Au Pair not doing all her duties properly - wwyd?

[Metrobaby]

My AP has been with us for 6 months now. We laid out all her duties in clearly from the start - however she has an irritating habit of not doing all her duties - or not doing it properly. I end up having a word with her, she improves, but then invariably she starts slipping again, and then I have to have another word with her again. She is allocated more than enough time to do her duties. She also has started to clock off early if my DH comes in early from work - despite still not having done all she is supposed to do.

I don't like having to pull her up on her duties constantly - and I have tried to ignore it and hope it gets better or that it is a temporary oversight on her part - but it hasn't. I'd be interested to know everyone's experience and views on how best to handle this.

What do you ask her to do and for how many hours/pay? If she is being paid reasonably for the tasks expected then I'd be inclined to have a fairly firm word as you have had so many instances. Perhaps along the lines of if you would like to work fewer hours then we could just agree to pay you less. If though she has a lot on for the pay then, as I learnt yesterday, it is may be you who needs to make an adjustment.

She is paid £85 pw with 4 weeks paid holiday. Her contracted hours are 30 hrs - however it is in reality more like 23hrs. She has to take care of the children for 1 hour in the morning and for 3-4 hours in the afternoon - 2hrs of which are sole charge for a 9 and 6 year old. The remaining time she is on duty is to be an extra pair of hands for either myself or DH with the dc. Her duties are mainly childcare, keeping the kids room tidy and laundry. We have a cleaner each week, so her cleaning duties are restricted to keeping the kitchen clean after use and running the hoover over the house once a week.

The type of things I have had to pull her up on are to engage with the children during her sole charge time, putting away the children's clean clothes, cleaning up the kitchen after her use, and reminding her that on the day my cleaner comes is not an excuse for her not to do her minimal tidying the kitchen duties.

She sounds like a teenager - my dses know what chores they are supposed to do, but need lots of reminding and the occasional reading of the riot act, to keep them up to the mark.

I think you may have to spoon-feed her with tick-lists.

Time with the children:
Please complete a diary showing what you have done with the children today - park / drawing / jigsaw puzzles / reading / ....

The children are old enough to corroborate this

Then for cleaning duties leave her a weekly schedule and tell her you expect to see it done and CHECK at the end of every day whether she's ticked it and whether it looks like it's been done.

Either she forgets (in which case a tick list will solve it) or she's lazy (in which case the constant nagging might get through or it might not).

Frakkinaround - I like the tick list idea a lot - thank you. Is it too late though to introduce it now considering the time she has already been with us?

My other concern is that some duties are not required every day and although I do want them done, I am not concerned whether they are done on a particular day. By introducing a tick list I would have to specify a particular day to ensure it gets done, and I am not sure how to handle this change with the AP.

with the tick list you may not have to specify a day but say at least twice a week, or you need to do so and so when asked, can still tick wether che did it when asked?

sack her. IF you get a good au pair, you are seriously lucky in my experience. If you don't, just cut your losses and boot them out!
It seems that the older ones are much much better, but so many are inexperienced children basically. My experience of au pairs is simialr to yours OP - when babysitting my ten year old one evening (from 7-8) I came home to find her downstairs watching telly and the au pair up her room chatting on her phone! We live in a big house and her room was right at the top of the stairs and front room - where DD was - right at the bottom, at the front. She even had time to open the door to a policeman doing door to door and give a full account of her entire family history and shut the door on him again and the au pair didn't even notice!

Never to late IMO. If things need doing 'as and when' ask her to note down when she does it and check the list every night.

I would sit down and have a meeting with her, point out what you're pleased with (you can find something, you know you can!) and introduce this. A good excuse might be 'we don't often have time for a detailed handover and I feel I'm missing out on what the children are doing (introduce diary idea) and it would be a big help thinking towards our next au pair if you could complete these (introduce tick lists) so we have a better idea what you're doing'.

If she doesn't improve after that then you can sack her, but depending on the disciplinary procedure in your contract I would imagine you had to give her reasonable time to improve. This also covers you if you have to give her a reference and want to be honest (take notes during the meeting and date it) because you'll be able to back up why you let her go/what she wasn't good at AND you gave her the chance to improve.

we didn't have a disciplinary procedure in ours. we just had a notice period, that could be dispensed with by either party in the event of wholly unreasonable behaviour by the other. I sacked her with 4 weeks notice.

FFS you pay her less than 3 quid an hour to do the work that you can't be arsed to do (including looking after YOUR kids) and then whinge when things don't go quite right. Grow up.

I wouldn't like to go into a tribunal as an employer with that TBH.

My contract specifies exactly what gross misconduct is and if the employer wants to get rid for a reason other than making me redundant then they need to have followed the disciplinary procedure, but then I work long-term positions so although I could theoretically be dismissed within the first year on a whim and it not be unfair dismissal I prefer to protect myself from that! I would always follow advice such as that from Businesslink on dismissal. There was in the relatively recent past someone on here whose AP threatened to sue for unfair dismissal so it can happen.

