We have a PT nanny, who works around 85 hours per month. I'm a widow with 3 children, no family support, and erratic self-employed working hours. When I hired our nanny, I explained that the most important thing to me is flexibility - I needed a candidate who is able to accommodate fairly last-minute changes in our arrangements. I also need someone who is flexible over the summer holidays, and able to take on extra hours or to change the usual hours around. (Usually she works after-school shifts on 3 days, but I suggested that it would be more useful if she could do full days during the summer holidays).
Our nanny is great, and I have no concerns about her skills or care for the children. But she's less flexible than she initially indicated. I have a question about what the usual practice is when the employer has to make changes to shifts. A few months ago, she wanted me to commit to our plans for the summer holidays. I found it hard to make plans so far in advance but I guessed that we would be away in one particular week (for which we would still pay her, our of the employer's allocation for holiday allowance), and that we would be at home the following week (when I'd like her to work her usual hours). Now our plans have unavoidably changed, and those weeks have been swapped around. It's still 6-7 weeks until those dates occur. Our nanny is saying that she can't accommodate our changes, and she's expecting to still be paid for the week when we were going to be away but now will be home (even though she says she can't work that week), and she's still expecting to be paid for the week when we were going to be home but now will be away. So essentially I'm paying her for 2 weeks, but getting no childcare out of it.
I was wondering if this is usual practice? (There are a number of other occasions when this is happening over the summer). For context, our nanny frequently requests one-off changes to her shifts, which I'm happy to accommodate if I can do so. When she cancelled a shift with 2 days notice, I said that we needed an agreement that she'd give me at least a month's notice if she changes any shifts. I'm wondering if other nanny-employers have an agreement about how much notice they have to give their nanny if their plans change around taking holidays? ie. if you tell a nanny that in a particular week you'll be away, but then those plans change and ideally you'd like the nanny to work during that week - is it just a case of sucking it up, and accepting that you'll have to pay them even if they can't work? or is there a period of notice within which you'd expect to have flexibility to change plans and ask the nanny to fit in with them (or, if they can't work, to take it out of their holiday allowance themselves or as unpaid leave)? I just want to do what's fair and usual practice.