How much of a raise to give our PT nanny?

KDR1979

When we found our nanny (amazingly on care.com), she was hoping to make $15-20/hour. She is in her late 50's, has a bachelor's degree, and is a professional nanny. She is amazing. We absolutely love her. She works two 11 hour days for us. We negotiated with her and pay her $14/hour b/c she preferred that we use a payroll service (Nannychex) so her pay is directly deposited. We also became official "employers" with our state, so we pay taxes on her income and pay a fee to use NannyChex. We also pay for worker's comp. So, we told her that it averaged another $2/hour with those expenses and she agreed to take $14/hr start. She gets 3 weeks of unpaid vacation, but if we go on vacation, she still gets paid for her 22 hrs/week.

So, 10/1 is her 1st anniversary with us. I have been planning on giving her a 5% raise. Most of my jobs have given a 1-5% raise per year. 5%= 70 cent raise. I don't know if we can give her a 5% increase every  year though.

Anyone else have any experience with this? What kind of raises do Nannies expect???
Thank you!

PinkinProvence

Maybe an anniversary "gift" like a small lump sum or gift card coupled with a smaller annual raise (2%) of $14.50/hour?

CaliCarly77

Yeah - we absolutely cannot afford to pay our nanny more than we already pay her ($14 an hour under the table). We also use ours full time. I like the idea of a lump sum gift, with maybe a smaller raise. I think when we hit our 1 year we will give ours a bit of a bump, but no more than 50 cents an hour. 

DenaMaree

I'm a lurker, I was pregnant with triplets but miscarried in April, and would love to give you a Nanny's perspective. I'm a full time nanny and my family gave me a 2.5 percent inflation raise this year and a cash "bonus" of $500.00. Perhaps you could consider something like this? Not necessarily those numbers based on your budget, but I was very happy with how my family did it.

LittleLady77

We also gave a cash bonus and a raise when out nanny went full time with us.

KDR1979

We wrote her a review and told her that most of our jobs over the years have given 0-5% raises per year. Most employees get 3% but excellent employees get 5%. We gave her a 5.3% raise= 75 cents. She seemed very happy with it.

Thanks for your help!