As a nanny I work through anything I can; be that a cold, mild GI issue, etc. I understand the importance of reliability. It is just a hazard of the job to catch a bug here and there. Now, my charges and I may spend these rare days taking it easy but the parents would rather have me come in and watch a movie with their kids instead of forcing them to scramble for childcare or stay home themselves. I also have a chronic illness that I closely manage and I am determined to not let it interfere with my work attendance. The only times I will call out are when I am vomiting or in intense pain which leaves me bedridden.

Anonymous wrote:Our nanny has 10 PTO to be used at her discretion in addition to 6 standard holidays. She burns through it all and also takes unpaid time between doctors appointments, family commitments, long absences (2-4) for common illnesses, and short vacations. We also give her our vacations off paid. Overall in her first year she had about 5 weeks of paid time off total in addition to a few days of unpaid time off.

We seem unable to get a handle on the situation. She is very good with our son and professional, and works hard. She is a good nanny. He is happy. We thought, if she needs all this time due to chronic illnesses (both real and imagined) and managing her undiagnosed anxiety, so be it. We declined to give her a raise (we started high anyway) and planned to use the "savings" to pay for backup care. But, *how* she manages her frequent time off has precluded our ability to actually schedule backup care, hence my question.

The idea would be to make it unpaid time if we are given notice after 2pm and it is the second (or later) day of a stretch of time off. But I wanted to know both how common this situation is and how others manage it.

You need 5-7 back up caregivers, and you need to set a reasonable deadline, like 2-3 hours before she starts for the day. So, if she works 6-3, then she needs to text no later than 4, but if she works 8-5, she could text or call by 5-6. If you have 2-3 hours notice, you have plenty of time to figure out if you can have one of your many backups come in or whether one of you needs to stay home.

As far as the unpaid time, that’s crazy! She has 10 days, that’s plenty, if it’s all sick days. However, it sounds like it’s combined with vacation? Norm is a week of her choosing, one week your choice, (vacation, for which she can book tickets, not just guaranteed hours, for which she needs to be able to cancel her plans if yours fall through), sick days and paid holidays. Total usually falls between 14 and 20 total days per year, so your 10 is too low; however, if she’s getting vacation time when you travel, with no expectation that she needs to be available (and at least 2 months notice, so that she can make plans!), she should be fine.

You need to let her know that there will be no more unpaid time. You need to have consistency and reliability in your child’s nanny, and all of the unpaid time is making her not seem to have either one.

Anonymous wrote:Our nanny has 10 PTO to be used at her discretion in addition to 6 standard holidays. She burns through it all and also takes unpaid time between doctors appointments, family commitments, long absences (2-4) for common illnesses, and short vacations. We also give her our vacations off paid. Overall in her first year she had about 5 weeks of paid time off total in addition to a few days of unpaid time off.

We seem unable to get a handle on the situation. She is very good with our son and professional, and works hard. She is a good nanny. He is happy. We thought, if she needs all this time due to chronic illnesses (both real and imagined) and managing her undiagnosed anxiety, so be it. We declined to give her a raise (we started high anyway) and planned to use the "savings" to pay for backup care. But, *how* she manages her frequent time off has precluded our ability to actually schedule backup care, hence my question.

The idea would be to make it unpaid time if we are given notice after 2pm and it is the second (or later) day of a stretch of time off. But I wanted to know both how common this situation is and how others manage it.

This describes my part-time nanny exactly. It's an issue, but she's gotten better at giving notice over time. It helps a lot that I don't have to plan back-up care - my son can just go to the school after care. We had a different nanny when he was a baby, and she was almost NEVER sick or out unexpectedly - maybe one or two days with the flu over 2 years. If she had been as unreliable as our current nanny it would have been a much bigger issue, because back-up care would have been much harder to arrange.