Au pair handover

[FeatheredHeart]

I want our au pair to do a handover to the new a/p including daily jobs, explaining how I like things done and showing key places round our town etc. It will save me a lot of time and I will finish off and help her find her feet. I'm prepared to pay for a good handover. When I learnt to become a trainer we had a week watching and then a week doing it supervised and then we were on our own. I was planning doing that approach. The first week she helps where she can, and the second week she is taking the initiative with the old a/p on hand to help out and keep her on the right track with tips and tricks (eg: how to clear up the kitchen while keeping a baby and small child occupied). Any thoughts?

In principle it's great. There's nothing like a handover from the person who actually does the job already.

2 weeks is a long time for an ap job where the daily routine is pretty much the same. One week would probably be enough. The ONLY time as a nanny I've done a 2 week handover was with a SN child and that was partly to cover the transition to primary school (and I had a couple of days off to sort out my own move). More practical might be a day watching, a couple of days doing things together, a day where new ap tries by herself (old ap under instructions to either get out or not get involved!) and a day back together where old ap can address any of new ap's concerns.

If you have 2 aps there they will help each other so one will clean the kitchen, the other will sort the kids out. You would need to make it crystal clear to your old and new ap that towards the end you want the new ap doing 90% of the work.

Watch out for any bad habits your old ap has and make sure she doesn't pass them on!

I'm sure there's more but I fear my cake is burning.

I tried this. In short it was a complete disaster. Old au pair who was excellent at her job and with the children mutated into a sulky teenager when new au pair came. She must have shown her some jobs since the house was clean that week but once old au pair left, new au pair didn't do some basic jobs and once I noticed ( took a few weeks I admit) claimed no knowledge of the task. During the 'overlap' week the kids were basically ignored and I came home to find the au pairs watching MTV and giggling together and the kids entertaining themselves. Oh and they compared job descriptions ( I tweaked the original one to reflect small changes we wanted) and then argued with me over the changes.
It really ruined the last week of what was a great time with our original au pair and I had to spend extra time trying to 're-train' new au pair anyway.
Would recommend, if you go ahead with this, that you have a good chat with your current au pair about the importance of the handover.
Good luck

I don't think I would rely on this, even if your current AP is super competent, for the reason that you need to be very clear about what the new AP does and doesn't understand about the role. Your current AP may not be the best judge of this. For one thing, new AP may not want to look stupid in front of her predecessor. Also, with two of them around it coudl be the case that any issues get masked because the old AP automatically steps in for her. I think it's fine for a couple of days but I would then plan to do most of the training myself.

From my experience, I think millarkie has described the situation pretty well. I am not a fan of handovers - take the time to get to know your new AP and train her yourself, it will pay off.

I am a fan of hadovers - though only a week long, I simply can't spare the time to take off work to train the new au pair. Once old AP has gone I then sit new AP down just to check what seh thinks is routine and responsibilities, but in terms of teaching basic routine and where to find everything in the village then it saves me a lot of time.

I think that's what I'm going to do. Let the old a/p do the basics and where things are and afterwards I'll check what she's picked up then fill in the gaps. Thanks all.

Only to add a vote rather than anything new... the negative experiences here are similar to ours. Now we simply say our outgoing au pair will give us a good reference and pass on the email address of the leaving au pair to the new one. Then, though we have always been fair, we cross our fingers. There may be niggles that surface as they never did with us. Bear in mind that most au pairs have a brain, and will dismiss petty snipes. The nicest thing about au pairs is that when they go home most are genuinely up set to leave my girls. I suppose the new au pair wants a sense of 'it's my way from now on. I'm not going to to be the last au pair's clone' and that's a healthy attitude.

We try to get the outgoing au pair to introduce the new one into her social scene.. we think that is far better investment in time. I don't mind showing the new au pair the ropes - in fact I much prefer to do it as I can often get a run of 5 or 6 days off at a time.. What I feel too old to do now is to be taking the au pair around in the evening or weekend trying to hook her up with new friends..

I did a handover in between 1st and 2nd au pair but they knew each other and 1st au pair was very mature 22 yr old. It was hard having two au pairs together as we were all quite upset to see our first au pair go and this made me feel very guilty for the new one.
I also think that sometime the au pairs develop bad habits and it's better to start fresh with the new one.
Now I have a 7 page file for them which documents everything about the job (not that it's that complicated) - but it means that they can take their time to read it and re - read it and also you can then just tweak it every year.