Rules/Advice needed around pregnant nanny sick leave

[ManicMumof3]

Our nanny is currently undergoing fertility treatment to get pregnant. Although the nanny being pregnant is not ideal, I can live with it. However, I'm struggling to find legislation/guidelines on sick leave when pregnant as a nanny. My worry is that she is the type who will have a difficult pregnancy and take many odd days sick leave at short notice, i.e. phone in sick on the day. Both my husband and I work full-time and this is not a scenario we can live with. It's not about the money, it's about what we do with 2 children under 3 each time she is off sick. I know there is emergency childcare out there, but I'm not keen on putting my kids with strangers and it costs a small fortune! I also know that legislation quite rightly makes it nigh impossible to fire a pregnant employee. You may think I'm jumping the gun here as she's not pregnant, but I feel before I can even have a conversation with her about it all, I need as much information as I can get. Thoughts/advice please!

This one has got under my skin, if I'm honest.

I find myself quite annoyed by your attitude, it stinks of discrimination to me. Yes she may have to take days off at short notice, and she may mess you around and let you down. You just have to SUCK IT UP. You are an employer. She has rights and you both have obligations to each other. It sounds as if you are finding yourself massively inconvenienced by practicalities and it is blinding you to the fact that she is going through a very traumatic time and is probably stressed out of her skull at the moment. The last thing she needs is a boss breathing down her neck.

I suggest you
(a) back off. The poor woman isn't even PG, she may not get PG for a long time
(b) step away from the 'woe is me' feelings and simply deal with it pragmatically. Just like your own boss would.
(c) list out all the options available (including emergency nannies) if the worst comes to the worst and think about pros and cons of each option

It's not as if I can't empathise. My own nanny is PG and I'm having to shove things round quite a bit and yes, it causes me quite a few headaches dealign with it all. Life for me would be shedloads easier if my nanny weren't PG. But she is. And she's a lovely nanny, and I know she'll take a full year off and the house (or rather, the homework) will fall to pieces when she goes. BUT I don't have the right to get upset by it. She's an employee and I have to deal with the logistical issues pragmatically. The fact that it messes up my own schedules is just another headache to deal with, and I can't blame her for these headaches. I wouldn't have them if I wasn't career-minded myself, and neither would you.

StillSquiffy, perhaps you were when you wrote your post. Your comments are rude, unncessary and hurtful. At NO point have I suggested I do not support my nanny. I am looking for advice on how to cope with the issues thrown up by having a pregnant nanny.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing at all.

Thanks to those of you who have been helpful however there are just too many upsetting, unhelpful comments from people who are jumping to unfounded and incorrect conclusions. If I could close down this thread, I would. Instead, I will just hide it from now on.

The way to stiop them skiving off is not to give them sick pay.You've made a rod for your own back by being so generous and it's particularly difficult as you have one who is often off sick.

We had a nanny have a baby (in fact twice - she came back soon after with her baby and then with the second one). She was utterly reliable and if she had a doctor appointment she would take our chidlren with her as she knew we were working and could not just down tools. For the 2 months she took off we hired a temporary nanny. It worked fine.

Anyway I think the advice above is good - if the contract says you pay her when sick then you have to pay her when sick but do not pay more than it says. Does it give a maximum number of days? Also she knows your situation - why not ask her to suggest a friend who could cover for her when she's not there so you're making it her problem morally which of course it is.

Your comments are rude, unncessary and hurtful. At NO point have I suggested I do not support my nanny.

Apart from:
(1) I don't want to sack her. I don't want to go through the nightmare process of finding a new nanny we all like! (Using the difficulty of replacing someone as the reason to not fire them is low. I really am struggling to see the 'supportive' part here. On a legal note, you can't sack her, by the way)
(2) I think it is becoming clear to me that I need to have a conversation about expectations. (such a conversation is unlikely to be received as being supportive, and on a legal note you could find a discrimination case lodged against you simply for having such a conversation)
(3) I think I will also seek professional advice (Yep, struggling to find the supportive element there, too, because that comment certainly infers you are looking up how best to protect yourself here, not her)
(4) she is the type who will have a difficult pregnancy and take many odd days sick leave at short notice.... that is not a scenario we can live with. (Yep, really supportive. And whether you like me telling you or not, you do have to suck it up - she has the legal right to time off sick when she is, er, sick)

I have no objection to your sending private messages accusing me of having a go at you simply because I?m some kind of mean bitchy cow, but as an HR professional I think that people contemplating acting outside of the law should be pulled up for it, and if they contemplate in public, then I reply in public. That way people can read and comment, and, hopefully inform. Personally, I think your sending me private messages to have a go at me says more about you than me, but hey, ho. Each to their own.

