Ask Marta
Q: I have just hired this lovely person as a Nanny/Housekeeper. She works
hard and is great with my two school age boys. My dilemma lies in that she
is not a great housekeeper and always seems to forget to do certain things.
Both boys are in school are home only in the afternoons with her. I would
have to say that the position is more 70% cleaning and 30% childcare.
So what do I do? Should I fire her and get a person who is a better cleaner
and risk that this new person is not as good with the boys, or should I keep
her and sacrifice the housekeeping skills I require?
A: This is a common occurrence in our field. It has been my experience that
when a person is particularly good at being a “Nanny” the same person is
usually not so interested in cleaning and therefore does a lousy job at it. On
the other hand, a topnotch housekeeper is rarely going to want to spend a lot
of time with children if she feels that the house needs attention.
The question here lies in what is most important to you at this time. The
30% that your employee spends with the boys seems to be of utmost
importance because the children rely on her to pick them up and spend
afternoons together. The cleaning aspect of the job has a greater chance of
improvement with some training as long as the attitude and willingness is
present. On the other hand, it is harder to create chemistry between a person
and a child.
So let’s first try to improve on the housekeeping skills. Begin by making a
list of everything you want done in the house on a daily, weekly and
monthly basis. Go through each room with her carefully. Once you have
gone through the entire house and put a household manual together for your
employee, now you can begin the training. Take a room at a time and
supervise your employee. The likelihood is that you will see improvement
right away. No matter how good she is with the boys, her job remains as
Housekeeper/Nanny NOT Nanny/Light Housekeeper. Soon enough, you
will not be so perplexed in your decision-making because at least you will
have given her a fair chance to improve by providing all the necessary tools to do so.
Q: Between work and my social life, my schedule is very busy. I need someone
to help me at least 16 hours a day. I would love to hire a live/in to cover at
least most of that time, but my husband refuses to have someone in our
home living with us. He demands privacy. We have two small children
under the age of 5 and my husband is out of the house working long hours.
I just can’t do it on my own and require a long day. How do I get someone to
work a 16-hour day?
The fact that your husband does not like to have an employee in the house
24 hours the day is understandable. Many men feel this way about live/in
help. However, you will have to do some campaigning on this one. Here are
some advantages to having live/in help:
• The live/in is there to begin the day at any hour you need her – so if
one day you have to leave early for work, you could have her start as
early as 6 am.
• You can get a long day out of a live/in up to 12 hours by providing all
the necessary breaks (3 1⁄2 hours throughout the day). The advantage
to this is that you could establish a day that is 7am to 7pm and get
your early morning and early evening hours covered.
• If you need babysitting in the evening, you have the live/in available
for that and only need to pay her for the extra hours worked.
• Any spontaneous social event or late workday is covered without
worrying about a person needing to leave because she normally works
a live/out schedule.
If you still can’t convince him, then this is how you will need to design your
work schedule for in home help.
• Hire a person to work the early morning shift for 8 hours. Have this
person help you get the children up, dressed, and ready for pre-school
(if applicable). This person should drive and have a car (unless you
have a vehicle available).
• Hire a second person to work the afternoons to early evening so that
you have 16 hours covered with 2 individuals.
It will be expensive, but there are no two ways around it. You will never
find a person who wants to work 16 hours live/out – nor should you consider
hiring anyone on that basis. You will burn out any person who does this.
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