What's normal re nanny holidays?

[74slackbladder]

What's the norm with dictating how much of a nanny's holiday she must take when the family take theirs ? We are just coming to the end of our first year with a nanny and foolishly just let her take her hols when she wanted to and she also got the time off that we took as holiday (Mostly), excpet for a few days that DH & I did something minus DCs for the day.
For the next year's leave, I need to recify this, otherwise she ends up getting more or less double leave. I do appreciate that she needs to be allowed to decide whenn she takes some of it but what should the split be ? 50/50 ?
SHe gets 20 days leave a year plus bankhols and works a four day week

If she works Mondays, 20 days plus BH is reasonable, but if she doesn't then it will be below the statutory minimum of 22.4 days in a year where Christmas Day falls on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday (because then only Boxing Day (Tuesday) and Good Friday will fall on normal working days: this assumes that December and the January that follows are in the same holiday year) but you should be OK until 2016.

You don't have to let her choose any, but any change now will be a change to her terms and conditions which may not be easy to force on her, and in any case it is reasonable to have at least 50:50. That doesn't necessarily mean you end up paying her to work while you are on holiday though, as long as you can be flexible enough to take time off when she wants hers.

she does work mondays. we based her leave on being the same as mine - 20 days, pro-rata'd down from 25 if i were full time.
k
i have mentioned that we may need to do this - ie enfore when she takes some of her leave and she was ok with the idea.

Is the issue to do with a lack of tracking of the holiday being taken? As the employer you get to authorise or decline all leave requests, so keeping tabs on what leave has been taken and how much remains should be reasonably easy as long as it is all recorded.

I would not suggest that you dictate more than 50% of the leave... though employers are able to dictate 100% of it. The sooner you book your holiday, the sooner you can let your nanny know that those days will also be their leave. They can then book the remaining days of leave to fit with their requirements (subject to you being able to accommodate the leave request).

no, we have tracked and looged holidays. its just that she hasnt booked a lot of leave, perhaps because she hasnt felt she's needed it as she has had fairly frequent odd days off that we have booked for long weekends or whatever.
50% seems reasonable, so we will go with that, i think
thanks

So is it that there is leave remaining to be taken but time is running out to take it? If so, could she take the leave asap?

I'm quite bad at taking all my leave, I don't really go on holiday that much. So if my boss does not remind me that I need some time off now and again, I would probably just keep on working all year round. Keep an eye on leave taken and remind her to take some if it's appearing that it won't all be taken in the annual leave period.

that is one issue , so there will probably have to be some enforced leave before her leave year runs out at the end of this month
however, if she had HAD to take some of the leave when we were on leave, we wouldnt be in the situation we're in.
its our first nanny so we were a bit clueless about these things. i live & learn!

You don't have to force her to take leave - if she doesn't ask for it, she doesn't get it (and usually contracts do not allow you to carry leave forward).

It sounds to me like this year has been a bit of a mess though, so perhaps you should sit down together and throw all the issues together including any outstanding leave for this year and agree how it is going to work better next year.

I am a nanny share currently. I get 4 weeks hols a year plus sat days. I get 2 weeks of my choice and each of my employers gets a week of their choice but if either parent decided to go away outside of this agreement they still have to pay me but as I am a nanny share they are splitting the childcare cost between them so it is not a huge issue, hth.