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As an entrepreneur, speaker, fan of women-owned businesses, and a member of Entrepreneur’s Organization, entrepreneurs have become some of our favorite families to work with at Adventure Nannies. There are few things more rewarding than supporting families who, with the help of a nanny managing childcare and other aspects of their household, can build businesses that create job opportunities and elevate their local communities.
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At the same time, I recognize that as entrepreneurs, our brains work a little differently - and sometimes our “moments of genius” exist in blurred spaces between what the law says and what everyone else does. While sometimes these moments are what set business owners apart in their industries and make them magnates, in the world of domestic staffing there isn’t a ton of “grey area” from a legal perspective, much to every entrepreneur’s frustration. 

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Most Common Hiring Issues

Here are a few of the most common issues we see entrepreneurs run into when hiring and employing nannies:

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Not following your own best hiring practices.

In your business, do you hire off of “vibe”? Never. While your nanny may not need to pass a “beer and barbecue” test, you are literally entrusting them with the care, safety, and development of your children (and your home) on a daily basis. You wouldn’t hire a sales lead or an operations director based off of their energy, and you shouldn’t hire a nanny based off of vibe or energy either. Ask real-world questions during interviews, not hypotheticals. Bring them in for a trial, or paid working interview, and give them feedback in real time instead of waiting for them to magically intuit your heart’s deepest desires. Even the best nanny isn’t going to be able to guess which rack of the dishwasher to put your kids’ plates on or which doors in your house you like to leave open or closed.

Hiring the nanny as an employee of your business

“For entrepreneurs, efficiency is second nature. So it’s no surprise that putting a nanny on the company payroll feels like a smart solution. But household employment follows a different set of rules—ones designed to protect both domestic workers and the families who employ them.”

— Rachel Lawrence, Homework Solutions Household Payroll and Tax Service

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This is something every single entrepreneur wants to do when we first talk to them - and they think it’s SO ANNOYING when we tell them that the Fair Labor Standards Act requires domestic employers to hire nannies as W-2 employees of their households. We get it! The option to add your nanny to the benefits package you’ve already invested time into designing for the team at your company feels like a win-win. Here’s the issue: they aren’t an employee of your company. By adding a nanny to your company’s payroll, you’re actually putting your family and your company at risk in one fell swoop. Is your company’s worker’s compensation going to kick in if the nanny takes a spill down your stairs? It is unfortunately not. If you mess up your employee’s paycheck and fail to pay them overtime hours, or decide not to honor a severance clause when employment is ending, any attorney will take one look at their paystubs and point out (correctly) that the nanny can both go after your family as employing them incorrectly and also go after your business as the “on-paper” employer. Trying to save a few hours a quarter or a few hundred bucks a year by trying to onboard your nanny into your business ecosystem actually puts everything you’ve worked so hard to build in jeopardy. We always recommend families go through a payroll service that specializes in domestic employees, such as Homework Solutions.

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Really really really wanting the nanny to get paid a salary

We know most of your workers are classified as exempt employees, meaning in most states they get paid the same amount every week, regardless of how few or how many hours they work. Here’s the thing - you could pay a nanny $500,000 a year and legally, according to the US government and the Fair Labor Standards Act, it would still need to be written as an hourly wage with a corresponding overtime rate for any extra hours worked in a week (this varies state-by-state and is based on whether the employee lives on property or not, in addition to other state and city-specific laws, but in general live-out domestic employees begin receiving overtime after 40 hours a week.) There are easy ways for families to write this out in an employment agreement to get as close to a “salary feeling” as possible - for example, offering a nanny $40 per hour and guaranteeing 40 hours of work per week means the nanny will get paid $1,600 each week. The notable exceptions will be when you’re running late getting out of your last meeting, when there’s an evening event you’re asking the nanny to provide coverage for, or are requesting some extra support on the weekends or early mornings. When a nanny works over their guaranteed hours, they get paid for every hour they work. We know this is very different than most corporate setups - one of the reasons it’s different, though, is that domestic workers have historically been mistreated and taken advantage of by employers over the past 150 years since domestic work became paid positions after the end of slavery. The government's laws specifically protecting domestic workers unfortunately exist out of historical necessity.

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Skipping KPIs and a review process
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At your company, employees likely have a clearly-defined and often-communicated set of goals, metrics and outcomes they’re working to reach. They probably don’t have to guess at the end of every day or week how they’re performing, and hopefully aren’t basing those assumptions off of your mood at the end of a tough day, or how long their lunch break was. We know how to run high-performing, highly-engaged, highly-motivated teams in our businesses - however, most entrepreneurs suddenly forget all of this knowledge the second they step foot into their own home.

A domestic employee is still an employee. They’re still relying on training and onboarding, regular check-ins (we recommend at least a weekly touch-base, as well as a tracking system or log for the nanny to write down details about meals, activities, and anything relevant that happened during the day), and opportunities for growth. 

‍Ignoring industry trends and retention best practices

Like many other industries, typically the most effective way for a nanny to increase their compensation is to move to a new position - which can be devastating for families, especially after your children have bonded with and grown attached to the nanny. After all, if you’ve invested time into proper training and communication through all of the steps above, you’ll likely be just as upset (if not more) when you lose your nanny - perhaps the most key employee in your ecosystem.  Like any other job, finding ways to acknowledge your nanny’s birthday or other important milestones in their lives and building in regular raises (typically around

the 1-year anniversary mark, when their job responsibilities are expanding or changing, or when your family is welcoming a new child into your home) are important - and forgetting or failing to acknowledge them has the adverse, and sometimes even stronger, impact. Whether it’s asking your nanny if they’d like to add anything to your occasional coffee order, remembering special dates in their life like birthdays or anniversaries, or rewarding them with a holiday bonus, acknowledgements throughout the year help your employee feel valued - and valued employees typically stay in roles much longer than employees who aren’t feeling appreciated. Having employees in your home doesn’t need to feel like you’re suddenly in an episode of The Office - but remember that your sanctuary is now someone else’s workplace. Shortcuts or blurred lines when it comes to payroll, scheduling, and responsibilities can often create more confusion and miscommunication than following best practices for any employment relationship - and after all, any employee you’re bringing into your home to take care of your children is automatically being given much more trust than most employees in any business.

Have questions about how to create positive and professional relationships with your home’s employees, or experience shares about what’s worked well for you? Feel free to drop us a line at hello@adventurenannies.com - we’d love to hear from you!

Shenandoah Davis is the owner and CEO of Adventure Nannies.

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