The sooner ALL women are treated with respect in the workplace, and the sooner ALL employers treat PG as if it were simply a normal and expected extension of having staff, the better. And I'll bang on about this ad infinitum until things improve for women, and I will continue to do it whether or not people object to a mirror being held up against them.

Wow! SimplySquiffy, have you read this back to yourself? You're being very mean to Manic Mum. None of us know the facts here.

Stillsquiffy while I usually agree and enjoy most of your posts I don't think you're getting the main point here. It is not a straight issue of pg discrimination but the effect of 100% of your employees being off sick.

While I would agree that it is unfair to sack someone because they either are or are thinking of getting pg I don't think it unreasonable to say that the impact of someone doing that in a very small business vs a large one is immeasurably different. When I was pg with the dts and too sick to manage the commute I could call my boss and ask to work at home and rearranged my meetings to phone ones where necessary. That is not possible for a nanny.

Small employers run on smaller budgets with smaller staff and therefore the impact of one person being sick on a semi-permanent basis and then taking a long leave of absence is much larger. It is irrelevant why they do it as it makes no difference to the employer who has to foot the bill. A nanny as the sole employee who cannot work offsite has an even bigger effect. No one is employed for a sentimental reason and to pay sick pay and another carer is extortionate. I only offer SSP for the simple reason that an emergency nanny will cost me in the region of £18-20ph, for a 10 hour day. Even with a good salary that's a killer.

I think you need to take good advice on this as it sounds a minefield of sexual discrimination. Sack her = sexual discrimination, change terms of contract from full pay for sickness to SSP = either direct/indirect sex discrim, disciplinary for too much absence due to sickness = protected by sex discrim if pg although I'm not sure it works if not yet pg, on the other hand this might have been why she's telling you she's ttc.

I'm sure you do support your nanny on a personal level but at the end of the day you're her employer not her friend and if she cannot do the job you need to work out the best solution to getting the job done.

I like Xenia's friend idea. My theory after 5 years of this is to always have some form of back up childcare. My one on return to work is going to be nanny and AP.

Good luck!

Squiffy,I agree with you.Down to the last sentence

There are two separate issues here it seems to me that have been blurred into one.

OP are you in fact annoyed by your employee's CURRENT attitude towards sickness, attitude towards work generally? i.e. she's off for the slightest thing. It sounds like, in between all the general chit chat about possible pregnancies, etc this is actually the heart of hte matter.

Because that is what you need to address NOW. She is not pregnant yet, you shouldn't discuss it, yes it can be construed as discriminatory, all the points Squiffy makes, etc.) The pregnancy thing is something of a red herring.

If she does seem to err on the side of duvet days, it's VITAL for you to address this issue now before she gets pregnant so it's clear it wasn't linked to any time off she might have for pregnancy related illnesses. I would redraft the contract tightening up the sickness pay terms - if it's already SSP only you could move to that.

how many days off has she actually had?

It's hard to know how much of this issue is a real, actual day to day issue and not just your imagination running wild. I'm prone to this too, I do understand.

There is a real issue for those of us with nannies when they want maternity leave. The baby has a bond with that nanny. You cannot just jump in and substitute another person and if you bond them with a temporary nanny and then wrest them away when the other comes back that isn't too nice for the baby or toddler either. We coverd this as she took 2 months off and as soon as her baby was born we took the 3 children to visit her in hospital and she came back a month after birth but it really is very very different from 1 of 10,000 BT workers going on maternity leave. This is one reason Cameron needs to get on with removing employment rights protection from those with very few employees if he can within the confines of EU law of course.

Very poor form to send a rude PM. Quite surprised at that behaviour.