How to Staff a Full Household, the Right Way

A great home runs as a system. Staffing one is about building a team, not filling a series of unrelated roles.

Staffing a full household, a home or homes that need a nanny or governess, an estate or household manager, housekeepers, a private chef, perhaps a personal assistant or a household couple, is a different undertaking from hiring a single professional. The roles must fit not only the family but one another, and the firm you choose should think in terms of a functioning team, not a list of separate placements.

The first thing to look for is whether a firm can staff across every role from a single, coordinated search. A family building out a household does not want to engage one agency for childcare, another for management, and a third for service, each working in isolation. A firm with genuine range across childcare, senior care, household and estate management, and formal service can compose a team whose roles are defined to complement rather than collide, with a clear leader, usually a household or estate manager, to run it.

The second is consistency of standard. In a full household, every person has access to your home and your private life, so the vetting must be uniformly rigorous across all of them, not thorough for the nanny and casual for the housekeeper. A firm that screens every professional to the same demanding standard, layered criminal, driving, employment, education, and reference checks, and accepts only a small fraction of applicants, is the one that keeps an entire household trustworthy.

The third is the ability to define roles so they hold together. The most common failure in household staffing is overlap and gaps, two people who both assume someone else handles a task, or a nanny quietly absorbing household work until they burn out. A firm experienced in full-household staffing structures each role clearly and ensures the team fits as a whole, which is what allows the household to run smoothly and the placements to last.

And the fourth is staying power: matching each role for lasting fit and standing behind every placement with a substantial guarantee, so the team you build is stable rather than a revolving door. Ours carries a full-year guarantee, and our placements average more than five years.

Composing and placing full household teams, anywhere in the world, has been our work since 1999. To staff a complete household well, choose a firm with real range across every role, a single uniformly high vetting standard, the experience to define a team that fits together, and guarantees that keep it stable. That is how a great home is built to run. It is the approach Nannies + more…® was built on, and the one we keep.