Holiday pay for nannies

[stilllearningtobemum]

I was wondering whether I could get some advice from anyone here with experience with hiring nannies. I have a live out nanny. Because it is the first time I have hired one, and first time I am an employer, I enlisted the help of a company to sort out contract matters as well as payroll. The contracted annual leave entitlement for my nanny is 22 days(calculated from her working hours) this includes bank holidays. I have requested 12 days of leave which is over and above the annual entitlement. My nanny tells me that because she did not request those leave, I have to pay her. (She had requested 17 of the 22 days of annual leave entitlement) Is this right?

Don't know answers but have some questions... is there anything in the contract about what happens if she doesn't take it all? can she carry it over to next year - or do you make her take it regardless or does she forfeit the money for example?

Has she specifically not taken it because she wanted the money do you know? What would she do if you said to her to take the days off on xyz so that you don't have to pay...

As the employer you can dictate when your employee is permitted to take annual leave.

Your nanny works 4 days a week - trying to figure out how you came to the 22 day figure? You say you have calculated holiday as being 22 days... this is Statutory Holiday (28 days, pro rata for the days your nanny works).

If your nanny has already requested 17 days and you as the employer has approved that, then there are 5 days remaining from the 22. If you then decide to take 12 days off which don't match with the 17 days, then you can tell your employee to take 5 of those days as annual leave. The rest of the days are normal working days - so nanny could come to your home and tidy the toys if you so wished, or could have them as paid time off.

Perhaps to help you understand better, your contract with your nanny is an annual contract with ongoing renewal. Therefore you are paying your nanny all year round regardless of if you actually need them to work. You have included in the contractual terms that you will approve 22 days worth of statutory holiday a year (some of which may be bank holidays). So for the entire of the rest of the working days in the year, they are paid as per usual and expected to work, unless you decide they don't need to attend (so they get paid for not coming in).

Salary wise you should have budgeted for paying a certain amount Gross per Annum, which is then split into monthly or weekly payments and may be expressed as a per-hour figure in the contract. Statutory holiday is paid time off, so does not affect salary calculation.

So your nanny is right to say you need to pay - you can't tell your nanny to take that time off as unpaid leave. However you can insist that the remaining 5 days of annual leave are used, to co-inside with when you are away.

Does that make sense?

This year, there are 6 or 7 bank holidays, and 2 public holidays in England and Wales. That's quite a lot out of 22 days, and if you're choosing another 12 (That's not entirely clear) then she has no choice at all in when to take her holidays. It should be 50/50 and as an employee of course you have to pay her.

Why should it be 50/50 - employers can approve or decline annual leave requests, nothing to say that a nanny gets to choose half and employer chooses half, unless a clause like that is in the contractual terms.

Agree it isn't totally clear as to what is being meant by the 12 days. I am assuming the nanny has already taken the 17 days (or has had them approved to be taken shortly) and the 12 days are days the employer does not need the nanny to work, in addition to the 17 days leave the nanny already has taken.
Bank holidays between now and end of leave period are another problem I suspect.

When is the start of the leave year?
How many days per week does the nanny work?
Does the nanny work the same number of hours each day?
Has the nanny already taken the 17 days off?
Are the 12 days going to be in addition to the 17 days - i.e. none of the dates clash?

Sorry, NN, you're right of course. I guess I was posting as an ex CM. OP, forget what I wrote!

(I really do mean this, in a "I would delete it if I could" sort of a way.)

OLKN - you are right though that some nannies do agree to a term like that for agreeing holidays.

From what I've read on here, some novice nannies (and indeed novice employers) sign up to all sorts of nonsense. Not that I'm saying 50/50 is nonsense, btw.

I would actually say 50/50 (so 2 weeks each) is fairly normal however as an employer you can decline any holiday request. It just gives nanny a bit of flexibility/control in case they want to do something at a specific time but the employer isn't planning to take holiday. If you don't have that then the nanny may feel very hard done by, unless they specifically accepted a job with restrictions in holiday e.g. out of termtime etc.

I would probably express it in the contract that the nanny may determine the timing of x days subject to employer's approval and reasonable effort will be made to accommodate any requests.

It entirely depends on what it says in your contract (and any other arrangements that have been made before or during her employment), so you need to look at your contract and if you don't think it answers the question, speak to the people who provided you with it.

The statement 'she has 22 days annual leave based on her working hours' is a bit worrying - if leave is calculated on a daily basis and you work on five days each week, you are entitled to 28 days leave. If leave is specified on an hourly basis, you are entitled to 12.07% of the hours you work as paid leave.

Sorry, should have been clearer - you are entitled to whatever leave arrangements are in your contract, but that contract must grant you at least 28 days (or 12.07% of hours worked).

Thank you all for your input.
My nanny works 3 full days and 2 half days, therefore=4 days. Therefore the annual leave entitlement is calculated as 22 days. We did agree on splitting the requests 50:50 and any leave on top of that is unpaid. She wanted all the bank holidays off and I have agreed that that was ok, I do have to work some bank holidays but me or husband arrange it between us in such a way that one of us is available to look after baby. 22 days leave has already been taken/agreed on, out of that 5 I requested. I then wanted to take baby abroad to see grandparents therefore requested the extra 12 days.
The contract says that any unworked days has to paid back to employer. Nanny says any leave days above the 22 days entitlement is only unpaid if she requested them, not when I requested them. She has already booked herself on a cruise, so I suppose I won't be able to ask her to come in to do other work.
I do not ask my nanny to do any housework, I even do some of my baby's laundry and ironing and vacuuming of his room myself. I think nanny childcare is proving too expensive for the benefits over nursery care.

