Nanny pay rise

[Woteap]

Hi all, we have a great nanny and are coming up to our first pay review. We are already paying her towards the top end and with zero pay rises ourselves this year will be hard pushed to give her much extra even though we are very happy with her. Is it acceptable to give a really small pay rise like an extra 50p per hour, or is that so small as to be insulting? Also what kind of year end bonus do you give? Again not sure how much we can afford..

50p an hour on a 10hr day is £5 - times that by 5 if a full time nanny £25 / times a month of 4weeks £100 extra a month so IMHO not a small payrise :)

If you did not get any pay rise, then I feel it's acceptable to tell your nanny that and not give them a pay rise, or increase by only a small amount. Instead of 50p per hour, calculate it over a year, will make it sound a lot more. Keep in mind that tax rates will change, so a small increase will mean your employers NI will rise, and will rise further in the new tax year (assuming employers NI rate rises, which I think it is scheduled to do). Personal allowance I think also goes up in April, so that will mean less employee Tax/NI, so even if you didn't give any payrise now, your nanny would get a little more take home pay come the new tax year, assuming employee tax & NI stay the same - also assumes that nanny is on a Gross contract, not Net.

If you have a fixed amount weekly kitty, you could up that - nanny could then get themselves a hot drink, instead of spending all the money on your children.

My employers pay all my costs when out anyway nick so in increase in a kitty 'allowing' me a drink on duty woukdnt work with me

Tbh most nannies I know buy drinks etc out of the kitty if out

Agree about the kitty - that's covering expenses, it's not part of pay.

50p an hour is fine. Tell her the monthly increase not hourly. Or you could, as we are, explain that you can afford a big increase so will give a smaller one plus a bit (more) of an Xmas bonus instead.

Explain that you can't not can!

Thanks all, makes me feel a lot better! Any responses on the size of the year end bonus?

Don't feel compelled to give a pay rise. Presumably you do a good job in your own job and are not getting a pay rise because of the economic environment. Same goes for your nanny.
As for bonus we have paid between 2 weeks net and 1 month net depending on how nanny has performed and if not a full year we pro rata it but make that clear so the carrot of a full year bonus is there for the coming year.
We also get nanny a nice "proper" present such as smellies/ shoes (that I know she wanted/vouchers) and a home made present from dcs.

We plan to give 1 week plus a bit (less than 2 weeks though) as that's all we can afford.

50p sounds OK - if she is on £12ph that is more than 4%.

What do you mean by 'top end'? £600pw? More? I would have thought £600 would be an OK bonus.

Blurring the boundary between kitty and pay is definately not a good idea - I'm surprised at you Nick