Nanny Holiday Question

[WindyAnna]

Hi everyone

Sorry in advance for the waffle ....

Just taken on a new nanny and am writing her contract of employment. Her hours vary in school hols and term time and so I have worked out the holiday allowance as hours. By my calculation, once I take out the bank holidays, she will be entitled to 92 hours holiday. I did this with my last nanny and so if she takes holiday on an afterschool only day she only uses up 3 and a half hours but on a school holiday day she would use up 10.

When we had full time nanny it was always bank hols plus 2 weeks our choice, 2 weeks nanny choice. It worked well, we could usually agree on summer dates between us then she would always pick Christmas week and I'd pick one more. I've worked out that new nanny will get more time off than her allowance as we usually take 2 weeks in summer, a week at another time and at least a week off at Christmas. If I allow her to take the 82 hours at any time of her choice (could work out at a lot of days depending on how she takes it) then I end up with the cost and trouble of finding childcare for those extra days. Last nanny ended up being school hols only and agreed to always take her holidays when we took ours so she got 4 paid weeks off a year even though she wasn't entitled to that much, this was fine by her & she had been with us for a very long time and we had done lots to help her out employment wise so she offered and we accepted. It does not seem reasonable to ask new nanny to do the same but not sure how to get round it. I know other employers do dictate their nanny's holidays but that seems horrible plus does not make allowance for the ad-hoc stuff that comes up in her life which may need a holiday. I had thought about letting her choose the two weeks in summer but that pre-supposes she wants two weeks off in summer rather than bits here and there. I also know other employers who make their nannies come to work for any day that is not holiday entitlement and do children's housekeeping, meal prep, whatever just so they don't get extra holiday and I would never do that!!

So - any other nannies with reduced hours or employers with nannies on reduced hours - how do you handle holiday?

Thanks
Windy

I would say that once BHs are taken out the rest is split 50/50 choice. You could write in that her choice is not to exceed X working days or X consecutive days p.a. so you avoid the 3 weeks of after school childcare cover nightmare scenario.

Thanks - good idea!

What do you mean by "take out bank holidays" ?
A bank holiday can often fall in school holiday time, so is that day being considered as 10 hours or 3.5?
Two weeks in Summer, if 5 days per week 10 hour days then thats 100 hours, so already more than the entitlement you have calculated.

Is them taking holiday during term time really an option? Emergencies happen, people die for example so a funeral may need to be attended. That however may not be holiday - it may be compasionate leave. Other occasions they may want to trade the time off, so taking 3.5 hours off and adding that back on at some future point - evening care if you are late home, staying late so you can have an evening out.

Thanks Nick - By "take out the bank holidays" I mean take them off the leave allowance at the relevant rate depending on whether they fall in the holiday or in term time (only one falls in term time so that 3.5 the others are 10.5)

Exactly as you say the nanny will get more than her entitlement - I know other parents who don't give their nannies any other holiday entitlement on the basis that the parental holiday more than covers their statutory leave entitlement but I'm not like that I still want her to get some leave allowance to use as she pleases. Nanny does want to take leave in term time as going on holiday so much cheaper then as her own child is well below school age she wants to make the most of it while she can and I don't blame her!

So you are trying to find a compromise of some kind so that you are not left in a position where nanny considers they can ask for holiday during term time and that it will be approved. You seem very reasonable in being willing to approve some holiday to be taken during term time, you will also be giving more holiday than statutory minimum.

I wonder if contract wise you could state the minimum number of hours holiday they would get and that all holiday has to be approved. Then you can provide as much holiday as you like above that minimum number of hours and can decide on a request by request basis if you let them take the holiday at the requested time. Some of the time you will be dictating when they take holiday, such as when you go away yourself.

That way you can let them take a week off during term time, should it be convenient for you to cover that week off. What I don't think you want happening is that you agree in a contract that there will be at least a week off during term time and then find that you can't cover the week that gets requested, or that they want more time off than you can cover.

Thanks Nick that makes sense - good advise will perhaps talk to her and decide best way to contract it.

You can't work out holiday entitlement in that way. An employee is entitled to 5.6 weeks holiday. You can't make her work 50 weeks of the year and only give 2 weeks holiday, even if you do pay her for the right number of hours (12.07% of total hours worked or treated as worked).

Instead, divide 92 by 28 to get 3.29 (or 3.3, that's less than 0.5% extra) so that the 28 holiday days are paid for 3.3 hours. That way she gets exactly the same holiday pay whenever she takes her holiday.

Why would holiday days be paid less than normal working days?

A normal day during termtime is 3.5 hours. School holidays are longer.
So would the average wage need to be calculated?

Ah sorry, I took the 92 hours at face falue and missed this bit:

"By "take out the bank holidays" I mean take them off the leave allowance at the relevant rate depending on whether they fall in the holiday or in term time (only one falls in term time so that 3.5 the others are 10.5)"

You do indeed need to calculate the average working week e.g. 39 weeks at 3.5x5 and 13 weeks at 10x5 over 52 is 25.63 hours or a neat 5.125 hours per day so that would be the rate of holiday pay for each of 28 days holiday in this example.

Mr A your calculation is the way I did it just that the holiday and term week calculation is different as the average day is 5.9 hours.

In a similar situation with no family back up I openly explain at the interview that term time holiday is really difficult for us. It's not to be "horrible", but short term cover is hard to find, not to mention is an additional cost. If our nannies had not found this acceptable they would not have taken the job we offered.
However we are also flexible and when unusual circumstances arose we have on occasion agreed to some term time off. I can't quite see how we could cope with a regular occurrence though.

Regarding reduced hours I am calculating the holiday allowance as days, even though we have term time and school holiday working days with different hours. I have not thought about counting in hours and in my view a day's holiday is a day, no matter how many hours would have been worked. I suspect if I was counting the hours I would find I am providing more than her allowance anyway as we are mostly off during school holidays.