Do you pay your nanny for the week you take the kids to Hawaii without her? Yes. That's the whole idea of guaranteed hours: your nanny is paid for the full agreed weekly schedule whether or not you use it, because she's reserved those hours for your family and turned down other work to hold them. In the most recent INA Salary and Benefits Survey, 76% of nannies reported receiving guaranteed pay when the family doesn't need them — which means the clause isn't a perk anymore. It's the market.
Plenty of contracts still get it wrong, though — vague language, percentage floors, "we'll bank the hours" schemes that violate federal wage law. This guide goes deep on the single clause: the exact language to use, what it covers on vacation weeks and work-from-home days, and the three things guaranteed hours are not. The clause lives inside your written agreement, so keep our nanny contract template open alongside this — guaranteed hours is section 6 of the twelve.
Guaranteed hours mean your nanny is paid for her full agreed schedule — say, 45 hours — every week you employ her, even when you travel, work from home, or send her home early. 76% of nannies receive guaranteed pay, making it the industry standard for full-time roles. The clause should name the weekly hours and the resulting gross floor (45 hours at $28/hr = $1,330/week with overtime), and it does not permit "banking" unused hours against future weeks — the FLSA treats each workweek on its own. Your vacation is paid time for her; her vacation comes out of PTO.
What Are Guaranteed Hours, Exactly?
Guaranteed hours are a paycheck floor tied to a schedule: you commit to paying for an agreed number of hours per week — the schedule you hired her to cover — regardless of whether your week actually needs all of them. Work the math on a typical full-time arrangement: 45 guaranteed hours at $28/hour is 40 hours at $28 plus 5 overtime hours at $42, a floor of $1,330 per week. That number appears in the contract, and it's what she's paid in any week she's ready and available to work, short weeks included.
Why agree to pay for hours you don't use? Because the alternative prices worse. A nanny without guaranteed hours carries your schedule risk on her rent: every vacation you take, every grandparent visit, every conference-week WFH stretch cuts her income. Professionals won't accept that — they'll take the offer across town that comes with a floor — and the ones who do accept it leave when a guaranteed offer shows up. Guaranteed hours are what make a $28/hour offer actually worth $28/hour. If you're building the offer now, this belongs in it from the first conversation, not the final negotiation; our step-by-step hiring guide covers where it fits in the offer stage.
Do You Pay a Nanny When You're on Vacation?
Yes — your vacation is a paid week for your nanny, full stop. The cleaner mental model: guaranteed hours are triggered by whose choice took the hours away. If the family chose (travel, WFH, visitors, a lighter week), the hours are paid. If the nanny chose (her own vacation, her sick day), her PTO and sick-leave clauses take over instead. Scenario by scenario:
| Scenario | Paid? | Which clause |
|---|---|---|
| Family vacation, nanny stays home | Yes, full guaranteed hours | Guaranteed hours |
| Parent works from home, wants privacy, sends nanny home at 2pm | Yes, full day | Guaranteed hours |
| Grandparents visit for a week and cover childcare | Yes | Guaranteed hours |
| Child home sick; you stay home and don't need her | Yes | Guaranteed hours |
| Nanny takes her own vacation | Yes, from her PTO bank | PTO |
| Nanny is sick | Yes, from sick leave | Sick leave (required in some states) |
| You permanently reduce the schedule or end the role | No — renegotiation or notice period | Termination/notice clause |
The last row matters: guaranteed hours protect against week-to-week fluctuation, not against the job changing. If your needs permanently drop from 45 hours to 30, that's a renegotiation with notice — handled by your contract's termination and modification terms, not by quietly under-scheduling and underpaying.
A useful convention many families adopt: schedule family vacations with as much notice as you'd want from an employer, and give the nanny the option of those weeks as bonus PTO planning. She's paid either way; the notice is the courtesy that keeps the relationship warm.
The Clause: Exact Language for Your Contract
Here is clean, standard language you can adapt:
Employer guarantees Employee a minimum of 45 hours of pay per week at the rates specified in Section 4, in any week during which Employee is ready, willing, and available to work her scheduled hours. Hours not worked due to Employer's choice — including travel, visitors, schedule changes, or early dismissal — count as hours worked for pay purposes. Guaranteed hours do not apply to weeks in which Employee uses paid time off, unpaid leave, or is unavailable to work. Unused guaranteed hours do not accrue, bank, or carry forward to any other workweek.
