The First Week: 10 Conversations You Need To Have – Working With A Nanny From A-Z Series – Ep.12

A transcript of the video can be found below:

Hi everyone, Laura from Nanny Parent Connection here. Welcome back to my “Working With A Nanny From  A to Z” video series.

So far in this video series, we have covered everything from “Is a nanny right for your family” to “How to successfully onboard your nanny”.

In my last episode, we covered “How to be the best nanny employer”. 

In today’s episode, we’re going to cover 10 important conversations to have with your nanny during their first week of employment.

This topic piggybacks a little bit on my last video about “How to be the best nanny employer”. But, I can’t reiterate enough how often these things come up and how awkward they can get. I hear from nannies and families that these things are problematic well into the working relationship. Having these conversations upfront will save everybody time and misunderstanding, and will help to avoid some awkward situations. It might feel a little uneasy bringing these things up, but trust me it’s really important to have these conversations, right when your nanny is starting with a family.

My recommendation, have fun with it. Say, “Hey I found this interesting list of 10 conversations to have with your nanny before things get awkward. So, let’s just jump right in and cover these things, so it doesn’t get weird.”

Conversation #1: Food

Most often families do welcome their nanny to eat the family’s food in the home. If there are any specialty food items, such as special allergy-free foods, or any foods that are earmarked for someone’s lunch or leftovers for dinner, make sure you communicate that to your nanny.

The nanny is also going to want to maybe mark her own food or have a special section in the refrigerator. So that someone in the nanny family doesn’t eat the salad she brought for lunch for example.

So, whatever the system is, talk about it up-front, communicate about it, make sure that you have a plan so that it doesn’t get weird later on. You could also take the food situation a step further, and invite the nanny to add wanted items to the grocery list each week.

Conversation #2: Rest and Meal Breaks

A nanny’s job is very unique in that they don’t have regularly scheduled work breaks and they don’t have regularly scheduled lunch breaks. Sure they can take a little break here or there, but it’s also important to mention that nannies are always on call. So even if the child is napping and they’re watching the monitor, they still need to be ready to re-engage at a moment’s notice if the child wakes up, or if there’s an emergency around the house.

Make sure the nanny knows that taking a break is expected during the day. Sometimes, families say, “Oh you know I just would like the nanny to do tidying, and maybe start a load of laundry, and some dishes during nap time.” That’s great, that’s awesome but also remember this is a job, and rest and meal breaks are absolutely warranted. 

So, the nanny should take a little time, rest, regroup, eat, take care of some personal business before tackling some of those household chores. Make sure you check out any legal requirements for rest and meal breaks in your area, and if you happen to be in the Seattle area, make sure you check out this post where we invited a nanny to write a guest post about how she takes a common-sense approach to handle rest and meal breaks while on the job. 

And this probably goes without saying, unless the nanny is able to be completely relieved of her duties even watching the baby monitor, they should absolutely be paid for their rest or meal break. So just a little note on that. 

Conversation #3: Cell Phone Use

Most nannies are professionals and they conduct themselves as such. Most nannies don’t allow cell phone use to take away or detract from their level of engagement with a child throughout the day. We’ve all heard the horror stories, or maybe we’ve even seen some care providers, or parents for that matter, guilty at times but I think that it’s important to remember that nannying is a unique job as we talked about with the rest and meal breaks conversation.

Remember, nannies don’t have a lot of business hours to conduct personal business if they have to make any calls during banking hours, for example, or anything like that. 

So, just keep all of this in mind when thinking about how cell phone news should happen while in the home, and also make sure that you understand the nanny is a professional and they’re probably going to conduct themselves as such. 

I have an entire video about this topic as well, so if you’d like to dive a little bit deeper make sure you click here to check out the video about nannies and cell phone use. 

Conversation #4: Driving on the Job

It might seem like it would go without saying that the nanny should be following all of the rules of the road and the laws while driving the children around in the car. This includes cell phone use, adhering to all traffic laws including speed limits, adhering to car seat laws, also how to properly install a car seat, and how to properly buckle a child (including not buckling children with a puffy winter jacket on). 

And importantly, this could also be a reminder about what to do in the event of an emergency or a car accident. 

I recommend putting personal emergency information on the actual car seat, tape it right to the car seat, maybe a little index card with emergency contact info, in case that is needed. If the worst happens and you know the nanny is unconscious, if there’s a car accident, somebody will know how to get in touch with the parents. 

So, make sure you have those conversations. It’s just like an insurance policy. It probably will not happen, but if it does happen you’ll be so thankful you covered that topic with your nanny.

Conversation #5: Sick Policy

With the COVID pandemic, it’s more important than ever to discuss and be on the same page about your sick policy with your nanny. 

Pre-COVID, both nannies and employers were okay with continuing on with the workday if one or the other had a little sniffle. Now not so much because those little sniffles could be a sign of COVID. Now add in the upcoming allergy season, and we’ve got a mess on our hands. So make sure you discuss what your protocols are, so if there are any symptoms that could potentially be COVID, make sure to get that confirmed to be negative before resuming nanny care. If a COVID test comes back positive, that’s another story of course.

