Employing an au pair for the first time

For host families · NannyTank

You have decided you need help. Someone to do the school run, hold the afternoons together, and be in the house when you cannot be. What almost nobody tells you is that the moment you agree a wage with that person, you have become an employer — with duties that start before their first day and run every month afterwards.

This is the guide we wanted to exist. The first half is choosing well, which agencies cover properly, and we will point you at them where they are better at it than we are. The second half is the part their content stops short of: what happens in month two.

What you are actually setting up

An au pair arrangement is not babysitting with a nicer name. South Africa's Basic Conditions of Employment Act defines a domestic worker as a person employed in a private household, and it names childminding among the work that counts. There is no separate "au pair" category sitting outside the Act.

In practice that means a written contract is expected under section 29, the National Minimum Wage applies to every hour worked, overtime and Sunday and public-holiday work carry statutory premiums, and leave and notice are not things you get to invent. It also means UIF registration is your duty rather than theirs, and it runs through uFiling rather than SARS eFiling.

None of this is onerous. It is unfamiliar, and it is far easier to do at the start than to reconstruct fourteen months later. Our country page on employing an au pair in South Africa sets out each duty with a link to the official body, and every figure on it is dated, because they move — the minimum wage is reviewed roughly every March.

Trust is the point. Structure is what protects it.

Here is the thing first-time employers get backwards. Writing everything down feels like an accusation, so people skip it — and skipping it is what eventually damages the trust they were trying to protect.

The failure mode is almost never dishonesty. It is two people remembering a Tuesday differently. They stayed until seven because the sports match ran over; you remember agreeing they finish at five. Neither of you is lying. Six months of that, unrecorded, and somebody ends up feeling taken advantage of — usually them, because they are the one keeping the tally in their head while doing the job.

A contract, agreed hours and a record of what was actually worked are not signals of distrust. They remove the need to litigate memory. They are what lets you employ someone inside your family life without money becoming the thing you talk about most.

Choosing well: seven steps

1. Write the job down before you go looking

Hours, days, the school run, whether they drive your car or their own, whether cooking or tidying is included, and what happens in the school holidays. Families who skip this describe the job slightly differently to each candidate and then wonder why expectations drift later. Our free Au Pair Contract Checklist lists the twenty-seven things a contract has to cover, and it works just as well as a planning document before you have anyone in mind.

2. Decide how you are going to look

Broadly three routes, and they cost genuinely different amounts. A full-service agency screens and shortlists for you and charges a placement fee — the published structures we found while writing this ran at around 10% of the au pair's annual salary for longer placements, or 20% of the total for short ones, with a flat minimum in the region of R7 500 where the salary is low. A self-service marketplace charges a membership instead, on the order of R799 for thirty days, and leaves the screening to you. Hiring directly through your own network costs nothing and skips every check unless you carry them out yourself. Confirm any fee with the agency directly — these move, and they vary by package.

Our own au pair directory is free to browse and free to post a job on. We do not vet, screen or place anyone, and we would rather say that plainly than imply otherwise: it connects people, and the checking is yours to do.

3. Screen on the things that actually predict the job

Childcare experience with the ages your children actually are. A driver's licence and real driving experience if the role involves your car and your children in it. Availability that matches your real week rather than a theoretical one. Agencies also offer paid add-ons — ID verification, driver's licence verification, credit and social-media checks — and for a role with this much access to your home and children, some of that is proportionate rather than paranoid.

4. Interview twice, and the second time at home

The first conversation tells you whether they can do the job. The second, in your house with your children there, tells you whether it will work — and it catches the mismatch a video call cannot. Watch how your au pair is with the children when they think you are busy.

5. Actually telephone the references

This is the step everyone shortcuts. Ask the previous family what a hard day looked like, why the placement ended, and whether they would hire the same person again. Our Interview & Reference Kit is precisely this: what to ask, what to check and who to call before you hand someone the keys and your children.

6. See the documents

ID, driver's licence, a police clearance certificate from SAPS, and any first-aid or childcare qualification they claim. Sight the originals. If they already use NannyTank, their certificates and IDs live in the app with expiry tracking, and they can share them with you rather than emailing photographs around.