-------

To dismiss an employee fairly, you must first have a fair reason for doing so. The potentially fair reasons include:

• conduct
• retirement
• capability
• redundancy
• a statutory requirement which could prevent the employment continuing - eg a driver losing their licence

Reasonableness is undefined. However, tribunals will probably consider whether the employer:

• genuinely believed that the reason for dismissal was a potentially fair one
• had reasonable grounds for that belief
• carried out proper and reasonable investigations where appropriate
• followed procedures
• told the employee why they were being considered for dismissal and listened to their views
• allowed the employee to be accompanied at disciplinary/dismissal hearings
• gave the employee the chance to appeal against the decision to dismiss
• acted within the 'band of reasonable responses' available in the circumstances

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but aren't au pairs in a ridiculously vulnerable position? I didnt think employment law viewed au pairs as employees in the same way as say, a nannie or childminder - the minimum wage does not apply for example. I don't agree with it, but we went through a reputable agency, paid more than we were asked to, for less hours than were available, and still she left the chldren unsupervised in the house on their own. Youngest was 3 at the time. I think it was ok for us to sack her! I certainly wasn't going to keep employing her after that, tribunal or no bloody tribunal! I would tell the tribunal to shove it firmly up its arse if i got into trouble for sacking her after that!

Oh they are but they're not. Technically they're defined as workers but when you only have one on payroll that's virtually the same as an employee. I'll see if I can find the ruling from the ECJ but it's been linked to on here before.

Minimum wage only doesn't apply because they're live in, same as nannies who have a live in job.

What yours did would have been defined as gross misconduct in any reasonable contract and you could have legally sacked her on the spot. Unfortunately agencies sometimes don't know their arse from their elbow.

And childminders aren't employees - they're self-employed.

Sorry they are vulnerable (because they don't know their rights, nor do most agencies or families and they're depending on their host family to look after them) but legally they're not.

that is bloody terrible! so the agencies who both the APs and their host families are trusting to be the 'expert' in the situation, are actually just cowboys creaming off a commission!

I know I advocate a safe rather than sorry policy, but in this instance I would be inclined to agree.

Whenever anyone on here posts about using an agency I always advise them to double check any legal advice they're given. Some agencies are still placing girls from Turkey!

It's never legal to sack someone on the spot. There always has to be a fair process. To be fair that process will need inter alia

• a meeting to discuss the issue
• cooling off period between incident and said meeting
• opportunity for AP to have a representative present at meeting
• have had an open mind on the outcome
• reached a reasonable decision given the facts

I don't think chatting on the phone whilst child downstairs would legally count as gross misconduct on its own.

no i don't thnk so either. but leaving them unsupervised aged 3 might yes?!

thing is, when it comes to childcare, it is unlike so many other jobs - you cannot allow them to carry on working if you have any misgivings about safety etc, as their work is to ensure the safety and well being of yoru child - i saked on spot but with 4 weeks pay and offer to either stay with us for that 4 weeks while looknig for another job, or leave straight away. i think that is fair.

If it says it's gross misconduct in a contract then it is and it counts for summary dismissal. I know someone who had not locking the house correctly as grounds for instant dismissal - that's why the clause exists. Neglect of children would rank higher than that IMO!

How about you just talk to her and ask her if she is happy in her work? She might want to leave and not have the nerve to say it and is slacking off in the hope you give her an out.

It is understandable but in an employment tribunal it would be deemed unfair. Giving 4 weeks pay in lieu of notice seems fair.

Also something that plainly isn't gross misconduct such as forgetting to lock the door - like I have done so many times when in a panic to get everyone out of the door - doesn't become gross misconduct just because you put it in a contract. What that does is becomes an unfair contract and it might actually make it harder for you to enforce the more reasonable elements of it.

AFAIK everything Vicky has said is correct, trouble so few APs and AP employers know anything about their rights and duties (and I don't think it is about exploiting the AP I think it is ignorance of employment law) that APs are vulnerable. See the other thread active at the moment about APs locked out as to just how vulnerable - I would have thought that family was at risk of being sued for constructive dismissal if the AP had followed the house rules and was still locked out.

Hm, it would have been in her case (v special circs) and it wasn't just locking a door. It would be easier to get into Coutts' vault than that place!

But that just illustrates why GM should be specified - personally I only have theft, neglect and being unfit for duty through use of drugs or alcohol but failing to carry out specific explicit instructions given to preserve the family's security could well be in there. Doesn't someone on here have insubordination as GM?

In addition to those I have breach of family's privacy and as car is essential round here anything that threatens ability to drive (but that could be considered a type of unfit for duty).