Visitors for Nanny

[workingmom2000]

We are drawing up a contract for the nanny as first timers. I was wondering though if you normally allow your nanny to:
a) have visitors over;
b) use telephone (and if so, for what purpose)

is it a live out or in nanny?

live-out. Our nanny will be part-time: mondays and tuesdays. Is it normal to give all bank holidays? In our case, they would disproportionately all fall on Monday.

its normal to give bhols as part of holiday - you may want to factor in fact monday is a holiday as part of the amount you give /arrangemntes re days she chooses.

visitors only by prior arrangement and only short/occasional local calls during nap/free time (although these days wtih prevalance of mobiles you wonder how easy it is to control this although I suppose you don't bear the cost if you don't have a mobile phone as part of nanny's benefits).

What do you mean by visitors? Playdates, or friends of hers?

I do allow our nanny to have visitors. I trust her to only have appropriate visitors ? most of them are other nannies with their charges, which is good for the dcs, and keeps her sane. I know she takes the dcs to visit people from time to time ? her parents, particularly, which I?m fine with, and they have called in occasionally when they have been in the area. The dcs love them, and think that?s a great treat. She did ask once if it was ok if a friend of hers who was visiting from New Zealand came for lunch. I thought that was absolutely fine, and nice for the dcs to have contact with other people.

She uses the phone to call me and for dc-related stuff. I wouldn?t stop her using it to call other people, but she never does. She does use our laptop when ds is asleep to check email and so on.

Bank holidays for part-timers is a well-known employment issue - I think if you have a look on govt websites you will find some definitive guidance.

As I recall (being a part-timer myself), because I work an 85% year, I have entitlement to 85% of BHs - which for me works out as 7 out of the usual 8. The 8th one, if I take it, is taken out of my holiday entitlement. So your nanny is a 40% worker, so would get 40% of BHs ... that means, hmmm, 3.2, I guess you'd round it up to 4. So if she takes the other 4, those would be out of her holiday entitlement.

I allowed our live-out nannys to have appropriate visitors (ie. other nannys and their charges or nanny's sister for a short visit) during working hours, but I would make it clear that socialising during working hours is to be for the children's benefit not nanny's (we had one nanny who used to invite her boyfriend in to our house during the day!).
We haven't had a live-in nanny but our au pairs are allowed visitors outside of working hours (but mainly choose not to since there are old people (me and dh) hanging round in this place, prefer to go to the pub), but not overnight without permission.
Last au pair had her boyfriend come and stay a couple of weekends and her mum came for a weekend..all with permission and it was nice for us to meet them.

Use of telephone - we pay for a mobile and £10 of credit a month so nanny/au pair can make calls related to the children during the day. At other times we ask au pair to use a computer phone (skype) which she has her own account on and is very cheap so we don't have to limit the use of the phone at all and she is responsible for the cost of her calls home etc.

We sometimes have confidential work stuff in the house so we are fairly strict on the visitor thing: only if have met the visitors, and only if we are asked in advance.

In practice, this tends to limit visitors to playdates, but our nanny seems quite happy to take this in her stride and take the kids into town if she wants to meet friends for a coffee.

snickersnack you sound very sensible and just like my mb

you arent my mb are you?

i would be offended if i was told that i couldnt have mummies/nannies and children over for play dates

if you trust your nanny with your children, then you should trust her judgement to whom comes to your house

i use home phone, mobile signal is rubbish where i am, and also use mb lappy - she gave me all her passwords

again trust comes into it - sure she has many private and personal documents on her lappy, and I would NEVER go into her personall stuff and read

BusinessLink: Holiday Entitlement Calculator
For part-time employees, use this calculator to work out how many days holiday your employee is entitled. As the employer you can choose if you want to add Bank Holidays on to the resulting figure, or include them in that figure. Ultimately it is down to how the contract is worded which will determine if Bank Holidays are to be worked, or are to be taken off and be as part of annual leave, or in addition to annual leave.
Pay and Time off on public and bank holidays - a guide from BusinessLink.

I have visitors over when ever i like, always mums /nannies with their similar ish aged children.

Actually nearly every day we have friends round OR visit friends

have never had my own friends or family visit me at work, but in my old job i worked round the corner from my grandparents so we would sometimes pop in there. (they also lived near the park so we often borrowed their loo!)

i too use home phone and laptop and computer etc. again ONLY for things like getting directions from google maps, renewing library books, colouring pages from ceebeebies, checking opening hours and prices of places etc etc.... and if kids asleep /at school, my emails, facebook etc

wideawake mum... surely it would be ok to make any calls regarding your children from your landline?

I'm a nanny and I only have other nannies/mums with children over while I'm working - I don't feel it would be appropriate really to invite other friends or my family round. My DP did come round once to bring me my phone as I'd left it at home, but he didn't come in.

I only really use the landline to call my boss, or to call for things for the children. I sometimes use it to call DP if I'm going to be home late, as there is no mobile reception in the house.

Our nanny contract says she can have visitors if we approve them first. In practice this has always meant nanny asks the first time re a nanny friend of hers who has charges of a similar age, and then it is ok for that friend after that.

I have said no to nanny's DH being at the house in working hours.