How long before you know your AP is a good 'un?

[Metrobaby]

I guess I am asking as what is the reasonable length of time you would give for your AP to settle in??

I have a new AP - she has only been here for a week but I am getting the impression she is very homesick plus a bit reluctant to do her household chores (eg I have asked her twice now to ensure the childrens uniforms are ironed and they are not done which means I now have to do it in time for tomorrow ). I am also trying to figure out whether she does not understand - even though she says she does undestand...

We're pushed for time in the mornings too, but drinking coffee on the job would not be a concession, but a given for me! We have to keep to our 'timetable' to get to school on time, so I think not dawdling over breakfast is understandable. However, I'd never have been able to say that to somebody.

@ blueshoes: to help out with the children, yes, and if the AP had been very on the ball, she might have offered the Mother help getting the kids out of the door. But not to load the dishwasher!

The morning thing is a nightmare and this kind of thing is one of the things I am pretty strict about too - If an AP was lounging round drinking coffee whilst I have 100 things to do I would also ask her to give me a hand, and if she said 'in a minute' I would certainly say 'No. I need your help now'

I had a dappy (but absolutely lovely) AP turn up in jim-jams (despite being instructed not to) when their job was to be on duty at 6.30 until the school drop off at 8.00. I asked him when he was planning on getting changed, to which he replied "After my shower". I airily told him that given he wouldn't have time for a leisurely shower between 6.30 and 8.00 then the mothers were going to be in for a treat seeing him in his pyjamas at the school gate.

To say his face blanched is the understatement of the decade. Have never seen a guy get changed so quickly (sans shower )

lol at squiffy's aupair.

Coffee is of course allowed for breakfast, just not dawdling, if there are other tasks that are required to be done in that short window. Summer, dikke's specific instructions to aupair were to clear the table and load dishwasher before playing with dcs. Now if the aupair wanted to be able to do that after dikke had left for work, she should discuss that with dikke as that is a change.

I feel, at least in the beginning, an aupair's sense of time and a working mother's sense of time are quite different. An aupair, being single, probably living at home, never had children, will need to learn that there are certain things that need to be done in a given time frame without acres of time to catch later if they don't do it there and then.

My aupairs have generally been quite professional about their duties, but I won't hesitate to say: "no, I need you to do it now" as well if I was running around like a blue-arsed fly and the aupair was just spectating.

Morning crunch time and school run pick up belong to that category. I am pretty strict about timekeeping around those times and make that clear before I hire and also in the house rules. Last thing I need is another child to chase and look over her shoulder. If I say in the timetable aupair has to be up by a certain time in the morning, it means up and dressed by that time.

Other areas, there is much more room for give-and-take.

This is a really good point to have come up - it's one thing I'm definitely going to emphasize to our au pair, it's all hands on deck from 7-8.15. She then has until 3 pm to do what she likes and can have as many coffees as she wants then. Goes w/o saying I don't get breakfasts most mornings unless it's a bagel standing, and am usually lucky not to leave the house with my lo's breakfast on my work clothes!

Thanks all for your advice .

An update. After Monday she seemed to be OK but Tues and Wed have been AWFUL to the extent we had to have a chat last night with her. Things I found:-

1. Her reading the paper or magazine whilst 'on duty'
2. After me asking her to do things always when she was just staring at me coping with all 3 kids singlehandledy - she would completely ignore my request and walk off
3. She spends ALL day at our house - only going out to collect the children from school. (I have taken time to show her around the town and local facilities and where we live there is a lot of things to do and we are fairly close to London too).
4. On Weds morning she did NOTHING - leaving poor DH singlehandledly to get kids ready for school - younger one to nursery - and give breakfast. She knows this is part of her duties
5. Often giving up when she asks the kids to do something - and they don't - she will just leave it - and do nothing else instead
6. If DH or I are there she will often just stand and watch - not lend a hand nor do anything else. I find this incredibly annoying especially when I ask her to do stuff it is either ignored or done later.

