What is the right amount of severance for a good nanny who has outrun her course?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you have a contract that specifies notice and severance? If not, I think it's more notice than severance that is called for, since you've essentially been paying her full-time for a half-time job for the past two years. That's a lot of $$$.

But she definitely needs to have notice to be able to find her next position. Maybe a couple of weeks severance if you want her to train the new person, but I think this might backfire since she does a lot of things wrong.

No severance for a nanny of 6 years!?! That’s insane.

Op, it is customary to give one week for every year worked, in addition to the notice period in your contract.

[Anonymous]

I had a FT nanny for 5 years and once our youngest started school we just needed after school care. That was not enough hours. I ended up giving a 1 month notice and 5 week severance. I was very quick to respond to phone calls when asked for a reference. She found a new family within a couple of weeks.

[Anonymous]

I wish other families gave severance pay for tenure. I've worked with several families long term (ranging from 3.5 years to 5.5 years as their daily nanny), and when the time came that the kids were in school and they no longer needed me, they gave me only 3-5 weeks of notice, and no parting bonus or severance.