How does hiring a nanny work?
We are looking to hire a full-time nanny starting in January 2023, but we have no idea where to start! We’d love to hear from veteran parents about how you went about interviewing, negotiating with, and working with a nanny. Are there sample contracts we can review that detail how benefits/vacation/sick time work, and other things we’re probably not thinking about? Would appreciate any and all insight!
Aug 13, 2022
Parent Replies
We took a free class offered by BANANAS (https://bananasbunch.org/) "Hiring a Nanny 101" that was super helpful and done in partnership with a group called Hand in Hand (https://domesticemployers.org/) that advocates for ethical employment of domestic workers. There are sample contracts at their website (though we edited ours a bit to make it a little less formal). Not sure if you are wanting to do a share or not, but very helpful advice we got for doing a share was to first find a like minded family and then jointly recruit the nanny. We provide 10 sick days, 10 vacation days, federal/state holidays over a year. Also, we pay "above the table" and use Poppins Payroll to handle properly withholding for taxes, etc., but many nannies want to be paid "under the table". Something to think about and make explicit in the interview process to make sure you/they are on the same page. Usually nannies are looking for employment 6-8 weeks out so you have a little time before you need to start recruiting. We used both BPN and a facebook group called "Bay Area Nannies and Mommies" to recruit. Good luck!