Nanny contract help please.

[lucyloo7]

This is a tricky one but if anyone has experience in this matter, i'd really appreciate it. Is it possible to have a variation on a contract whereby if a nanny were to be sick for more than 4 weeks, we would have the option to hire someone else on a permanent basis & make them redundant? I realise this sounds like i'm the worst employer ever but we had an unfortunate experience with our previous nanny and we were unable to hire anyone else permanently with the nanny on long term sick leave & it was very disruptive to the children, not to mention expensive. My husband & I both need to work to pay the bills but we (or at least one of us) would find it difficult to hold down our job if the same scenario came up again since we have no other means of care. Has anyone written a similar contract or does anyone have any experience in this kind of thing? Thanks

This is a legal question, you ought to get it moved to the legal section. The brief answer is that you can't make someone redundant from a continuing job (ie if you intend to immediately replace them). But I'm not an employment lawyer.

I work for a company and it is written in my contract that one reason for termination would be if I was on long term sick leave lasting more than 6 months. I was not happy about the clause but it is their standard t's and c's. So the clause itself is legal - but I don't know if you terminating after 4 weeks sick leave would be considered reasonable. You can manage the cost to you by stipulating in the contract that you will only pay statutory sick pay - if they are off sick long term then that is all they would get. I believe you pay the sick pay but then recover the cost from HMRC (but check with your payroll adviser). Also if employee has less than 2 years service then you can pretty much give notice at any time anyway. As long as you are not terminating due to sexism, racism or due to maternity (these areas are subject to statutory protection and termination for one of these reasons may be unlawful).

You'd need to speak to an employment lawyer - PAYEfornannies will give you access to theirs for an extra £20 per year.

SSP can be quite a lot - for my two day a week nanny it was about 40% of her pay, so not trivial. And you no longer get it back from the government.

SSP is no longer recoverable for small employers.

I would not have thought a clause like you describe would be reasonable. A much longer period perhaps.

Managing absence is important so you can pick up on things quickly and start disciplinary procedure in cases of non-genuine illness. You can get an employee to attend a private medical if you need a doctors view as to their fitness to work (all at your cost though). ACAS has a guide to managing absence I think, so that may be useful for procedures to follow when an employee calls in sick and at what point someone on long term sick can be dismissed.

Redundancy could happen but it would need to be a genuine redundancy, the position of nanny no longer existing due to children going to nursery/childminder/relatives.