Bank holidays and holidays for nannies

[nesomja]

I've been posting here throughout my nanny search process about how to do it and it's been invaluable. Now I have found a nanny, she's in the process of Ofsted registration, I've enrolled with a nanny tax company, I've written the contract (but we haven't both signed it yet) and she is doing a settling in period. I am a bit confused about how most people negotiate holidays. I have specified the part time equivalent of 4 weeks + 8 Bank holidays in her contract, which means she will get 4 bank holidays and 10 days. Next week we are going on holiday - she isn't, we are of course still paying her and it doesn't count towards her A/L. However, the first Monday is a bank holiday. She usually works Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The Wednesday and Thursday will not count as A/L. Does that Monday count as a bank holiday and therefore get taken out of her A/L allowance?

And how do people negotiate holidays with their nannies, I obviously would like her to take A/L at the same time as us but can't see what the incentive is for her as if she doesn't she will get double holiday time? I have written into the contract that her holidays have to be negotiated as far as possible in advance but do I have the right to ask her to take holidays at certain times?

How have you calculated that she gets 4 bank holidays and 10 days? Sounds too simple based on 20 days 8 bank holidays.

Your nanny works Mon, Wed and Thurs... so that's 3 days per week.
So she gets 3 * 5.6 = 16.8 days
Round that up to whole days = 17 days

Next week you are away on holiday, so it's 3 days pay as per usual... as she isn't taking it as annual leave. You could request that some of it is taken as annual leave, if you wanted - I think you do have a right to request that.

ACAS: holidays
"Employers can set the times that workers take their leave, for example for a Christmas shutdown."

So that to me would imply that you could say that your 'shutdown' was a time they have to take their leave.

However it is more usual in nannying for 1/2 of the leave to be determined by the nanny and 1/2 by employer - so in your case you could decide say 8 days and let your nanny decide the other 9.

Is your nanny working a 1/2 day at all? If so, you may want to work out holiday in Hours rather than Days.

You should include the bank holidays as her annual leave (ie she has 28 days per year, pro rata for how many days she actually works for you), and stipulate that when there is a bank holiday and she would otherwise be due to work that day, she is to take it as annual leave - that is the whole point of the increase in holiday days for employees, because some employers were insisting that bank holidays be taken as leave out of the 20 days of annual leave. Employers who were giving bank holidays on top of the 20 days were unaffected by the increase in leave days.

Yes she is working 2.5 days rather than 3 hence why she gets 10 days A/L and 4 bank holidays - exactly half the normal allowance but it is all counted in one 'pot' of 14 days. What I mean is, is she entitled to choose not to take a bank holiday as annual leave or is that compulsory?

It's usual for nannies to choose half the holiday and employers to choose the other half.

Why is she not taking next week (when you are on holiday) as annual leave? It would seem most sensible for her to do that.

You can insist that she does as long as it doesn't say otherwise in the contract.

Bank holidays - You can specify that Bank holidays are compulsory holiday in the contract. If you do you not specify that they are compulsory, then if you don't want her to work, you can choose it as one of your holiday days and it will come off the total annual entitlement.

In practice, I've found with our nanny that it's a kind of 2-way negoiable process with give and take on both sides. So this year, our nanny was happy to go with our choice all year as she as no firm plans for holidays but last year she choose more than half as she was getting married and going on honeymoon

Calculate it in Hours not days, as what if she takes off the day she usually only works half of it. While it may be exactly .5 of a day, it may become tricky to keep track of how many leave days have been taken. If you do it in Hours, you just deduct the number of hours that the working would have had, if she had worked it IYSWIM.

It's up to you as the employer to decide if you want her to work or not on a bank holiday. So you get to choose that she takes it as annual leave, unpaid leave, or that she works it, or that she doesn't work it yet still gets paid.

Unfortunately most bank holidays fall on a Monday, so if you don't need her to work on those, then they will use up a lot of her annual leave entitlement - that's just the way it is with a part-time job that involves working on a Monday.