What is your sick policy with your nanny? (with COVID specifically)

[Anonymous]

Nanny has been feeling under the weather for 4-5 days with congestion and headache. No fever. She says she feels like it's just a bad cold but wants to be careful... She's getting a COVID test tomorrow and doc of course recommends quarantining until results come in.

Nanny says on the one hand, she wants to be as careful as possible, but on the other hand, is she supposed to get a COVID test and quarantine every time she has a cold this fall/winter? Resulting in lots of missed work? We are wondering the same. Also there is the lesser issue of paying her for all of these days missed. (We love her and don't mind paying, but it does get annoying paying for days she doesn't come especially when we are trying to work, manage e-learning, blah blah.) I should add, after today and tomorrow, she will be out of paid sick days for the year.

Just want to see what others are doing in these situations. We feel like we need to spell out some sort of policy to follow here, but I'm kind of at a loss.

[Anonymous]

If she gets it from you, you should give her leave. Otherwise I'd just play it by ear and it depends on your finances and child care.

[Anonymous]

I would do what my company does. Give her up to 2 weeks quarantine leave with pay. I will then take some of they time off myself since Rui wuld qualify for leave with my company since I don’t have childcare.
If she’s actually sick then we will sort it out best we can.

[Anonymous]

Wouldn’t your policy be heavily dependent upon your own personal comfort level? If the Nanny is willing to come in — with whatever standards you have used in the past — would you be comfortable assuming whatever the risk is that someone in your family might be exposed to covid? You mention how careful the Nanny wants to be — but haven’t said anything about how careful you want to be, and that, for me, would be a critical factor, so that you are accepting the level of “carefulness “ vs leaving that responsibility up to your Nanny.
I am being very careful, so I would pay for pretty unlimited sick leave this year, but my better safe than sorry position might be quite different from yours.

[Anonymous]

We set a policy of unlimited, paid sick time back in March when the pandemic hit. The last thing we wanted was for her to come to work with a possibly highly contagious virus because she was afraid of getting docked. Our nanny has not taken one minute of it.

In your case, OP, I would pay for a covid test and pay her until she feels well enough to work.

[Anonymous]

Yes of course she's supposed to not come in and should get tested every time she gets a cold. If she's distancing appropriately, it should happen a lot less often than most winters.

Our policy is 5 regular sick days a year.

But if directly exposed to anyone with COVID or sick with symptoms herself (or anyone in her household is), paid sick leave until COVID test results returned.

If she is COVID positive (or anyone in her household is), 14 additional days of paid sick leave.

It sucks financially and in terms of trying to juggle work and baby. But it sucks a lot less than risking getting COVID ourselves.

[Anonymous]

I think you need to talk to her about it. If her lifestyle is an issue right now, maybe you need a different nanny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If she gets it from you, you should give her leave. Otherwise I'd just play it by ear and it depends on your finances and child care.

How would you know for sure where the nanny got it? The parents or kid could be asymptomatic and the Abby picks it up from them but is symptomatic.

[Anonymous]

I give unlimited sick time but my experience is our nanny is really healthy and if she says she's sick, she's sick. She's taken maybe a couple weeks total sick time in the years we've had her.

I also have immune compromised kiddos so I prefer her not to push herself.

In covid, our official deal is if anyone has any symptoms they should stay home. In reality, we haven't had any symptoms yet.

[Anonymous]

If she gets it from you then she should have unlimited, paid sick leave. You should see if this is covered by Workman's comp.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately this is one of the terrible aspects of this situation for nannies as well as families. So families need to be one the same page in terms of comfort levels in the first place. Your nanny is being honest with you. If nannies feel they might be financially affected in some way they may feel uncomfortable being honest about this. Some part time nannies have gotten extra jobs and are not telling the other family because of fear of losing the job. Other families want to hire part time and don't want their nannies working for anyone else. Long story short I know it sucks but there are implications if caregivers are put between a rock and a hard palce

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We set a policy of unlimited, paid sick time back in March when the pandemic hit. The last thing we wanted was for her to come to work with a possibly highly contagious virus because she was afraid of getting docked. Our nanny has not taken one minute of it.

In your case, OP, I would pay for a covid test and pay her until she feels well enough to work.

+1. Exactly the same. We made it clear to our wonderful nanny that she now has unlimited sick time and we would continue to pay her if she didn’t feel comfortable working. She has never once missed a day.

[Anonymous]

I’m living in, due to covid (and my preference, but the family would prefer live out). The kids have had two partial sick days (I’m homeschooling), due to feeling off from weather changes. I’m perfectly fine, because we’re all quarantined as much as possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If she gets it from you, you should give her leave. Otherwise I'd just play it by ear and it depends on your finances and child care.

How would you know for sure where the nanny got it? The parents or kid could be asymptomatic and the Abby picks it up from them but is symptomatic.

Parents and child should get tested if nanny is positive and if family is positive you give them sick leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m living in, due to covid (and my preference, but the family would prefer live out). The kids have had two partial sick days (I’m homeschooling), due to feeling off from weather changes. I’m perfectly fine, because we’re all quarantined as much as possible.

Then, why not live out? They can pay a bit more to control your lifestyle.