Hiring a nanny/staff for your home

You must pay your worker at least the National Minimum Wage (NMW). The NMW rate changes annually. The current rates from 1 April 2024 are:

7. Pensions

Employers have to provide eligible staff (known as jobholders) with access to a qualifying pension scheme. To be eligible, the employee will be between 22 and the state pension age, earn £10,000 a year or more and normally work in the UK. Employers should enrol the employee in the scheme once they become eligible and notify the employee within 6 weeks. You must also make contributions to that scheme, unless the employee has opted out. The current contribution is 3% of pensionable salary.

8. The job offer

When you have selected the applicant you wish to offer a job to, you can set out your offer in writing. You may wish to consider whether to set a time limit for acceptance of the offer and you should make the offer conditional upon provision of satisfactory references/DBS check and confirmation that the employee is free to work in the UK or has an appropriate work permit or immigration approval to work.

9. Terms and conditions of employment

Before their first day, you need to send details of the job (including terms and conditions) in writing to your employee. This can be in a contract or a written statement of terms but by law it must set out:

• The names of the employer and employee;
• The date the employment starts and the date the employee’s period of continuous employment began;
• How long a job is expected to last if it is a fixed term contract;
• Pay (or method of calculating it) and interval of payment;
• Hours of work;
• Holiday entitlement and holiday pay;
• The employee’s job title or a brief description of the work;
• Place of work;
• Sick pay;
• The period of notice they must provide and you must provide;
• The days of week that the worker is required to work, whether hours may be variable and details of how they may vary;
• Any other paid leave to which the worker is entitled (e.g. maternity, paternity leaves);
• Details of all remuneration and benefits;
• Any probationary period including conditions and duration;
• Any training entitlement provided by the employer including whether training is mandatory and/or must be paid for by the worker;
• The pension arrangements;
• • whether any collective agreement applies (which is rare); and
  • how any disciplinary matter or grievance will be dealt with.

It is a good idea to obtain advice on the drafting of your employment contracts so that you include additional protections and deal with whether they live in. For more senior employees, or those who have access to confidential information about your family or its business, you should include restrictive covenant and confidentiality clauses.

10. Health & safety and other policies and procedures

You need to take reasonable steps to provide a safe workplace and your new employee has a duty to act in a way that keeps them and your children safe. It’s sensible to have rules around this and if you have 5 or more employees you should have a health & safety policy.
It is also advisable to put in place policies dealing with your approach to:

• Disciplinary and grievance matters
• Behaviour (harassment, bribery and whistleblowing) and
• Privacy (what is and isn’t private and how you will use their data)

You may also want to:

• review their performance at the end of probation and periodically, discuss what will happen if they are absent and what training you will want them to complete.