Our wonderful nanny is pregnant.....but what to offer her? As much an employment issue as a nanny issue

It does seem to me like the children come second in this case. I can't see any way around it w/o making employment law too complex and potentially discriminatory. But that doesn't mean that it's an easy situation for the family. If things aren't going well with the cover for whatever reason a year is a VERY long time for a child and the parents to have to put up with an unsettled situation.

Might also be worth finding out if you're allowed to have a trial period with the nanny and her baby if she comes back before committing to it indefinitely.

Are you OK fox, it looks like you are getting a hard time here and rather unfairly. I think people forget that you are just a mum not a company.

We have ahd several staff (very small business involving childre) go off pregnant and in my experience none of them know what if anything they are entitled to and all really appreciated a chat with regards to their plans (usually them telling me they wanted to work right up to the date and come back straight afterwards and me telling them they might feel differently.)

As an employer you assume that your nanny is going to take a full 12 months off unless she tells you otherwise. A temp will be fine with that.

Hope you are OK and not too upset at all the flak.

Jeez, is there a gang up up against foxinsocks incentive somewhere I have missed?

Hi, fox!

Chill out people. She is just worried about childcare for her kids. Sh'e's not sending the nanny packing or doing anything else inappropriate. Seems people are reading more into her posts than what she has actually tyoed.

You said that she hadn't made her mind up yet about coming back and that you needed a more serious conversation with her. I inferred from that that the conversation was about if / when she was coming back. My apologies if that wasn't what you meant.

My employer has to assume that I'm taking a full year mat leave. I only have to advise them if that is not my intention, and I only need to give 8 weeks' notice in that case.

Foxinsocks, I think you've been very unfair to flowery. I'm six months' pregnant, and if my boss tried to get me to commit to when I'm coming back after mat leave, I would be very annoyed. Obviously, you're likely to have a very different relationship with your nanny, but I would say that that means you need to be even more careful to do the right thing. Flowery's advice was (as usual) spot on.

I have had two nannies go on maternity leave - the only reason any nanny has ever left us! One wanted her pay as a lump sum, the other preferred monthly payments.

If you pay the SMP in a lump sum you get a short term cash flow issue from my experience. I use a payroll agency and they handled all of it. HRMC pay out AFTER you have made the first payment to the nanny, but they do pay a lump sum, and they pay very quickly - I think about a week. So if you pay by installments you are quids in.

Both my nannies were clear they were not coming back - one because I would not let her bring her child with her, and the other because even though I would have been delighted to have her back with baby, she was moving out of London.

But more generally in terms of coming back? As an employer at work, and as a nanny employer, I see no problem asking someone what her current intention is about returning, but I always say in the same breath, and before she has replied, that I understand her plans might change. There's nothing wrong with getting an indication, it is only a binding promise that you can't seek. Equally you can ask them how much maternity leave they plan to take. I think before they go they do at some point need to give you a return date but that can be changed - I'm not too sure about that bit. Then you can give those answers to your interview candidates. For some reason I think that Nanny has to give about a month's notice before her return to work anyway(maybe that is only if the date changes), so your replacement also needs to be on a month's notice.

You can also advertise a job as "maternity cover" and applicants will know fine well that if the nanny does not return they probably have a permanent job.

One final point - you need to be able to cover your nanny's ante-natal appointments, so you'll want to keep some of your own holiday entitlement in reserve for that.

i must say i have read many posts of flowery and have learnt a lot from her. i think her comment was general -and quite agree with it- but wasnt personal at all. However she spent her time to give free and very good advice and instead of 'thank you' she received verbal abuse .

Fox - I really didn't read it as an accusation aimed at you particularly, just a general point (which I totally agree with btw!).

Oh my, just for the record, foxinsox is also a lovely and helpful MNer. This went very wrong here.

i think flowerly advice is always very helpful

she found an answer and linked the site to my friends problem - whose mb needed to see the info in black and white till they decided to give my friend whatt she was entitled to anyway btw she now gets 17days

anyway i regress

think flowery is just stating that nannies have same employment rights as people in offices etc - just it is harder to replace/find a temp as nannies are such a personal thing

and tbh most mb's/employers on this site dont know the ins and outs on employment law - but who can blame them

fox - no one is accusing you of wanting to rip off your nanny, and you are even wanting her to come back with child - as many employers dont want that

i think many forget nannying is the only career (i think) that the employee can bring their own child to work with them) so that the terms are slightly different from coming back after ml than if in an office job

I'm sorry you feel my advice comes across that way nbee, I certainly don't expect every nanny employer to know everything about employment law.

In this particular instance obviously I have no intention of either explaining or qualifying my comments, or in fact engaging in any further discussion with someone who feels the need to speak to me as foxinsocks has done, so as far as I'm concerned the conversation is over, which is a shame but there we go.

Though I obviously don't feel as strongly as fox, I also questioned flowery's take on this.