7. Run a paid trial week, then put it in writing

Pay them properly for it — a trial is work. A week tells you more than any interview, and it gives both of you a graceful exit if it is wrong. Then sign something: terms, hours, rates, duties. Many agencies also carry a placement guarantee of three to six months, which is worth asking about explicitly before you pay a fee.

What agencies do well, and where their help stops

A good agency earns its fee. Screening properly is slow, reference-checking is tedious, and matching on temperament rather than availability is genuinely skilled work. If you would rather not do any of that, pay someone who will.

But it is worth understanding the shape of the business. An agency earns at the moment of the match. That is not a criticism, it is simply where the money is — and it explains why almost every agency's advice, ours included until recently, stops at "you have found them". Nobody writes the article about month two.

Month two is where it actually goes wrong. Not dramatically — an afternoon that ran late and was never counted, a fortnight of kilometres nobody wrote down, a month-end message with a number in it that neither of you can check. That is the part we built for.

What the first month should look like

• Before day one: contract signed, hours and rates agreed in writing, and the overtime agreement signed separately — under BCEA section 10(5) an overtime agreement signed at the start lapses after twelve months, so diarise the renewal now rather than discovering it a year later.
• Within 21 days: register them for UIF through uFiling. You each contribute 1% of remuneration up to a monthly earnings ceiling. Theirs comes off their pay; yours does not — it is your cost on top of their wage, and deducting 2% from them is the most common household payroll error there is.
• Early on: COIDA. Domestic workers were brought within the Compensation Fund following the Constitutional Court's decision in Mahlangu in 2020. It carries the sharpest tail risk of anything on this list: if someone is injured in your home and you are not registered, the exposure is personal.
• Every month: pay on the agreed date, give them a payslip — section 33 requires it whether or not they ask — and keep the record of hours and payments that section 31 requires.

Where NannyTank fits

NannyTank is built for the au pair. They log their day as they work it — start and finish times, and the trips they drove — and the app totals the month, flags anything past their agreed normal hours as overtime, and applies the kilometre rate the two of you agreed. At month-end it produces one claim and emails it to you.

You approve it with one tap in that email. Free, no account, no payment, ever. For most families that is the whole of what they ever need from us.

Some of what makes their side easier is worth knowing about, because it is why the number reaches you correct in the first place: saved trips, so the school run is one tap rather than retyped every day; a photo scan that turns a picture of the fridge whiteboard into a draft week; and a reminder each evening so the day gets logged before it is forgotten.

Two things families ask about specifically.

A shared schedule. You and your au pair see the same week — the dance lesson that moved, the Friday you need them later. It is how you tell them about Tuesday without a message thread neither of you can find again.

"On my way" messages. They can tap a quick status — on my way, home safe — and the app composes a WhatsApp message for them to send you, optionally with a map link of where they are at that moment. It is worth being precise about what that is and is not: they taps it, they sends it, and the location is a single point attached to a message they chose to send. There is no background tracking, no geo-fence and no location history. We have not built those, and we do not intend to.

That is a deliberate line rather than a gap in the roadmap. If what you want is software that tells you where your au pair is without them doing anything, we are the wrong product, and we would rather say so here than have you discover it after paying. What we sell a family is an accurate number and the paperwork behind it — not a view of their day.

If you do want the ongoing view, it exists: every claim kept in one place, a payslip PDF for each month with the UIF worked out, the shared schedule, and a daily diary of what the children actually did. Fourteen days free, then R699 once. Nothing renews and no card is kept.

What to do next

• Still choosing? The Interview & Reference Kit (R149) covers what to ask and who to call. The Host Family Starter Pack (R349) is everything a new au pair needs to know about your household written down once — house rules, an emergency sheet, and their first fortnight.
• Just hired someone? The Au Pair Setup Bundle (R1 299) is the BCEA contract pack, a permanent NannyTank licence for them, and the employer view for you — the whole start of the job, set up once.
• Working out what to pay? The au pair pay calculator checks a monthly salary against the minimum wage once the hours are actually counted.
• Want the short version? Everything on one page.

General guidance, not legal advice. NannyTank is not a law firm. Statutory figures move and arrangements differ — confirm anything you rely on with the Department of Employment and Labour or a qualified labour adviser before acting on it.