Because the job the family described at intake and the job the nanny actually shows up to are two different jobs, and nobody wrote either one down precisely enough to notice the gap. Early separations are rarely about competence. The nanny can do the work. What breaks is scope, money, or an unspoken assumption about how a household should run, and all three were visible at intake if anyone had asked the right question.
The pattern is consistent enough to be useful. A placement that fails in week three failed at intake. A placement that fails in week ten usually failed in week three and nobody said anything until resentment had a head of steam.
Here are the recurring failure points, what each one looks like from your desk, and the specific intake question that catches it before you present a single candidate.
Vague job descriptions that expand into housekeeping by week two
The classic phrase is "light housekeeping," and it means something different in every house. To the family it might mean wiping the counters after lunch. To the nanny it means the children's laundry and their dishes. By week two it has quietly grown to include the parents' laundry, the kitchen floor, and unloading the grocery delivery.
The nanny does it for a while because she is new and wants the job to work. Then she does it resentfully. Then she leaves, and the family tells you she was not a self starter.
The fix is to ban the phrase from your intake form and replace it with an enumerated list. Ask the family to name every non child task they expect, then attach each one to a frequency and a rough time.
| Task | Frequency | Est. minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Children's laundry, wash to put away | 2x weekly | 45 |
| Kitchen tidy after children's meals | Daily | 20 |
| Bottle and lunchbox prep | Daily | 15 |
| Playroom and bedroom reset | Daily | 20 |
| Grocery pickup | Weekly | 40 |
Total the minutes in front of the family. If the household tasks run past about an hour a day during a schedule with an awake toddler, you are describing a nanny housekeeper, and you should be recruiting for one and pricing the wage accordingly. That single arithmetic moment prevents more failed placements than anything else on this list.
Keep reading: What paperwork does a family legally need signed before a new nanny starts work?
Compensation misalignment: gross versus net and guaranteed hours
Two nannies quote you 30 dollars an hour. One means gross, one means take home. If nobody clarifies, the offer letter says 30 and the first paycheck is a crisis.
Net pay agreements are a trap for the family too, because the employer then absorbs every tax change and the candidate's own withholding elections. Quote gross, always, and say so out loud at intake and at offer.
Work an example with the family so the number is real. A nanny at 30 dollars gross for 45 hours a week, with the last five hours at time and a half, earns 40 times 30 plus 5 times 45, which is 1,200 plus 225, or 1,425 a week. Gross annual is about 74,100. The family's employer side Social Security and Medicare is 7.65 percent, roughly 5,670, plus federal and state unemployment tax and any workers compensation premium their state requires. So the true cost of the role is meaningfully above the wage, and a family that budgeted 74,000 has a problem in month two.
Guaranteed hours is the other half. If the family agrees to pay 45 hours whether or not they use them, write it down. If they do not agree, tell the candidate before she accepts, because a nanny whose income drops 400 dollars in a week the family took a trip will start interviewing elsewhere that same week.
Overtime expectations that were never written down
Nannies who live out are generally covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act as domestic service employees and are entitled to overtime at one and a half times the regular rate for hours worked beyond 40 in a week. Live in arrangements are treated differently at the federal level, and several states, including New York and California, have their own household employment rules that are more protective. Whatever your state, the family cannot simply decide the nanny is salaried and be done with it.
Where this actually breaks a placement is date night. The family assumes a couple of evenings a month are part of the deal. The nanny assumes they are extra. Nobody discusses it until the third request.
Ask at intake: how many evenings or weekend hours per month do you expect beyond the regular schedule, and what rate will you pay for them. Then write both numbers into the work agreement. If the family says none and later asks for two a week, you have a document and a conversation rather than a resignation.
Keep reading: How does a boutique agency compete when app based sitter platforms undercut my fee?
Travel, sick days, and paid time off assumed rather than agreed
These are small items that families treat as details and nannies treat as terms.
- Family travel. Is the nanny expected to travel. Paid at what rate for what hours. Who pays for her flight, room, and meals. Is time on a plane with the children work time. It is.
- Family vacation without the nanny. Is she paid. If the household has guaranteed hours, she is, and the family should know that before they book.
- Paid sick days. A growing number of states and cities require paid sick leave for household employees. Agree a number, and agree whether it carries over.
- Nanny vacation. How many days, who chooses them, how much notice.
- Holidays. Name the specific dates rather than saying "the usual federal holidays," which nobody agrees on.
Every one of these can be settled in ten minutes at intake. Every one of them, left unsettled, produces a tense conversation in the first quarter of the placement, and tense conversations early do not stay isolated.
Skipping the paid trial or working interview
Families skip the trial when they are in a hurry, and hurry is the single strongest predictor of an early separation in most agency books. Make the trial a condition of your process, not an option you offer.
A workable structure: two paid days, at least four hours each, in the home, with the children, at the rate the role will pay. The parent is present for part of the first day and out of the house for part of the second. Pay is direct from the family to the candidate, and you say clearly that a paid trial is work, not an audition, because unpaid trial hours are wage hours in most circumstances.
What the trial catches is the whole category of things nobody can articulate: the volume level of the house, whether the toddler warms to her, whether she and the mother interrupt each other. You will learn more in eight paid hours than in three rounds of interviews.
See how NannyMatchDesk handles this for nanny and household staffing agencies
Parenting philosophy mismatch you did not probe at intake
Everyone says they want a warm, structured nanny. Ask instead for behavior in specific situations, from both sides, and compare the answers.
- The four year old hits his sister. What should happen in the next sixty seconds?
- The baby is crying at nap time. How long, and what do you do?
- Screens: how much, when, and who decides?
- Food: does the child eat what is served, or is there an alternative?
- The child asks for something the other parent already said no to.
Ask the family. Ask the candidate. Put the answers side by side. Small differences are fine and often healthy. A family that wants a firm, immediate consequence and a candidate who wants to name feelings and wait it out will not survive a hard Tuesday together, and you should know that before you present.
A check in cadence that catches drift before it becomes a call
Early problems announce themselves quietly. Somebody sighs. A start time slides. Then week nine arrives and a parent calls to say it is not working, which is the first you have heard of any of it.
Schedule the check ins at placement, on the calendar, both sides separately:
- Day 3. Five minutes each. Is the schedule what you expected. Anything surprising.
- Day 14. Fifteen minutes each. Has anything been added to the job. Is the pay landing correctly and on time.
- Day 30. Compare the actual week against the written work agreement, line by line. Amend it in writing if the job has genuinely changed.
- Day 60 and day 90. Short. Mostly to keep the channel open through the end of your guarantee window.
Ask each side one question they cannot answer with "fine": what is one thing you would change about how this week went. It works because it presumes there is something, which there always is.
Where to start
If you only change one thing, change the intake form. Enumerate the household tasks with times, quote compensation in gross with overtime and guaranteed hours stated, settle travel and time off in writing, and record both sides' answers to the same five parenting scenarios. That single document eliminates most of what breaks placements in the first quarter.
Then make the check ins something the calendar does rather than something you remember. NannyMatchDesk carries the family requirements from intake into the work agreement, keeps the signed terms on the placement record, and schedules the day 3, 14, 30, 60 and 90 check ins automatically, so drift shows up as a note in your file instead of a phone call in week nine.
