Top 10 Tips For How To Keep Your Nanny!

The cost of living has drastically increased over the past year. These rising costs are impacting the nanny world, and many nannies are leaving long-term positions for other opportunities offering a higher wage or additional benefits.

Have you found a great nanny? Make sure you are doing everything you can to keep them happy, cared for, and valued as they work with your family! Below are our top ten tips for how to keep your nanny in the long term.

We can’t stress how important communication boundaries are for many nannies. Don’t text or call your nanny late at night! And be sure to read all the way through for a bonus tip at the end.

When you find a great nanny, you want to do everything you can to keep them. With inflation impacting the nanny world, some nannies are “shopping around” for other families offering higher pay or additional benefits.

Here are our top 10 tips for how to keep your nanny!

Tip #1: Set the Stage With a Job Description

It should be comprehensive in describing what it is your family is looking for, what you are looking for in a nanny, and what you are looking for in the job duties. Make sure you are specific and that you have covered all bases with what exactly you need.

Tip #2: Make Sure to Offer a Nanny Industry Standard Compensation Package

This will include items like guaranteed hours, paid time off, accrued paid sick time, paid holidays, and it could also include a medical stipend.

By offering items like guaranteed hours, paid time off, and paid sick time, your nanny will be able to count on their income, take time off to maintain a good work-life balance, and they’ll be able to take time to rest and recuperate in the event that they get sick.

Good employers who care about their nannies offer these benefits, and they will go a long way to make your nanny feel well cared for and want to stay at their position.

Tip #3: Really Think About Who You Will Be as an Employer

Will you maintain a positive work environment, and be supportive and approachable as an employer? Nannies look for these characteristics in employers.

They want to work with someone who is mindful and treats them with respect. Not someone who is rude, demanding, and impolite.

Tip #4: Make Sure to Have a Strong Onboarding Process

(Don’t forget to conduct a working interview before making a job offer to your nanny).

Remember, the nanny’s first several weeks are the orientation period. Consider doing a home and a neighborhood tour, offer ongoing support and invite regular check-ins. It’s also important to give feedback to your nanny and invite them to do the same for you.

Make sure to set your nanny up for success, allow them to ask questions, and make sure they feel all of their questions have been answered.

You may also want to consider putting together a nanny binder, which we highly recommend. A nanny binder is where you keep all important information about your family such as emergency contacts, addresses of schools, emergency protocols, copy of the nanny contract, any allergies, etc.

Tip #5: Take Some Time to Understand What Their Values Are as an Employee

This would include how they best communicate or anything they feel they need for the role in order to be set up for success.

This could look like a car seat for their car, so they don’t have to switch car seats daily, this could look like setting up a plan for expenditures, so the nanny doesn’t have to front the money and wait to be reimbursed, this could also be communication boundaries and having good work-life balance, for example, no texting after 10 pm, or on weekends maybe you email during certain hours if it’s late, or on a weekend in order to respect the nanny’s time.

Tip #6: Take Opportunities to Reinforce Positive Beliefs and Nurture the Relationship

This could mean discussing a child’s behavioral issues and providing support, or any other problems that come up during the working relationship.

Reassurance and a positive outlook can really go a long way to help certain situations out, this could also be something simple, such as remembering to tell your nanny and possibly your child too to have a great day, or “it’s going to be a great day!” before you head out the door.

Tip #7: Make Sure to Provide Ongoing Support

What is working well, what might make the nanny’s job easier or more enjoyable?

This is a great way to discuss role expectations and how those roles can be carried out to maximize job satisfaction.

Tip #8: Set Realistic Expectations

And if you’re not sure, ask your nanny to weigh in.

For example, your nanny isn’t going to be able to tackle all of the household chores while the child is sleeping, they’re going to need some time to rest and recuperate as well.

Perhaps take a lunch break, so that they can feel recharged for the second half of the day.

And if your nanny is participating in a nanny share for your family, there might not be enough time in the day for your nanny to tackle the baby’s laundry, but rather only to handle daily tidying of the spaces used during the day.

Tip #9: Make Time for an Annual Review With Your Nanny

During this time you want to make sure to address a cost of living raise or an annual raise with your nanny.

Right now, inflation is on everyone’s mind (including nannies), and many nannies are actually leaving positions they’ve been at for a while in order to get a higher wage somewhere else.

You can prevent that from happening by having a conversation with your nanny recognizing that the cost of living especially this year has drastically gone up, and offering a commiserate raise.

And families, if you’re not sure what an annual review might look like, setting aside dedicated time to walk through performance, goals, and compensation can make the process much smoother.

Tip #10: Appreciate Your Nanny

We appreciate our nannies daily, of course, and we know you do too.

But make sure you show them and make them feel appreciated.

This could be remembering their birthday and giving them a small gift, this could be knowing that Nanny Appreciation Week happens every year in September and celebrating them during that week.

It all boils down to feeling valued, make sure your nanny feels valued.

And if you’re still with us here through all of these tips, here is a bonus tip for you!

Provide opportunities for your nanny to stay happy, healthy and have growth in their career. 

This could look like providing a medical stipend for your nanny, this could also be giving them several mental health days each year, so that they can maintain good work-life balance, this could be a gift to the Calm app which is great for meditation and mindfulness, and of course maintaining a positive work environment is very important.

Something else you could consider is offering your nanny a professional development stipend.

This could be used for your nanny to further their knowledge and understanding of a certain parenting philosophy, such as positive parenting, or perhaps you would love them to learn more about montessori to help support your child’s growing interests, this could even be courses in child development.

We guarantee this will make your nanny feel very valued, will make them feel appreciated, and it will make them value you as an employer as well.

That is it for our top 10 tips on how to keep your nanny, plus our bonus tip.

We hope you found this information helpful.