Tracking Household Employee Hours

A household employer is more than just a person who owns the property where a nanny or other household employee works. An employer is a business manager – they must establish the goals of their employee, promote the household culture, and be the employee’s supervisor. Part of that responsibility is keeping accurate records of everything related to their business, including their employee’s wages, benefits, and tracking household employee hours and attendance.

Creating and maintaining an accurate time and attendance (T&A) record for your nanny is an important component of the employee’s personnel file. It ensures that you have the proper information required by law, and establishes a documented work history for a particular employee.

Having an accurate record of an employee’s time and attendance will be helpful in several situations:

• If an employee ever has a disagreement with the number of hours on their paycheck, you can reference the T&A record to confirm or dispute the employee’s claim.
• If an employee wants to use vacation or sick pay (if that’s a benefit you offer), you can reference the T&A record to see how much paid time off they have available, or to check how often they are using that benefit and determine if their request is reasonable.
• It provides a timeline of their employment, useful to you should any discrepancies arise for any reason.
• If you do performance evaluations for your employee, which is a good employment practice to implement, you can use the T&A record as part of your evaluation of the employee’s overall performance.

The T&A record can be a very simple, straightforward form to use. Download a sample attendance record form, and contact GTM Payroll Services at (800) 929-9213 for more information.