For more detail on this topic including how to handle nanny pay when one party or the other party calls out sick with suspected or confirmed covid, please check out this video.

Conversation #6: Inclement Weather Policy

If you live in an area that gets snow from time to time, this is really important. For us in Seattle (and I know we get endlessly trolled about our inability to drive in the snow), it’s very important to consider that the nanny might not be comfortable or able to drive on snowy, icy roads depending on where they live. 

There could be hills, there could be a ton of ice from a thaw, and then refreeze. Whatever the scenario is, you just want to make sure that you have an understanding of what your nanny’s comfort level is. 

With inclement weather, you do not want to figure this out on the morning of a workday. Whenever there’s a snow day, I see the nanny forums just blow up because inevitably this conversation didn’t happen beforehand, it’s happening in real-time when parents are frantic, nannies are frantic, it just does not end well it gets awkward very quickly. Make sure to have this conversation up-front, so that it doesn’t get weird later on. 

Conversation #7: Mileage Reimbursement

Now, it’s important to note that mileage reimbursement is not required unless the cost to operate the nanny’s vehicle, and any maintenance involved with any operation while on the job takes the hourly rate below the minimum wage. This is not the case for most nannies, most nannies do feel like their hourly rate is one thing, and reimbursing for mileage should be added on top of the hourly rate. It is considered to be an industry standard, and an easy way to do this might be to track with a pencil and paper, it could be with an app like “Mile IQ”, which is a very handy app. 

Think about what this looks like, how reimbursements happen, and if you are going to offer mileage reimbursement for your nanny. I know that it can become awkward if those activities and outings add up and all of a sudden the nanny just feels like “Man, I am driving so much. I’m getting so much wear and tear on my car”,  or “I’m spending so much in gas to transport the children around on the job”. Have a conversation about this early, or if you have a big uptick in the amount of transportation needed, it might be a good conversation to have at that time. 

Conversation #8: Parenting Philosophies

This is a great time to see how the nanny handles different situations, and to weigh in on how you would like the nanny to handle certain situations, should they come up.

Most nannies are very on board with honoring parenting styles, so you need to make sure that you give them enough information to work with so that they can perform the job to the best of their abilities. This could include things like guidelines on outdoor time, many parents want outside time for their children no matter the weather. This could be on redirection giving choices, this could also be (and believe me, this is an actual thing which is why I’m including it), saliva sharing for lack of a better word, kissing, spoon-sharing, drink sharing, anything like that.

So, it seems like in COVID times we wouldn’t need to have these conversations because that just should be so on everybody’s radar, but trust me I have received the phone calls from parents who say “What do I do? My nanny’s kissing my child, and I’m just not comfortable with it, and how do I bring that up so it doesn’t get awkward?”.  

The answer to this question is to bring it up proactively so that it doesn’t get awkward later on. Have those conversations, let the nanny know your preferences, they’re also going to weigh in with how they do things, and so you guys can get on a good level of how things work between everybody. Make sure everybody’s in alignment, and everybody just gets to ask and answer all of those questions between one another about parenting philosophies, and how that happens throughout the day.

Conversation #9: House Keys

I’ve actually received a question from a nanny that says, “Hey, you know I feel like my nanny family doesn’t trust me because I’ve never gotten a house key”.  Well, in thinking back to how I’ve handled house keys in the past, I’ve really done it all. I’ve given a nanny a house key and we keep one in the door that the nanny can use during the day. There are a variety of different ways you can handle house keys, I will tell you most nannies do get house keys of their own, but it’s worth a conversation to say “You know we’re going to entrust you with a house key, you know if ever you lose the key, please let us know right away, or you know here’s where the extra house key is”.  Just make sure to have that house key conversation. I’ve heard of nannies getting locked out of self-locking doors during the day, whatever your situation is just to make sure you have that conversation with your nanny so that they know upfront they don’t start to second guess your trust in them, and they call you right away if ever the keys are lost. 

Conversation #10: Check Ins/Progress Reports

At the beginning of the working relationship, this could look like daily check-ins such as, “How did your first day go? How did things go this week? Is there anything that you need for your day-to-day activities with my child that we might not have”, those kinds of things.

As the working relationship is newer, make sure that you have those conversations a little more frequently, and as time passes you can reduce that of course, maybe just the weekly check-in, the monthly official check-in, the six-month official check-in. This is a great time to raise any concerns that you have, anything that you’ve noticed, it’s also a really good time for the nanny to raise any concerns they have, ask questions, anything like that. 

It’s a “welcome mat” for any questions or concerns, and it gives the nanny or the family the floor to address anything without it really getting awkward. 

Keep that in mind about the check-ins, it’s a really useful tool to help facilitate that smooth nanny-family working relationship. 

Alright, everyone, that’s it for “The First Week: 10 Conversations You Need To Have”.

I hope you found this video helpful, if you like this video, please click the like button, subscribe, ring the bell so that you can be notified when more of these videos come out. Please come back next week and join me for Episode #13 where I cover “How to handle problems with your nanny”. 

Thanks, everyone, bye!