Christmas holidays unpaid leave

[thedicewoman]

Hi, just about to employ a part time nanny for the first time and looking at contracts etc. I wondered about Christmas; I will get the full two weeks off, and I wondered if it was possible to just not include these two weeks in the contract, for example to have the contract based on 50 weeks of the year, so that Christmas would essentially be unpaid leave? I guess it's a little like having a term time contact, and there may be other weeks that I want to treat like this too, meaning that the contract might be for less weeks even than 50/year. Or is this really silly? And would it just make calculation of holiday entitlement tricky?

That's not going to be attractive to the nanny. You need to agree what you are going to pay net per hour then work that out per year.
Legally you have to give an employee 5.6 weeks holiday a year, this could be 4 weeks plus the 8 standard bank holidays if you employ on a standard 5 day week.
When I had a nanny they had all bank holidays (as I did to) plus 2 weeks holiday of my choice (when we went on our summer hols) with plenty of notice and 2 weeks of their choice to be taken either in one block or as odd days as they preferred. In addition they had the period from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day off as my company shut down.

Thanks for your reply, finding the whole thing quite confusing. So you essentially gave your nanny the holidays she was entitled to with 2 weeks offs at Christmas on top of that?

Mine will work 2 days per week, and I had originally calculated her holidays as 12 days per year on a 52 week basis, which is 6 weeks, is this then generous enough to include having to be used for the 2 weeks at Christmas?

Ah just re read and see you chose 2 weeks, they chose 2 weeks and Christmas was the other 2 weeks. Thanks!

A 2 day per week nanny would get min of 11.2 days annual leave, so rounding up to whole days is good, thus your 12 days.
Insisting that the holiday is taken at certain times is not unusual, though dictating it all probably will not go down well. So many employers will have certain times when staff need to take leave and other times when they get choice.

Xmas is a time people tend to like having off, so you insisting they take leave on the weeks you have leave sounds sensible. Leave year starts when they start the job, unless contract says otherwise.
Not sure many nannies would sign a contract that says they work 50 weeks a year, some may agree a term time only contract (about 40 weeks I think once holiday entitlement is included) but that won't suit everyone.

I feel you should look at a nanny (and indeed all childcare) as being an annual cost, not hourly, weekly, monthly. Not unusual to have an annual salary written in contracts for various jobs, nannies are no different.

You need to manage annual leave, you need to make sure nanny take it all and you need to realise that if you authorise leave which then does not leave enough left for when YOU do not want the nanny to work, that you still pay them even though they are in affect getting more leave than due.

If nanny works on a Monday, bank holidays can take up a vast amount of their annual leave. Some holidays fall on other days of the week, so check the calendar for next couple of years to see how many Working days are going to be on a bank holiday. You as the employer can insist those days are taken as annual leave, that is assuming you do not need childcare on a bank holiday (also assuming you are in the UK).

My employer requires me to take 3 days holiday between Christmas and New Year. They do give me rather more than stat min holiday allowance, and it's a far cry from two weeks however. When you have a nanny you'll just have to accept that sometimes you're paying them to do NOTHING. Alternatively, there might be some jobs that she could do from home over that period - name tapes? sewing? Or you could have a day off from the children during your own holiday.

Are you getting paid for your two weeks off at Christmas? Hmm, thought so. I always turn these questions around and ask if whatever you are proposing would be acceptable if you were on the receiving end of it? If the answer is no, then you should expect it to be the same for your nanny.

I would emply her for the full 52 weeks of the year, and sit down and agree the holidays for the first 12 month fixed-term contract. I would let her choose two of the weeks, but ask her to do so at contract writing. You can, if you want/need, choose all of the holiday dates. But that won't do much for your employer/employee relationship. As an employer, what I would aim to avoid is a lot of chopping and changing at the last minute of the planned holiday dates.

Thanks everyone for your replies, that clarifies things quite clearly! Add I say I'm new to this and my thinking of employing her for 50 weeks (or potentially less) rather than 52 was on something akin to a term time contract. I can see now that this would just massively complicate things though, and I'll just agree with her that Christmas has to be taken (as my employer insists with me!)

I've just worked out that most nannies don't seem to book time off at Christmas as they think the bosses won't want them around so give them extra days off. Mine keeps telling me that I don't have to have her here !

That's going to have then opposite effect on me I'm afraid!!

I think it depends whether you work over Christmas, I didn't and enjoyed my break with the DC. I also found it a good way of rewarding the nanny (smaller Christmas Bonus) without any need to arrange cover. On a full time contract it was only an extra 3 days.

OP I didn't realise your nanny was only working 2 days per week.