When we sat down with her she said she was happy (she keeps saying this) - but she also admitted to not knowing how to handle the kids when they play up or do not do as they are told. She actually got quite upset about this. We told her how to handle them, what to do etc (we have gone through this already) and she seemed to be a lot happier. I think the kids have latched onto the fact she only ever pleads with them and have been pushing the boundaries with her and consequently I think this is getting her down. We also told her that we want her to start trying and not wait for us to keep telling her what to do. I did also tell her that when I ask her to do things it is because she is standing doing nothing, and that I want her to do it straightaway - not later.

I'm hoping now things will change and will see how she does in a week.

She seems to be a kind girl - the kids like her but I am worried that she is just not right - or maybe a bit clueless or perhaps lazy. The other thing is that neither my DH and I 'connect' with her, and for this reason I am tempted to start looking for another AP now. DH thinks though if she starts improving it would be wrong to simply get shot of her.

I am so trying to be supportive as I know it must be hard coming from a different country but it is exhausting.

MB I don't think you have said how old she is - does sound like there is a maturity issue here.

There is a lead in time to recruiting new au pairs, there is nothing wrong with starting out the process now. She may improve, she may not. She improves you stop the recruiting process.

As an employer you have to take her through a proper disciplinary process, if you gave her a verbal warning on Monday then you are probably justified in moving to a written warning next week if things haven't improved.

that does sound very exhausting for you! hope she improves rather quickly!

If she's young and has no experience with children, then I can understand her struggling with them - having to do maybe a significant amount of childcare "training" is something you sign up to when you hire a young, inexperienced au pair. Could you maybe scale back her contact with the children and give her more housework or meal prep to do?

Just plain not doing her jobs and ignoring you is completely unacceptable though! Has she ever had any kind of job before? Did she have household staff growing up? I can only imagine doing what your boss tells you and helping out around the house are totally alien concepts to her

I totally agree with DIOM - verbal warning, week to improve, if no improvement then a written warning, one more week to improve or give her her notice. That will probably give you enough time to recruit a new au pair if necessary.

DoiM - she will be 22 years soon.

Does it really have to be so formal with written warnings before termination?? When I have spoken to her I have never said the words "this is a warning" nor threatened her with giving her notice. DH seemed to think it would be rather heavy handed at such an early stage. Plus I get the impression if I gave her warnings and told her the reason I was getting rid of her as she is useless she would be heartbroken - and then prob refuse to to anything during her notice period.

If you don't follow a proper disciplinary procedure then it could be an unfair dismissal. There was a thread on here a while ago from a mum who sacked an au pair but didn't have a proper contract (if I remember correctly) and the au pair threatened to take it to a tribunal.

She has had experience of looking after children, and unfortunately no job experience which on hindsight should have rung warning bells.

Lemonchik - would be completely happy to re-adjust her duties but we already have a cleaner and tbh the school pickup and entertaining my eldest 2 until i come home 3hrs later is something that I need an AP to do.

Could I not just give notice and tell her something along the lines of we just don't need her anymore instead?

She seems to be a bit confused about the nature of her role - that she's your employee rather than a house guest! If I were you I would start looking for a new au pair, and give your current au pair a very clear notice to improve.

I'm not sure - wouldn't that be making her redundant? Then I think you can't employ someone else in the same role. Unless there is a probationary period in the contract?

If she then found out that you subsequently employed a new AP it would be unfair dismissal.

Yes it may sound heavy handed but these are your responsibilities as an employer. If she subsequently refused to do anything that could be construed as gross misconduct which is grounds for instant dismissal.

I don't belive you can claim unfair dismissal under a year and you can't claim redunancy under a years employment. However it is good business practice to sit her down and explain you're not happy and give her a chance to improve. If she doesn't then you are quite within your rights to tell her she is not fulfilling the job as required.I would always unless a case of gross misconduct pay notice.

What Jules said. In the first year you can sack someone because you don't like the colour of their socks. So long as you are not 'discriminating' in any way (race/religion/etc) then you can ask her to leave and replace her immediately. BUT you need to be nice about it and give her a clear period of time to improve, having already explained to her that if there is no approval, she must go home. I would do that bit in writing.

Unless your contract states otherwise her notice period during the first year of employment is one week.