Flowery - you seem to come across as if you feel every nanny employer should know the ins and outs of all employment laws. When, usually, a nanny employer has no experience of HR and only has the one employee. They are having to learn all the ins and outs of being an employer as they go along - not many would take a crash course on every senario that may occur during a nannies employment - and quite a few of them come on here for advice on such matters.

When it comes to maternity leave - not many people know that you can claim back maternity pay from the government, so the issue off how to pay this to the nanny and also afford and pay someone else is bound to come up and to be a worry.

Aside from the money side of things, most would want to know the situation with maternity leave - length and whether they are coming back - so that they are able to prepare their children for the nannies absence and possible return. It's not as easy as being a big company that employs lots of people and can cover maternity leave relatively essily, we're talking about small children and big changes for them.

Not critsising your advice, flowery - it's great that you have the knowledge and are willing to share it - just the way that advice comes across occasionally.

Can't see anywhere in my post me accusing you of doing her out of her entitlements.

Can't see anywhere in my post me saying it's easy employing a temp.

Can't see anywhere me making any suggestions that you would discriminate, definitely not intentionally anyway.

But obviously if you don't like advice you are given, you are more than free to ignore it. Shame you feel the need to rant and swear at someone just because you don't agree with them though.

just to get away from the legallese a bit and talka bout the human side of this it could be marvelous news for you longer term. If your children adore her it will be lovely for them to see her throught the pregnancy and meet her new baby when it is born, and if you are lucky it will be a continuing relationship. Our nanny of some years back started with us when DS1 was 6 weeks old and went from live in to live out nanny when she got married, she then went on maternity leave when DCs were 7 & 3 - I relied on a nursery and my mother and some summer holiday cover to tide me over - then she registered as a child minder and had my 2 at her house until the oldest was 11 and she moved to another part of the country. She is part of our extended family and DS1 who has just turned 18 uses her as confidente and agony aunt - by being flexible and keeping the relationship going we all benefited and I would urge you to keep calm and see what happens - things usually turn out for the best if you do.

I would be very careful about your plan to 'have a serious conversation' with your nanny about this. There is no way she can be expected to know what she wants to do so early on. She gets a year off on maternity leave, so much can change during that time and I think putting her under any pressure to make a decision so early is the wrong thing to do. In a 'normal' employment situation if a company started having those conversations with pregnant employees there would be complaints, quite rightly. Nannies are no different to other employees. I do get a bit irritated when I see nanny employers on here saying things like 'I don't want to do her out of her entitlements but....' Why 'but'? You should imagine what behaviour you would consider acceptable from your own employer and work on that basis.

You should work on the assumption that she will take the full year off, and then come back. If she chooses at any point to do anything different, she must let you know. If she wants to come back earlier she must give you 8 weeks' notice, but if she decides not to come back at all, she only needs to give as much notice as is in her contract, which is probably 4 weeks I imagine.

As MrsWobble says, she also gets full holiday entitlement during her maternity leave, and is therefore better off not resigning until the last minute to make sure she gets that. If you put what could be conceived as any pressure on her to resign sooner than that, thereby doing her out of her holiday pay, that could be a problem if she then finds out what she's missed out on. Employees working for companies usually have access to maternity policies outlining what their entitlements are to pay, holiday, benefits etc and what will happen during their maternity leave. Nannies don't usually have that so are more likely to be a bit in the dark as to what they are entitled to. Don't take advantage of that. If she resigns sooner than a year she will be worse off and she may not know that.

Best bet imo is to assume she will be off for a year, don't question her about her intentions, hire a temp nanny, making it clear that it's maternity cover and therefore may go permanent, and then see what happens.

one further (slight) complication. Your nanny will accrue holiday while she is on maternity leave so whether she returns or not you will need to budget for paying that. Given that her entitlement to paid holiday stops when she resigns she is actually better off not letting you know until as late as possible. We were in your position last year - fairly sure that our nanny wouldn't want to return, happy with whatever she decided to do but needing some degree of certainty for planning purposes. We sorted it all out by talking to her.

Hi there, i'm a nanny who has just had a baby and returned to my old job, although only parttime. My boss got all of my smp pay before I'd even started my maternity.

I'd also advise not paying it all in one go as the nanny may decide she didn't want to work fulltime and come back to you, she may want to look for something eles that wil suit her family life a bit better with a baby. If she started a new job it may be before her maternity leave with you is finished. Then she would not be entiteled to the rest of the maternity pay I hope that makes sense.

Just wanted to add that you only have to offer her the job back on the same terms as she was employed previously and bringing her baby with her changes the terms.

This means that if you employed a temporary nanny who you loved and your old nanny did decide to come back but wanted to bring her baby, it would be perfectly possible (from a legal point of view) to not allow her to change the terms of the contract and so keep the temporary nanny.

I think this is correct but I am no legal expert.