giving notice to my nanny - timing

[MtnBikeChick]

Come September 2016 we will no longer need a full time nanny. We are planning to get an au pair. Our nanny will have been with us over two years and I am aware we will basically be making her redundant and she will be entitled to redundancy pay. My question relates to timing. I obviously know now that was wont need her from Sept and I want to give her as much time as possible to find a new job. However, I don't want to tell her too soon as she may find a new job quickly and disappear!! I want her redundancy date to be the third Friday in August. I was thinking of giving her 3 months' notice, even though her contract only requires 1 month. I am curious as to what other people have done though. Should I tell her ASAP?

It is a risk that she will leave early especially given your dates. Many parents go back to work for September/January and will want to do a settling in period ahead of then. It depends if your end date will also allow her to take some leave before she starts with another family. She will obviously get accrued holiday pay as well as redundancy but she may want to take 2 weeks off before starting elsewhere.

Presumably you will want an au pair to settle in before the school term starts also [presume this is the trigger for the change]. Ideally you wouldnt do the new au pair plus first day of school in the same week.

One option is to offer a bonus payment to work out her full redundancy notice?

What I don't know is from a legal perspective - if you give her three months notice, while her own notice period is 1 month, if she leaves early without your agreement is she essentially resigning and therefore forfeits her redundancy?

In the interests of your child I would favour early notice rather than later. You don't want her final month to be desperately focused on finding new employment rather than your child's summer holiday activities.

Thanks! She will have used all her holiday by then (she's just had a 2 week skiing holiday and has a week off at Easter). I think that legally if she resigns before the redundancy date she would forfeit the payment. I am checking this with a lawyer though. I am planning to have 2 weeks off work to settle my new au pair. Au pair will arrive before school starts

If she resigns she would not get the redundancy pay - certainly check that with your payroll provider/legal line. How much that payment is might make a difference to if she would resign or not, as if a job comes that she interviews for and gets, she may decide it is not worth delaying start date for what may be a few hundred to £1000.

Calculate what redundancy pay would be - it is based on age and length of service and it is capped at £475 gross per week. www.gov.uk/calculate-your-redundancy-pay

Quite a lot of nanny jobs start in September though some may want an earlier start. So there is hope that she would be able to continue working through to your desired end date.

What if she did decide to leave... what you would do then? Do you have an au-pair lined up who can start earlier? Do you have backup childcare of some type - grandparents able to visit and stay a while?

Follow redundancy procedure - you need to give warning that you are thinking about changing your childcare requirement. You could drop some hints now but maybe better not to do so until nearer the time, so perhaps from half-term of the Summer term.

I am all for giving as much notice as possible but the more you give the more they may find work which starts at a point which does not suit you. It will depend on the person though, you may have a great relationship and they may agree to working until the end date you decide.

Thanks nanny nick, so helpful. We have a great relationship but I know she will want the certainty of another job to go to - completely understandable