Nanny annual leave & bank holidays

[Hellodaisy29]

Hi!

First post & looking for some advice RE our part time nanny.

Our nanny has been with us for nearly 6 months. She is contracted to work 2 days per week & in her contract has statutory annual leave (11.2 days per year including bank holidays).
She has taken/requested 6 days and we asked her to take 2 days of annual leave when we are on holiday.
She responded by saying she’ll agree to take those 2 days as a favour to us (I was slightly miffed by this, as I have read that many nannies split their leave choices 50:50 with the employer…)
And she was very annoyed and incredulous that bank holidays are included as part of her annual leave allowance. She has basically asked for us to pay her on these days, but she won’t be showing up to work.
She has previously kicked off at us for expecting her to work when she doesn’t think she is “needed” - e.g. if we are available during the day, she presumes that she doesn’t need to come to work, but expects to be paid. On another occasion we asked her to cook for our baby while a family member took him out, and she was outraged that we asked this from her.

She is very good with our son, and he seems happy. This is the most important thing to us, but we are at a bit of a loss over what to do RE the bank holidays, as we really can’t afford to keep paying her for days that she doesn’t work… I should mention we gave her 3 weeks of paid leave over Christmas because we were away on annual leave and she refused to take any of this out of her own annual leave…

What would you do in this situation?

She sounds like a pain in the arse. You might need to reset the arrangement with her formally to make it 50/50. Maybe a side-letrer to her contract.

Get a new nanny and rewrite the contract to be more explicit.

She is BU obviously

She sounds like she's taking the piss tbh. I'd find someone else

What would I do…
I would see this clearly isn’t working, and part ways

It’s very rare for a nanny to not be good with their charge but if they can’t be good with the parents, it just won’t work

The rot has already set it and it won’t get any better. Deal with it now before it gets to crisis point and she leaves you in the lurch

Get a new nanny?

Or put her in touch with a third party who can explain to her how holidays work.

I would have thought this should have ideally been discussed before employment - holiday allowance, Bank Holidays, choice of timing of annual leave.

While you are 100% within your right to ask her to take bank Holidays out of allowance i can also see how this is frustrating since the majority of bank Holidays fall on her working days leaving her with fewer days of choice. Maybe a compromise of offering say 15 days annual leave?

In terms of not wanting to work when you are off, well either she works or takes those days out of her annual leave.

Am l missing something?

I was always paid for bank holidays on top of annual leave.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Am l missing something?

I was always paid for bank holidays on top of annual leave.

Were you part time?

How did you work out her holidays. If full time (37 hours per week) you get 28 days minimum including bank holidays. If she's working long days (just line many professions do) I'm not sure if you can calculate bank holidays as long days? Also the minimum is rarely the amount you get, I get 33, dp gets 35, ex gets 41

If she works ⅖ of full time then she gets ⅖ of full time holiday allowance which is ⅖ x 28 days (20 days + 8 Bank holidays) = 11.2 days. If they have a bank holiday off it comes out of the 11.2 days

I believe that statutory holiday allowance is inclusive of bank holidays, though many employers do offer bank holidays in addition to annual leave. I understand why she might feel annoyed at that..
I guess I am just resentful of the fact that we have given her a lot of paid leave already that she has refused to count towards her annual leave allowance, and now she wants bank holidays too (works out as another 3 days of leave this year). I think what annoys me most is the assumption that we will pay her even though she has no intention of showing up to work, it seems cheeky. & it is becoming unaffordable.

I agree that it may be time to just cut ties.

When l was parting l was paid a pro rota amount of bank holidays.

Your holiday allocation is 100% correct as @dementedpixie has shown above.
She sounds demanding and cheeky get rid

Seeing it from her point a view - I would annoyed if my company told me when I had to take my holiday.

I work 2 days a week (10 hour shifts) , I get an prorated allowance for my annual leave, rounded up to the nearest half day and a prorated amount of time for bank holidays rounded up to the nearest working day. This normally gives me 15.5 days off a year. I do work bank holidays though, unless I place leave. As I work Mondays a minimum of 5 days of leave would be needed for those, more if Christmas falls on Monday or my other working day.

Whilst you have to give her time off but not of her choosing, I think it would be unreasonable to expect her to take all her leave as single days to cover bank holidays or your time off without any choice of when she can take her own holiday too. Bare in mind there are 9 bank holidays in England this year if that’s where you are.

Legally- You can tell her when she can take her leave - and it does not have to be in her contract that way. You just have to give her twice as much notice as the leave you require her to take - so for 2 days leave you must give 4 days notice etc.

www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/booking-time-off-

Sounds to me like she just wants more time off than she's entitled. Her contract says 11.2 days and includes Bank Holidays. You cannot retrospectively doc holiday for when you were away previously but insure as he'll wouldn't be pandering to paying for extra days with her attitude. (But then I'd be letting her go and making the next contract clearer).

Perfectly fine for you to tell her when to take some of the holiday.
If you do not need her to work on a bank holiday, then those that fall on a working day are to be taken off as annual leave.
Then what often happens is the remainder is split between the family and nanny.
If you go away for additional time, then it is reasonable that you pay as per usual. You can assign nanny some duties during that time but it is nice not to do so.

Not sure what days of the week your nanny works but as this has come up now, I suspect one of the days may be a Friday. So Good Friday and Platinum Jubilee occur on a Friday and if you do not need your nanny to work those days, then they can come out of the annual leave entitlement.

@FitAt50

Seeing it from her point a view - I would annoyed if my company told me when I had to take my holiday.

It’s absolutely standard terms for a nanny to have 50% of their holiday picked by their employer and 50% picked by them

If they found that annoying, they shouldn’t be working as a nanny…

You need to make your working agreement much more explicit. Especially with a part-time employee and bank holidays that may or may not fall on work days, you need a plan for how those will be handled and it needs to be laid out at the beginning of employment. They need to be addressed separately from annual leave.

If you want to be able to specify some of the days your nanny uses annual leave you have to put that on the agreement as well. Yes, nanny employers specify half is common. It’s also common that it must be declared at least 6 months or longer in advance so the nanny can plan. No, she doesn’t have to reciprocate with that much lead time. You just have to book alternate child care. She has to be allowed to book holiday travel which we all know must be done well in advance.

As for working when she isn’t explicitly needed, that is part of the beauty of a nanny. They help out in the household and make the family run more easily. So mom and dad might be able to go to the gym or watch a movie and the child is with a known caregiver. When children are busy a nanny might organize clothing, cycle toys, prep child meals, or prepare child enrichment activities. It sounds like your nanny doesn’t quite grasp this aspect of the job.

If you otherwise like her, I would sit down and try to have a reset meeting. Write up a specific work agreement. If you don’t. Start fresh, cut be much more specific next time .

Once you’ve got a good nanny you’ll do whatever you need to do to keep her.

You say she “kicked off” about being expected to work when she didn’t think she was needed. Why put up with this? I wouldn’t act that way towards my employer.

When we had a part-time nanny we made it clear that she could choose half her holiday, we chose the other half and then on a bank holiday she could either work, take it as holiday or take it unpaid - her choice.

It sounds as if she's being unreasonable about other things too though, so I'd just give notice and get someone else.

It's not very generous annual leave, is it? It's the bare minimum.

And the christmas leave issue, wouldn't those days have wiped out all her leave days and more?

Hmm I think it's tight not giving her the BH as additional and thinking you get to choose when she takes her AL - that sounds pretty crappy for her.

You literally could not give her any less annual leave could you?