Long-term household employment
How to retain a great nanny or housekeeper
Retention is built through a workable job, clear expectations, reliable pay and time off, regular conversations and respect for the employee’s professional contribution. A household that wants continuity should review the role before frustration, underpayment or changing duties make leaving the easier option.
What helps a household keep good domestic staff?
Start by making the job sustainable. Keep duties aligned with the role, pay and schedule you agreed, provide lawful holiday and employment arrangements, recognise good work, and create predictable opportunities to discuss workload, changing household needs and future development.
Retention is not the same as avoiding difficult conversations. A strong household employer can give clear feedback and still treat the employee with respect. The goal is a relationship where both sides know what is expected and where changes are discussed before they become resentment.
Six practices that support long-term retention.
These are management disciplines, not guarantees. Individual employees leave for many personal and professional reasons.
Keep the job recognisable.
When household needs change, discuss the change rather than letting the role expand informally. Persistent role creep is one of the clearest signals that the original job no longer matches the work.
Review compensation deliberately.
Use the actual role, hours, responsibility and current market evidence when available. Do not wait until resignation to discover that the household has never reviewed pay or benefits.
Plan holidays and cover properly.
Respect agreed working hours, off-duty time and statutory leave. If the household needs cover, solve that operationally instead of assuming the employee will cancel personal time.
Make performance conversations routine.
Regular check-ins make it easier to recognise good work, correct small problems and ask what support the employee needs before either side feels the relationship has become one-sided.
Treat domestic work as professional work.
Give clear information, appropriate notice, privacy and a consistent point of contact. Avoid giving conflicting instructions through several family members.
Discuss how the role may evolve.
Some employees value additional responsibility, training or a clearer progression in pay and scope. Agree changes deliberately rather than using “development” as a reason to add unpaid work.
Use an annual review, but do not wait a year to communicate.
Formal review and everyday management serve different purposes.
Acas describes performance reviews as a chance to discuss what someone is doing well, areas for improvement, support or training and development objectives. It recommends regular performance reviews for employees and notes that at least once a year is a good idea.
For a private household, the annual conversation can cover duties, workload, pay, holiday planning, changed household needs, development and whether the written role still reflects reality. Shorter check-ins during the year should handle everyday feedback so the annual review does not become twelve months of accumulated complaints.
Schedule performance reviews and check-ins using a simple structure that records what is working, what needs attention and what each side will do next.
Retention problems often show up as role-design problems first.
Before assuming someone is “not committed”, look at what has changed around them.
The role has expanded without a reset.
More children, a larger property, additional cooking, travel or new household expectations can make the original job impossible within the same hours.
Instructions come from several directions.
Conflicting priorities create avoidable failure. Agree who manages the role and how changes are communicated.
Hours and time off keep moving.
Frequent last-minute changes can make the job hard to organise around personal commitments, even when the total hours look reasonable on paper.
Good work is invisible until something goes wrong.
Specific, credible recognition tells the employee which standards matter and makes the working relationship less purely corrective.
From our work: the original role brief is the best retention baseline.
Filipino Domestic Services asks households to define the role, duties, normal days and hours, working arrangement and practical requirements before introductions begin. We do that because a candidate needs enough information to decide whether the actual job fits before accepting it.
The same document becomes useful later. When a household says a good employee seems less engaged, the first comparison should be the job they accepted versus the job they are doing now. Has the household added recurring work? Are the hours less predictable? Has the priority between childcare and household duties changed? Has the role grown but the pay or support never been reviewed?
We do not treat retention as a personality question or a nationality trait. It is an employer-management question. A household cannot guarantee that someone will stay, but it can avoid creating preventable reasons to leave by keeping expectations clear and discussing real changes openly.
When the placement still fits, regular check-ins help protect that fit. When it no longer fits, the right response is to redesign the role, agree a change or consider whether the household now needs a different staffing arrangement.
That is the same reason our enquiry process records working patterns and duties before a search begins: long-term fit starts with a role that is realistically scoped.
Review pay with evidence, not only when someone asks to leave.
The FDS salary-report page is intentionally not linked here until its methodology and current data are approved.
Pay decisions should reflect the actual role and current evidence. Avoid copying a headline rate from a different job without checking hours, live-in or live-out arrangement, childcare responsibility, household-management scope, location and any additional duties.
Until the FDS market-rate report is published with approved methodology, use current external market evidence and appropriate payroll advice where needed. The household should also keep statutory obligations such as minimum wage, holiday pay, pension duties and sick pay separate from any discretionary retention decision.
Questions about retaining domestic staff.
How often should I review a nanny or housekeeper’s pay?
An annual review is a practical default, and Acas says regular performance reviews are useful for employees. A pay decision should still use the actual role and current evidence rather than an automatic percentage increase or an outdated market rate.
Is a bonus the best way to retain good staff?
A bonus can recognise good work, but it does not fix an unworkable role, unclear boundaries, unstable hours or poor communication. Retention is usually stronger when the underlying employment relationship is sustainable before discretionary rewards are added.
What if the household needs more duties as the children get older?
Discuss the change before making it permanent. Some duties may reduce while others grow, and the role may evolve sensibly. If hours, pay or the substance of the job change materially, agree and document the new arrangement rather than relying on gradual role creep.
How can I recognise good work without making feedback awkward?
Be specific. Say what was done well and why it mattered to the household. Specific recognition is clearer than vague praise and gives the employee useful information about the standard you value.
What if a good employee still wants to leave?
Listen to the reason and avoid pressuring them to stay. Some departures are driven by personal circumstances or career plans that the household cannot or should not try to change. Use the information to decide whether the role itself needs improvement for the next stage.
When should I contact FDS about an existing placement?
Contact Filipino Domestic Services when a placement develops a persistent issue, the role has materially changed or you need to understand the available post-placement support route. Commercial replacement or refund provisions remain governed by the current client terms.
Sources and scope.
The retention framework is grounded in the current FDS role-brief and post-placement process. Employment-management points use current official guidance. This is general information, not personalised employment advice.
Retention is an ongoing management habit.
Use regular reviews to keep the role, expectations and working relationship aligned as the household changes.