I have only had to ask one person to return home (my Finnish common-or-garden dementor) and because I was asking her to leave I offered to pay her return flight. I think that is fair in the circumstances. Alternatively you could help her try to find another AP job (but that would be a bit unfair on the next family )

Metrobaby, I am in almost exactly the same place as you, tot he point that I actually lost it earlier and roared and my own DS, who I was having to look after during APs hours, and his two friends (neighbours) an yet STILL AP didnt log off her computer and stop talking to her boyfriend

She also ignored a request for help earlier, and spent the whole 35 minutes of 'sole care' (DS was actually playing on the drive way with next door child, and his mum had their door open) on her computer talking. I was pitting and am so so cross now. She has hidden in her room pretty much since then (very sensibly) but tomorrow we are having 'the chat' and I am giving her a formal warning. I actually have 4 weeks in which I get a 'free' replacemnet from the agency if she doesnt work out, so I dont want to leave things too late

MB - how did you find her? If you found her through an agency I would get the agency involved.

We have had a lot of au pairs (always through agencies) and have had problems but they were always resolved and hence we din't require any to leave.

You are the best judge obviously, but I found that being very clear about what you want and how you want it and when you want it (as I mentioned before we had lists and they had to tick the things they had done), and also being very clear about what you don't want (eg. reading books/newspapers/chatting on phone/texting/surfing internet during work time when they still have tasks to do, be it looking after dc or other tasks you require them to do)is the key.

Also, we did not allow any internet/telephone stuff during worktime full stop because I didn't want jobs rushed and poorly done so they could spend the whole day behind the laptop. However, I did make sure she had proper breaks and was not required to do anything during these breaks. I always tried to ensure that they were at the same time so she could arrange phone calls and even visits from friends during the breaks.

I would sit her down and talk her through the things which are going well and the things which you are not happy with, give her very clear examples. Write this all down and give it to her after the meeting so she can consider and then follow up with a further meeting on how she is proposing to address these issues. In that same meeting I would make clear that if this cannot be sorted out she will have to go but that you really hope that it can be sorted out.

Good luck.

I found her through AuPair World and did my own checks and references etc. She seemed so pleasent on the phone and over email/MSN etc. Next time I am definately going through an agency so I have some come back.

Thanks to the fantastic help from Millarkie and DioM and other threads on here I put together an au-pair manual, list of duties, suggested timetable and a contract. I then spent 2 days off work to show exactly what to do, take her through our routines, where everything was etc etc. I even emailed her the information and told her to run it through a translation program so she understood EXACTLY what is expected with her. I then asked her if there was anything she didn;t feel comfortable doing. She said everything was fine. I must admit I did not do a sheet of "Things that you must not do" - but will start one for next time. I guess I assumed some sort of professionalism and common sense.

Yesterday she had improved - but hey having done nothing on Weds I guess anything would have been an improvement . To her credit she seems to have made an effort and whilst things are still not up to speed I am prepared to see how things for next week. However, that said her general lack of enthusiasm, and the fact that she spends most of the day holed up in her room makes me think that she is probably not adjusting this.

DTG - what agency did you use?

Hi MB

I used Sunflower agency link here

Phoned them this morning and they had good advice, and have said they will speak to her if needs be and will find her a new home & me a new AP if we cant resolve it. I do hope we can tho the smoking is really bugging me- reformed quitters are the worst arent they!? But then again form said non smoker and I have (4 months ago) just quit myself and dont want smoking around my home ... And why should I???

How long are you going to leave it MB?

After having 2 fab aupairs recently i can say that i knew they were great within 3days.
Bit worried about new girl though,she arrived wednesday and has cried ever since its a shame as my lovely Polish girl has been trying to show her job role and where everything goes (although she has monopolised her somewhat,to the extent that eldest dd complained that "*** wont let me speak to new girl!")but i think this one may end up leaving.

Oh heck, TF! Is she homesick or is there more going on? (can she skype home each evening?). Our (lovely) current AP cried a lot the first weekend she was here - missed her last family soo much..but she settled over the next few weeks especially since I gave her contact numbers for a lot of other au pairs and now she's fantastic.
Metro - how you doing? I don't think you can change an APs mindset if they haven't got that 'I'm here to help' attitude, even my 'bad' AP tried to help out if I was around.