Employing a Nanny

Employing someone to work in your home

The difficulty is that having someone come into your home and care for your children bears no correlation to employing someone to work in your office.

For example, can you imagine a worker in an office asking if they can bring their child to work with them? Well, in our world, nannies do sometimes bring their own child to work. If you love your nanny and you want to keep her, then you will bend over backwards to accommodate her, which could mean allowing her to bring her baby to work once she returns from maternity leave. That would never happen at Goldman Sachs!

Employment procedures

Nannies have earned the right to be treated fairly and the same as any other workers - I totally get that - the law is there to protect them from bad employers. However, I also understand that as a parent it is sometimes difficult to reconcile employment procedures with what is going on at home.

For example, if you have any concerns about how your children are being looked after, as a parent your instinct is to protect your children. You are not going to want to hear that you can't terminate the nanny's employment without having to follow protracted disciplinary procedures dictated by government. But unfortunately that is often the case.

Nanny employment contract

At Tinies, we provide parents and nannies with guidance on the law - it is one of the benefits of going through our agency. You don't even need to recruit a nanny from us - we provide a separate legal package tailored to you.

One of the best pieces of advice we can give you is make sure you draw up a nanny employment contract. Carefully list out the duties you want the nanny to carry out, and annually review the contract to make sure it reflects what the nanny is actually doing.

If you are not confident about drawing up a contract, then speak to your local Tinies nanny agency and ask about our Legal Package.

Amanda Coxen, Working Mum and Tinies Director