One of the most common headache expat families everywhere face, is finding suitable childcare. Entrusting a stranger with the care of one's home and children can be quite scary! This is especially true if there are significant cultural differences between our home and destination countries. My local Expat Family WhatsApp groups are full of desperate parents and caregivers scrambling to find their very own Mary Poppins.
After over a month of intensive search and trial and error, we found a great nanny that we trust and like. Here's what I learned during the process.
Tip #1: Figure out what your family needs
Do you need someone to solely look after your children, or also help out with household chores? Want a cleaner or cook? Job descriptions around here are not as clear cut as back home, a nanny will often chip in with housework while the children are napping or playing independently. A gardener also doubles as a driver in many households. A cook can clean as well. It's important to know exactly what you're looking for. We wanted someone whose primary role is to look after the children, but is also able to take care of light, daily household tasks and is flexible enough to be able to stay longer in the evenings and work occasional weekends as needed. We also hired a cleaner separately via recommendations within our compound, who comes once a week to do a more thorough deep clean. Compounds also offer housekeeping, linen and car wash services. However, these tend to be more expensive than a private individual.
Tip #2: Find out what's available
In the Middle East, a fully staffed household is not a privilege only the super rich can afford. It's not that uncommon for middle-class families to have drivers, housekeepers, nannies and cooks on payroll. Most families we have met so far, opt to have one or two people fulfilling all these roles. Reliable household help is more accessible than in Europe thanks to the combination of grey areas in the private-service sector, employment laws highly favouring employers, and a huge influx of immigrant workers pushing down prices.
Having live-in staff is relatively common in Saudi Arabia. Most of the bigger apartments and houses are equipped with a maid's room. The advantage of an arrangement like this is that live-in staff is cheaper, as they don't need to worry about rent, food or transportation costs. Most agencies we spoke to specialise in providing live-in staff only.
We discussed the options in detail and came to the conclusion that we cherish our privacy, and aren't comfortable having someone else around most of the time, so we opted for a live-out nanny. Her salary is nearly double (or in some households more than triple) that of a live-in nanny/housekeeper, but her working hours and role are similar. She's providing us with an invaluable service so paying her what's considered here a very good wage, and is close to European salaries for someone with similar skills and experience, is well worth it for us. We were very clear in that we do not want to feel like we are exploiting someone for their labour. In addition to this, our maid's room is so small that we didn't feel confident housing someone there permanently. It only has space for a small single bed, a bedside table and there's a tiny toilet with a shower and sink. I'm currently using it as a laundry room instead.
Tip #3: Money talks, but you need to talk money too
Prices vary so greatly from person to person and household to household, depending on so many different factors, that I'm unable to even give a rough estimate of what an "average" salary is for a nanny. I've heard everything between 1,200SR - 6,000SR per month for someone full-time. Casual workers tend to work on an hourly rate.
We found it important to try and openly talk about the salaries our acquaintances pay their household staff. I also believe that openly discussing salaries in any context will benefit the workers, and ultimately the employers as well, as it can pave the way to better employee satisfaction. Of course talking about personal finances is very difficult and awkward, but it seems to be quite common and accepted here. Discussing the cost of services is how I found out today, for example, that my preferred driver charges me double than my neighbour's.
I was clueless, because the rates seemed alright compared to London Ubers (what a stupid benchmark, if you just think about the gas prices, huh?) I also factor in the "expat-tax", and learned the hard way that it's SO OBVIOUSLY not smart to disclose that you're new to the country.
I hate the idea of haggling, so I usually just accept whatever I'm offered for a product or service, but it's not the norm here. Our new cleaner, for example, originally wanted to charge 25% more, but I'm actually really proud that I managed to negotiate the cost down to the standard hourly rate within our compound (40SR) and now don't feel foolish or taken advantage of.
We knew right away that our nanny was a right fit when, after a few days of her babysitting for us, we asked her to consider taking on a full-time role, and her salary requirements matched our offer.
Tip #4: Networking, networking, networking
I remember when we first arrived, we were desperate to find someone to help me look after the children, that money wasn't even an object because we were just that in over our heads. I fell into the trap of paying for an online subscription service where you can browse nanny profiles and contact prospective employees directly. If you're in the UK, and are familiar with childcare.co.uk, it's pretty much the same. This, however, turned out to be a complete waste of time, money and effort – most of the profiles haven't been updated in a while, I suspect a number of them weren't even real, and even when I got a response, it was only to tell me they've already found employment or left the country. I definitely recommend staying away from these websites.
I also posted an ad on a few different social media channels. This resulted in being approached by an army of unverifiable people and being bombarded with illegal, or semi-illegal offers. It can be risky to take on a stranger under our sponsorship, as proper background checks are notoriously difficult to conduct. We found our nanny via Husband's embassy connections. She has previously worked for different diplomats as a babysitter, so had a good track record and we trust the people who recommended her.
Tip #5: The moral dilemma
Private employees who are already in the country are often already with a family under their employer's or an agency's sponsorship. In this case, the family either keeps the worker under their employment and contracts them out, which in my very personal opinion, is a somewhat problematic concept, because it's so easy to abuse and the employee's approval isn't necessarily requested. More commonly, a sponsorship transfer must be processed. However, this is quite time consuming and expensive. And what may sound strange and even uncomfortable to Europeans is that in addition to the documentation and insurance costs, the current employers often want to be reimbursed for allowing their staff to leave. We discussed this with a lawyer when we first encountered pushback from a family to let go of their nanny whose advertisement I responded to, thinking she can just give her notice and come work for us instead, once we settle everything via the relevant authorities. We actually came close to hiring her, but halfway through negotiating with their current employer, and after the lawyer's warnings, we decided we would not take any risks and pulled out. I still think about that woman and wonder if she ran away or managed to find a new job. We were forbidden to meet prior to payment, which was a deciding factor in our decision.
It's also very difficult to verify that people are actually who they say they are via social media. This is when an agency can help. We have visited a few before we knew what we wanted. We had one really bad experience so we ended up avoiding this route. Husband and I were both a little overwhelmed by the process of choosing a candidate at one of the agencies. It's very different from what we dealt with in London back when we first hired a nanny. As soon as I have finished describing what we're looking for, they brought forward five young, shy, sheepish girls. I was taken aback by how intimidated these girls looked when I asked them a question. Their English clearly wasn't as good as I was led to believe. The agent, seeing that there won't be a deal made with us today, raised his voice and shouted at these poor girls. This in turn made me feel unsafe, so we promptly left the place and never looked back. I ended up crying in the car and would like to believe that this agency is just one bad apple and the majority out there are reliable and professional. I must mention, that a big advantage of hiring someone via a reputable agency is that they are here legally and are fully insured. You don't need to pay sponsorship, iqama transfer fees or health insurance. You pay the agency, and the agency compensates the nanny - whether how fairly, that needs to be clarified. There is also a probation period and changing nannies is very easy.
Ultimately, it's up to us to make sure we treat all service workers with the dignity and respect they deserve. This should also be reflected in their pay. Ask yourself how much is the person caring for your children and your family with dedication worth to you? They sacrifice time with their own families to help yours - they deserve to be compensated accordingly.
Overall it was a really challenging task to find the right person for the job, made more difficult by local laws and customs, and we are grateful to the people that have helped us. We are now very happy with our arrangement and hope that our lovely nanny with stay with our family for a long time.
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