unannounced at least once a year — and that supervisory bodies should be resourced to make that possible. Quality must not depend on how often someone drops by. → Announcement
Parents who would like to know when their center was last inspected can ask the family service.
What the sector is actually short of
The City of Zurich’s Report Kinderbetreuung 2025 sets out what people report to the childcare inspectorate. Across all 321 centers and 149 providers in the city, understaffing was by far the most common subject in 2025, followed by safety and health, staffing ratios, and centers exceeding their licensed capacity. The reports came from parents, employees, third parties — and in nine cases from providers reporting themselves.
That is not a finding about individual operators. It is a finding about a sector with too few qualified staff and too little funding.
This is where globegarden puts its resources: more trained staff per child than the market average, more than 300 apprentices in training, and over 85 percent of them staying in the profession and at globegarden after qualifying.
That higher quality requirements are needed is not in question. But they have to be covered by the funding model, or they come at the expense of staff. globegarden contributed to the City of Zurich working group on the revision of the childcare ordinance.
Source: Report Kinderbetreuung 2025, Social Services Department of the City of Zurich, May 2026
Reviewed and recognized
ISO 9001 quality management — held without interruption since 2011, as the first childcare provider in Switzerland to do so. Every center falls within the scope of the audit. Randomly selected locations and the head office are audited annually, with a full recertification every three years, most recently in autumn 2025. → Announcement · → Certificate
In-depth review by the City of Zurich, 2020 — Between February and July, the childcare inspectorate made 37 unannounced visits to every Zurich center. Inspectors checked the number and ages of the children, the staffing of each group, and compared attendance records and duty rosters against the situation on site. The review closed without findings. → Announcement
External review of operations, 2020 — All processes, internal rules and employment conditions were examined by an independent external body: around 500 documents totalling more than 7,500 pages. The review confirmed that the organization and its employment conditions meet the requirements. → Summary
Great Place to Work 2025 — A survey of more than 1,000 employees with an 82 percent response rate. The Trust Index rose from 72 to 80 percent. Previously Best Workplaces Switzerland 2022 (rank 9) and Europe 2022 (rank 46). → Results
Leading Employers Switzerland 2026 — The independent Institute of Research & Data Aggregation awards this seal to the top one percent of employers in the country. → Announcement
Parent survey 2023 — 95 percent of the roughly 2,000 participating parents recommend globegarden without reservation. 98 percent praise the pedagogical teams and their educational work, 97 percent the atmosphere in the center. → Results
Participation in research — The centers are open to academic research, including QUAKI (Jacobs Foundation), CLASS and a study by the University of Konstanz / PHTG led by Prof. Dr. Sonja Perren. → Projects and studies
All awards and memberships: Honors · All announcements: presseportal.ch
Positions
The same standards for everyone
All childcare centers should be inspected against the same criteria and at the same frequency. Only then does quality become comparable for parents. The 2022 motion passed by the Zurich city council, calling for at least one unannounced inspection per center per year, was expressly welcomed.
Good care starts with good working conditions
Professionals who stay are the precondition for stable relationships between children and the adults who care for them. That is why the focus is on training, further education and career paths — and why pay, equal pay and workplace culture are reviewed externally and the results published.
In family hands
100 percent family-owned since it was founded in 2009 — and staying that way. This is not a formality. It is the reason decisions here can be made in decades rather than quarters: a center opens when there is a need for it. Parents enrolling a child today can expect the same people to be running globegarden when that child starts kindergarten.
Child protection
A long-standing partnership with the specialist agency Limita produced a code of conduct on the prevention of sexualized violence. Every employee signs it, and it is part of annual training. Two independent points of contact outside the management line are open to parents, employees and outside observers. → Reporting and confidential concerns
Association work
As an independent and politically neutral provider, memberships are taken up where an association advances the quality of early education or helps families combine work and family life. Expertise on quality management, employment conditions, social benefits and audits has gone into specialist groups and committees of cities and municipalities for years.
Media contact
globegarden media office, c/o KMES Partner
presse@globegarden.org
