Contract for Assistant

Hello,

I am in the process of taking on an assistant. Henceforth, two areas that have arisen when doing the contract are sickness and pension and therefore, I am wondering what others do who have an assistant.

Sickness:
Do you offer no pay when off sick or do you offer a number of days per year for example, 4 days maximum paid sick?

Pension:
Do you offer a pension scheme as part of an employee benefit. I know this is coming in for all employers from 2015 (I think) therefore, do you offer this be it employee can pay into it or not and employer can pay in or not?

Obviously both of these have cost implications and therefore trying to do what is best and think from employee side.

Any help would be great.

Many thanks in advance.

I think if you are employing them then you have to offer these I don't think you can put restrictions on them.

Also don't forget to factor holidays and bh in to your contracts.

https://www.gov.uk/statutory-sick-pay/overview

This document explains you have to pay SSP you cannot go under this amount

https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions

https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitleme...ts/entitlement

A bit of a minefield you may be better off taking advice from a solicitor to make sure you get it right :thumbsup:

My assistant is self employed and therefore neither of these scenario's apply. No work no pay

Thank you Fussy Elmo for the information and links which is really helpful. Yes, I had been seriously considering consulting a solicitor. Between the Ofsted checks taking ages and now the contract it feels like a minefield before the assistant has even started - the whole idea was for them to be a help!

Chatterbox Childcare I like the idea of a self-employed assistant. Any advise on how to set this up as going forward may give this consideration.

Many thanks again to you both for your responses.

Chatterbox is your assistant a friend/relative. If not how did you find them. I want a self employed assistant but not sure how to go about advertising

I'm also looking into getting an assistant and have been trying to research contractual things too.

How do you convince someone that it is a good idea to be self employed?! I mean obviously if they are employed they get benefits. I would much prefer to have them self employed as the whole thing of the legalities of breaks for example and like the op said pensions and sick pay etc is so complicated. But what sort of benefit have they got as self employed? Do you offer a higher rate of pay? Or maybe some benefits like holiday pay?

There is a free assistant contract for free or gold members on childcare.co.uk under the 'Contracts, Terms & Conditions, Policy & Procedures and permissions' section of the childminder guides

The free contract is here - Childminder Guides - Exclusive Information Guides for Registered Childminder Members - Childcare.co.uk free log in...

Lots of information about assistants here - - Assistants

Hth :D

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Originally Posted by sarah707

The free contract is here - Childminder Guides - Exclusive Information Guides for Registered Childminder Members - Childcare.co.uk free log in... Lots of information about assistants here - - Assistants Hth :D

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Your link for assistants is fa fantastic checklist thank you and I think I have totally got my head around everything apart from employment/ self employment. (See other thread)