Paying an assistant

[CarlyB]

Hi all,
So I'm thinking of taking on an assistant and have a few questions for those that have one.

1. Do you have to pay them National Minimum Wage or are they self employed and invoice you for the hours they do?

2. Do I have to still do the EY2 and DBS if I'm just giving them a week trial to see what their like?

3. Do you find having an assistant profitable for your business?

Thanks X

[samb]

I had an assistant. She was employed by me and so yes national minimum wage at least was needed to be paid.

Do you need to do a weeks trial? Could you instead write something into their contract so that if things don't work out as expected you can give short notice period? I wouldn't like to say for sure but yes i imagine you'd need to do DBS and EY2 even for the week.

Was it profitable for my business? No. But this is due to me needing to stop caring for infant school children which is where most of the money was coming from to pay her. When it was just the early years children, especially some on funding which is much lower than my hourly rate, I had to have the full 6 children the whole time she was working for me to make more money than if I had 3 children on my own. I had 2 leave at once and so had to make her redundant as it just wasn't financially viable. Had I been able to keep up the older children it would have worked better. I had personal reasons to need to stop.

[CarlyB]

Thanks Samb,

I'm thinking a weeks trial with just my normal children to see how she gets on and if we get on working together 1st. Then I'll take on more EY children to fill the spaces. I don't think it'll be worth doing if I have to pay her NMW as then out of 3 children only one child will be profit :-( I've seen others that have a self employed assistant which you can then agree a wage on. After reading all the employment laws I'm not sure I want to bother now lol xx

[sarah707]

Lots of advice about assistants here - Independent Childminders - Assistants (http://independentchildminders.weebly.com/assistants).

Hth :D

[CarlyB]

Thanks Sarah :-)