sick pay

[CoffeeWillAlwaysLoveMe]

Our nanny will be taking two weeks sick leave for an operation and recovery. We are going to struggle to pay her full pay for two weeks, although I know we are not obliged to, we would like to.

We thought we would ask her to take the 1st week sick. Then we have moved our holiday to co-incide with the second week, so we will give her one weeks full pay, taken as holiday, for the second week and it will be taken out of (our) holiday days.

Have I missed anything here. Could anything go wrong with this arrangement?

Eh? Doesnt it work out the same money wise?

Also, if a Doctor signs her as unfit to work for a fortnight you have to just accept that.

If she's unfit to work then it's sick pay. You can offer to pay her discretionary but you may be on sticky legal ground reassigning it as annual leave, even with good intentions. do you use a payroll company? mine give very good advice on this sort of thing.

Have you checked to see if your nanny agrees to this? Depending on what surgery she is having, she may genuinely not feel well for both of those weeks. Therefore she would be losing a weeks holiday while sick!

I think it's nice that you want to pay her fully while she is off, but she may prefer to get SSP for one week and then still have a weeks holiday where she can go away and enjoy herself. Rather than spend it off sick!

But that's really your nannies decision.

It also depends how many days she works - for a two day a week nanny on £10 phn, SSP is around 40% of pay, which isn't too bad. obviously less if she is full time.

From what I remember when I worked in HR you can't use holiday entitlement when sick, even if the holiday was booked first.

Can you pay her full pay 1st week and SSP second week? What's in her contract?

Ah I see. Honestly thought we were doing a good thing (we can only afford to pay her full pay if we take holiday so we don't have to pay for cover) so this is good feedback. She's been told she should be able to return to work after a week if all goes well. We asked her if she would like to take it all as sick leave or one as sick and one as holiday so she didn't have to rush back and could take some extra time. She chose holiday (we didn't mandate it). But now I see if she's not actually ok to come back to work it might be dodgy, hmmm, not sure what to do.

You could not pay her any if that's what your contract States. She would then have to claim SSP after 3/4 days but this can take awhile to get in and may leave her short. I think paying a basic sick rate of 10days a year is standard and would make you look rather mean.

Sorry Red. I don't follow. Do you mean we should (as an unsaid rule) pay 10 days full pay sick a year.

The contract just states SSP. She's only had SSP from previous emitters. To top it up, for us, will require us to take holiday and not have to pay for cover (which is what we planned doing for a week but it uses up mine and dh's holiday entitlement at work ). I certainly don't want to look mean, we are super generous employers in many ways.

I thought we paid her SSP and didn't have to wait for it to come through from anywhere?

I employ home carers they get standard 10 days sick a year paid then any more they claim SSP. I've not paid it presumed it took a while as you claim it back from HRMC but depends on your total wage bill.

I wasn't saying your mean but giving she can't claim SSp for first 4 days so week one she gets 1/5th off£88 and 2nd week the full £88 it's going to hit her hard. I put aside a % of pay invade have to pay sickness I think 5-10 days was around mim. Hope you can sort it out

You can't claim SSP back from HMRC any more.

Thanks election fatigue just looked it up! Argh that's means must have up to 28weeks paid leave at £88 in case carer is sick that long! Crazy. luckily mine only ever had 2 weeks or so a year but big burden to expect an individual to pay whilst cover

Yup. Apparently by not making it reimbursable, companies will do more to get their employees back to work. Because of course I have access to a huge HR department, private physio, counselling etc. It's rubbish. I'm a fairly high earning professional and am about to drop down to 1 day a week because by the time I pay a nanny, and take on the risk of SSP, it just isn't worth it.

Thanks everyone. We've looked carefully at our finances and think we can afford to pay 1 week full pay and one smp without nanny taking holiday days. But question is, what if nanny says she can come back to work after a week, despite us moving out holiday to cover her op period. Then we need to pay two full weeks. Can we then say you need to take the second week as holiday (all holiday entitlement remaining is our choice)

I think you need to talk to her. You're offering to pay over and above her contract, so she needs to use a little "give and take" too. but whatever you arrange run it by your payroll company as this sort of thing is tiger country in employment law!