Nannies are a very costly option for the care of one child. Your nanny could well be doing some child related duties, especially babies laundry, tidying bedroom, wiping down surfaces in kitchen, loading/unloading dishwasher etc.

Are the half-days exactly half-days? Given that those days are a different number of hours to a full day, I would suggest working out holiday entitlement in Hours. That way if nanny takes off a full day then it's x number of hours of holiday taken. If they take off one of the half-days, then it's whatever number of hours that is that gets deducted.

You say you have agreed to splitting requests 50:50 but you have authorised 17 days worth of holiday of which only 5 days you requested, so 12 requested by nanny. If holiday entitlement is 22 days (see above about calculating it in hours given the half days) then 11 days would be half... so you have let you nanny decide on more than half.

"The contract says that any unworked days has to paid back to employer."
That does not sound like a usual term found in a contract... or do others disagree and feel that term is often found in a contract?

What do you mean by that term exactly? I would have thought that once nanny requests more than their holiday entitlement, you would simply decide for each request if you will permit it and pay, or permit it as unpaid leave, or not permit it.

"Nanny says any leave days above the 22 days entitlement is only unpaid if she requested them, not when I requested them."

Yes I would agree with that. If you want more holiday than your nanny is able to take off as paid leave, then those extra days should be paid as per normal. It's up to you to book those days when you need nanny to use their holiday entitlement as early in the leave period as you can. If you have left it late to book them and have authorised the nanny to take a lot of their leave already, then you could well be in a position where the nanny does not have any remaining leave to use for those days.

"She has already booked herself on a cruise, so I suppose I won't be able to ask her to come in to do other work."
You authorised that holiday request when the request was put in. I don't feel you can change it. Before authorising holiday requests you should consider what impact that has on the remaining days of holiday entitlement and your plans to go on holiday yourself.

Sounds like you have not planned your visit to grandparents that far in advance, thus are now in the situation that your nanny has not got enough remaining annual leave to cover all the days you will be away. I do not feel that is the nannies problem and not paying the overlap days would not be right.

My nanny works 3 full days and 2 half days, therefore=4 days. Therefore the annual leave entitlement is calculated as 22 days.

That doesn't work I'm afraid. 4/5 of 28 days is 22.4 and you cannot round this down, so it would have to be 23 (or 22.5). Also, you would have to make sure that if she takes holiday on a day that is normally a half day, it is only half a day's holiday otherwise you are not giving the minimum 5.6 weeks, and this could work out very badly for you if she decided to take all her holiday on half days because she could then end up with 46 days off!

Finally, a 50:50 choice works where bank holidays are always taken as holiday because it suits both parties, so with 28 days holiday, 8 are normally bank holidays leaving 10 for the employer to choose and 10 for the nanny. I don't think it works if you take the 8 days out of either side's 50% choice.

Thank you for that. I am guilty for not being organised in keeping an eye on things.
I do not ask my nanny to do housework hence do not feel right in asking her to come in to do housework when I am on holiday.
The leave does work out to be 22.4 which I have already rounded up. It said 16 working days and 6.4 bank holidays. I have rounded up to 7 bank holidays. I hadn't noticed this initially and thought leave entitlement was in addition to bank holidays. I have given her ample notice, the holiday I booked is not till next February.
My contract says: The employee agrees that if they have taken and been paid pro rota more holiday time than they are entitled to with respect to time period worked at the end of the year or at the time of leaving this employ they will repay the overpayment back to the employer either by a reduced leaving wage figure or a money settlements if insufficient wage funds.
Of course if the norm is to pay her I wil, depsite what the contract says. Just trying to get my head around it.
This is all too complicated to work out. Between swapping oncalls at work, and co-ordinating with my husband's work, now I have another person's holiday to contend with. I think I will revert to nursery care after the 1 year contract.

Is it a fixed term contract? Keep in mind that you can terminate a contract at any point, by giving notice as per the notice period specified in the contract (minimum notice is 1 week).

Whilst you have given notice about the holiday you are taking in Feb 2012, you have already authorised the other dates your nanny has taken off and didn't tell them they had run out of annual leave and would need to take some as unpaid.

Holidays can be complicated to work out, it does need to be tracked carefully. At beginning of each holiday year I would suggest booking each day already known about that year, such as bank holidays, so it's clear how many days are left available to be taken.

"The employee agrees that if they have taken and been paid pro rota more holiday time than they are entitled to with respect to time period worked at the end of the year or at the time of leaving this employ they will repay the overpayment back to the employer either by a reduced leaving wage figure or a money settlements if insufficient wage funds."

That is horrible drafting, but the intention is clear and this is the usual arrangement - in the year of leaving there is an adjustment for the amount of holiday accrued vs. that taken.

But your problem is not that she will have taken too much holiday, it is that you have approved holiday on too many dates of her choice. You can't change that now in any fair way I think.

I’m a nanny for a family 3 days a week, 3 1/2 per day. How much holidays am I entitled to and can they take off the holidays they are taking from my holidays, meaning I didn’t book those holidays, they are going away and they are taking that off my holidays. Hope that’s clear enough.

What does your contract say?

@lovely1001

I’m a nanny for a family 3 days a week, 3 1/2 per day. How much holidays am I entitled to and can they take off the holidays they are taking from my holidays, meaning I didn’t book those holidays, they are going away and they are taking that off my holidays. Hope that’s clear enough.

3 days per week x 3.5 hours per day = 10.5 hours per week. Assuming you work those same hours all year round, you annual hours are 546 hours of which 58.8 hours are paid annual leave. (10.5 hours x 5.6 weeks = 58.8 hours).

Then how much of that you get to choose to have off depends on the terms of your contract. Yes the employer will typically choose some of it, they can often legally choose all of it but that does not make for great employer:employee relations so the contract will often give you a certain amount of choice.