Help - Nanny pay increase? Yes or No? I need your views!

[LittleOneMum]

I have a truly wonderful nanny. She's been with us ten months now and looks after our DS (17 months). I live in central London and pay her £450 a week net. She's my first ever nanny and now it's coming up to the one year stage and I need to decide whether to increase her salary at that time. I'm not currently minded to, for the following reasons:
(1) I pay her for 52 weeks a year but give her ten weeks holiday (all paid) - two of them are her choice
(2) In return for the extra holiday her contract provides that I can ask her to babysit twice a month but I've asked her literally 3 times (and have always paid her extra for this)
(3) She works 8.15 to 5.30pm despite her contracted hours being longer; and
(4) I'm thinking of having another DC at some point in the next 12 months and would obviously put her salary up then and don't want to have to put it up twice

BUT I'm very keen to treat her like gold as she is fab and i don't want to annoy her at all. What should I do? Maybe I should take the babysitting clause out of the contract and agree always to pay her extra?

What is the fair thing to do? That's really what I am asking.

That sounds ridiculous to me!! Perhaps she is taking advantage of your generous nature a little?! I was amazed when I saw the initial salary of 450 pnds/ week with 10 week holiday, although we don't live in London! This is more than I started on as a junior doctor and believe me I worked 2-3 times as many hours for the wage! It dosen't sound as if the job is taxing as she only looks after one child, finishes early, hardly ever babysits (and gets paid extra anyway) and has twice the normal holiday allowance. If I were you, even if you can afford it, I would have a really good think about this!

How did it go?

I feel your pain. I am looking for a nanny in Cambridge for a moderately cushy job, and an agency sent me details of a 21-year-old girl the other day (incidentally younger than my eldest child, if that's in any way relevant), who had done a short distance learning course in home childcaring, and who has two years' childcare experience (mainly 3 days a week). She wanted £8 an hour net. I was told she wouldn't accept a penny less. I worked out for 50 hours a week, this grossed up in the region of £30,000, which was top of the pay scale for graduate teachers, and not that far off what I earn as a reasonably senior education lecturer. So I had to email the agency and tell them this was completely out of our league. They seemed surprised.

They then sent me details of someone who was the same age and had done a part-time NVQ Level 2 on the job, who had job-hopped doing temping work in nurseries, and who wanted £7 an hour, grossing up at about £25,000 a year. That's still a lot for us.

I had genuinely thought after chatting to nannies on MN and reading various posts, I would be able to get someone who had studied for a couple of years at college and had a year's experience for our budget of £20,000 gross. But I fear I may be sadly disappointed having read your post.

You should be able to either get a DCE/BTEC with a year post-qualifying as a nanny or mother's help or a fairly experienced NVQ3 nursery nurse with no nanny experience for £20k gross! That or the market's improved significantly since I was looking for my second job!

London is an expensive place to live so salaries are higher but also all the nannies gravitate there so supply can be lower in other regions. Swings and roudabouts.

I did think so, Frannikin. (BTW what is DCE?) Since posting I have looked at websites of a couple of very posh London agencies, and interestingly the country salaries they are quoting there seem a bit lower than expectations around here, for better qualified and/or more experienced people, and I am baffled as to why this would be. It was the same with Norland. Maybe local agencies in East Anglia are real chancers and talk up the rates a lot?

DCE - is the diploma in childcare and education which is a NVQ level 3 and the equivelant to the NNEB - also if you want her to be ofsted registered you really want someone with a DCE.

so LITTLEONESMUM wwhat have you decided to do?

at 450 a week she is on good money, but if you said payrise in contract, then techinally you have to give her one - though if she wants £500 thats a huge payrise

I would offer maybe 3/5% so up to £11 a week extra

if she says no,then yes you may have a fab nanny and your child loves her, but she is young and will love another nanny as well

For OFSTED you don't necessarily need a DCE - you need any of the qualifications listed on the list here or common core training (easily available as the ICP or distance learning from MNT).

Sorry for the thread hijack OP!

I also live in Central London Little One's Mum, and have a great live-out nanny who has been with us for almost 7 years now!
I have made it a policy to keep paying her top rates because I think she is very very good, and I trust her 100 per cent to do the best for my children. I have a very demanding job and I need the peace of mind that I have the right person in my house looking after my little ones.
She is qualifed and has lots of experience so I have always paid her rates towards the top end of the market average for this kind of role. I like the fact that she gets paid a bit mroe than her nanny friends too - I think this underlines how highly we rate her, and how important we judge this role to be in our family. We have always given her pay rises at every annual review.
I would cut back on everything else before I considered "downsizing" childcare.

BoffinMum - agencies definitely talk up the money! Have you tried advertising the job yourself stating the gross annual salary upfront?

Speaking as a nanny employer, I think if you can afford to pay £500 a week net, and you think your nanny deserves that, then that's great. I can't afford that, so pay my nanny in central London much less - she is a fab nanny, and happy with her pay. I game her a small pay rise last year, but will not be doing so this year - at my firm all pays are being frozen.

Boffinmum - when I first moved to the Cambs region and rang round some agencies a few were quoting huge £net per hour for nannies - more than I was paying in London. However the potential nannies I contacted directly (through gumtree/nannyjob) and a newer agency quoted much more reasonable rates.
It still seems the case now, I have seen a few jobs on nannyjob in the last few months (am scouting out in case we swap au pair for nanny) at what I would call reasonable rates - but I was told £12 per hour by an agency.

Funnily enough, emboldened by all the advice on here and Penth's other thread about recruitment, I have now advertised on Gumtree with an ad based on one Nannynick et al helped me draft a few months ago, and I got some very promising inital responses and no daft ones at all. All are considerably more qualified and experienced than the rather dodgy agency candidates being put forward by the agencies, and all seem to think £300 pw net live out for 50 hours is a fair rate of pay around here. As do I, so that's good.

I had an idea about payrises - how about offering nannies exactly the same percentage pay rise as the employer gets?? This would be easy for me to do as I am a lecturer and it's all public information.

I used to work for a teacher and when she got a pay rise, I got one at the same rate. Teachers don't get big pay rises but an extra few pennies all helps I suppose.

Well I think I'll do that then. It's the fairest way most probably.

Please advise ...I can afford to pay £1400 a month gross for around 40 hours/wk, no house work, no cookin, one three year old and one other after school for an hour. Approx 30 days holiday a year.

Do you think I will find a nanny in Cambridge for this sort of pay or is this unreasonable? I could do a nany share for three mornings a week with a child of a similar age to increase nanny's salary -assuming I can find someone who needs p/t care.
Accordign to agencies it is impossible - so scared havign spoken to someone who advertised on Gumtree...when I asked if she smoked she paused and thhn said she had given up - when I asked how long ago the response was "CAW(?) around a month I suppose...what am I to do!!!

Hi Carmel - I live in Cambridge too and have employed both nannies and au pairs. Agencies will always give you the top end of the range in terms of salary but in my experience I have found better and more committed people by looking on my own (currently have temp nanny found through gumtree - did have to weed out many people but there are good ones out there!). TBH I think what you are offering may be on the low side but it depends very much what kind of person/experience you are looking for. I also think nanny jobs in Cambridge are a lot thinner on the ground than they used to be a few years ago.

Also - I would potentially be interested in sharing a nanny two mornings a week (I have a 3 YO son) - do you want to get in touch? You can email me at amrehak at yahoo dot com if you're interested. thanks and good luck!