Are you hiring a housekeeper for the first time, or are you thinking of adding to your existing household team? Hiring staff can be challenging, but with the right support, it can be a seamless process. At SILKS, we have over 10 years experience in recruiting housekeepers across the UK, and we wanted to share some of the most important factors to consider when hiring household staff.

Assess your situation

Think about the tasks that you would like a housekeeper to complete. Realistically, how many hours would you anticipate it would take to complete these chores – would part time hours be sufficient, or would they need full time hours? Do you require a ‘child-friendly’ housekeeper, a competent cook or to be comfortable with pet care? All of these extra dynamics within your home will need to be considered in your brief.

We often visit clients within their homes to help evaluate the scope of the role. This will allow us to truly understand the needs of our clients, to allow us to match the right candidates within the right home. We find this leads to staff longevity and quicker candidate placements.

Do you have separate accommodation for live in staff?

If you are employing housekeepers within a live-in basis, they will need adequate accommodation. Either a self contained apartment, or en suite room within your home will be necessary to maintain boundaries and relationships.

Selecting CVs

We have a refined process to recruitment at SILKS. We won’t bombard your inbox with an unnecessary amount of CVs for you to review. We carefully select a small number of candidates who we feel would be a perfect match for your home. And we won’t present anyone to our clients that we haven’t personally interviewed.

Normally, clients will interview 2-3 candidates and will sometimes decide to trial a housekeeper to help to finalise their choice.

Trialling Housekeepers

Trialling a housekeeper gives you the opportunity to see the housekeeper within your home, access standards, and generally make sure that they are a match. Housekeepers will be paid for their time, and it’s the perfect way to see if the candidate will suit your household and perhaps other members of staff before you commit to a long term contract. We provide all housekeepers with a manual – this ensures that all staff have a full understanding of daily, weekly and monthly tasks that need to be undertaken. This document can be tweaked or reviewed at regular intervals.

As well as running thorough background checks, many of our clients require NDAs which we can also provide. As part of our service, we provide employment contracts for both parties, and we can also assist with payroll support.

If you have any queries on hiring a housekeeper in the UK, or would like to speak to us, please contact us.