Swap in your own hour count and cross-references, and note what each sentence is doing: the first sets the floor, the second assigns family-caused gaps to the family, the third keeps PTO and sick leave in their own lanes, and the fourth kills hour-banking before anyone proposes it.
Two variants you'll see in circulating templates — skip both:
- The percentage floor ("Employer guarantees 80% of scheduled hours"): this just re-imports the income instability the clause exists to remove, and candidates read it as exactly that. If your schedule truly varies, guarantee the honest minimum you'll always need and pay hourly above it.
- The banked-hours offset ("unused hours may be credited against future overtime"): this one isn't just unattractive — it's illegal. The FLSA evaluates each workweek standing alone; you cannot offset week one's unused guaranteed hours against week two's 48 worked hours to dodge overtime. Nannies are non-exempt employees, and comp-time arrangements that average across weeks don't survive a wage claim.
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Hybrid work is where this clause earns its keep, because WFH creates a steady drip of "we probably don't need her today" moments — and each one is a test of whether the floor is real. The rules that keep it clean:
- Sending her home early is your choice, so the day is paid in full. A 2pm dismissal on a slow Friday doesn't create a 6-hour day. In California this isn't just contract practice: Wage Order 15 requires reporting-time pay when an employee shows up and is given less than half her usual day — at least half the scheduled day's wages, with a two-hour minimum and four-hour maximum — on top of whatever your contract promises.
- Don't convert guaranteed hours into a discount on flexibility. The floor buys you the right to say "take Thursday off, we're covered" without renegotiating pay. It does not buy the reverse — "we didn't use Thursday, so work Saturday free." Extra hours are new hours, paid at the contract rate, with overtime past 40.
- Write down the WFH ground rules separately. Who handles a mid-day school pickup when both parents are home? Is the nanny's workday over when a parent logs off early? Families who leave this to improvisation end up with a resentful nanny or a quietly shrinking paycheck — usually both. One paragraph in the work agreement prevents it.
The pattern the Beverly team sees again and again: families never regret the weeks they paid for hours they didn't use — they regret the great nanny who left over an unstable paycheck. Guaranteed hours are cheap compared to a second search.
What Guaranteed Hours Are Not
Three boundaries keep the clause legally sound and the relationship honest:
Not a salary. Nannies are non-exempt hourly employees under the FLSA — you cannot pay a flat weekly amount that ignores hours actually worked. Guaranteed hours get you the predictability a salary offers, legally: a stable floor, hourly rates on the books, and overtime at 1.5x past 40 hours in the weeks that run long. A "$1,330/week salary, whatever the hours" arrangement is a wage-claim risk; "45 guaranteed hours at $28" is the same money, done correctly.
Not a cap. The floor has no ceiling attached. A 50-hour week is 45 guaranteed plus 5 more at the overtime rate — and those hours also flow into your payroll and tax numbers, which is one more reason to run real payroll (our nanny tax guide covers the employer side, including the $3,000 threshold that makes it official in 2026).
Not a substitute for benefits. Guaranteed hours stabilize the base; PTO, sick leave, holidays, and health coverage stack on top of it. If you're building the full offer, our benefits package guide shows how the pieces fit together, and our nanny health insurance guide covers the most valuable line item in depth.
The Bottom Line: Just Put the Floor in Writing
Guaranteed hours cost you a handful of paid-but-unused days a year — for a family taking three weeks of vacation, roughly 5% of annual nanny payroll — and buy you the two things that actually make a nanny arrangement work: a professional who stays, and the freedom to change your own plans without a pay negotiation. Against the cost of a mid-year replacement search, it's the best money in the contract.
The execution checklist is short: name the weekly hours and the dollar floor in the contract, route her time off through PTO and yours through guaranteed hours, ban banking explicitly, and add a WFH paragraph if either parent works from home. Fifteen minutes of contract drafting, and the single most common source of nanny-family friction is off the table for good.
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Even though we work to keep the information, stats, and details in this article accurate and up to date, please do your own financial and legal due diligence before acting on anything you read here, and reach out directly to the private companies and government agencies referenced for the most current details.