Nanny - annual salary increase?

[AAK1797]

Is it usual to give a nanny an annual salary increase? If so, how much is acceptable / usual expected?

Our nanny has been with us for almost a year now, and we are VERY happy with her. She lives out and works 50 - 60 hours a week. We are based in SW London. We want to be fair, but not extravagant.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

These days I don't feel it is usual, as parents may not have seen any increase in their own salary. These days people are just glad of having a job still. Saying that though, a small increase in salary would no doubt delight your nanny.

CPI annual Inflation is currently at 4.2%, December 2011 (source)

According to this BBC Article (which has a graph of CPI and RPI), Bank of England has predicted that inflation will be 2% by late 2012.

So, how much should salary increase by - hard to know, but any figure between 2% and 4% is probably reasonable.

Before you do increase the salary, do use a PAYE calculator to get a feel of what the change to take home pay would be to the nanny. Tax Free income amount goes up in April 2012, so even without giving a pay rise, as long as your nanny is on a Gross salary, they will be getting more take home pay later this year. Also the PAYE calculator will help to show you what changes there will be to Employers NI if you increase your nannies salary. You need to make sure their salary is still affordable by you.

This isn't an annual increase, it is the end of her first year which is an entirely different thing and depends totally on the situation. For instance if when you were recruiting you were expecting to pay more but ended up taking on someone with less experience than you would have liked, but over the 12 months she has exceeded expectations then a 10%+ rise would not be out of order. But if you are already paying top whack and are getting a corresponding performance, and noting that the going rate has probably not increased over the past year, you might think about giving her nothing: you could explain that the reward for her performance to date was the generous Christmas bonus you gave her. Of course if you didn't give much at Christmas and give nothing now, it might be harder to keep her motivated...

I work in sw London and had been with my family for a year 3 weeks ago they gave me a pay rise of 45p extra per hr!
I was very grateful for it!

Thanks All. We are in the "paying top whack and getting a corresponding performance" category. I didn't know about the Tax Free income amount increase - that's v useful.

Out of curiosity, what would a generous Christmas bonus be?

Thanks!

We have a wonderful nanny too, and we also pay top whack and get a corresponding performance. I think she is amazing.

As much as possible, I adopt the 'you get what I get ' rule of thumb. So this year I got 3.6% annual salary increase at work, and so this is what we gave our nanny too. I also got a bonus, as a percentage of my salary, which we also passed on. This worked out as £300 gross for her.

We give Christmas and birthday gifts of £100 in vouchers, and a token present at Easter.

Also considering that our nanny also gets another 2 or 3 weeks paid holiday per year maybe than her contractual entitlement, I think this is probably fair.

I agonised over what increase to give to our nanny. She is our second nanny, and she is amazing, as I said. Head and shoulders above our first in every way - reliability, punctuality,, creativity, energy levels etc. I definitely couldn't do my job as well without her. But whatever incrtease you give has to eb what you can afford. I remember positing about my dilemma about what increase/bonus to give, and someone (I think nannynick) asked me how I would be funding that increase/bonus. When I said that anything on top of what I was thinking of (which is what I've outlined above) would come out of savings, the general consensus seemed to be that maybe I should think again, given that we were already paying top whack.