Taking on domestic staff can be one of the most important and risky decisions you take. When done right, you bring peace of mind and quality of life to your home. When done wrong, you can introduce fear, uncertainty and distrust.
The guidance we will offer in this article may seem in depth, but first ask yourself this question.
How well would I like to know someone, to whom I will give my house keys, alarm codes, personal information and unsupervised access to my entire home?
Whether temporary or full time, most of these positions involve letting people into your inner circle, granting them extensive and often unrestricted access to your life, personal information and home, none more so than a cleaner, who may be expected to clean the most personal areas of your home, unsupervised.
BACKGROUND
A simple trawl of the internet has numerous recent examples of those who have unwittingly found themselves or their loved ones betrayed by a domestic member of staff.
Tamara Ecclestone
The potential inside job at her home in London reported involved domestic staff and an alleged theft of Jewellery worth £50M
King Mohammed VI
The Moroccan King, whose cleaner stole 36 luxury watches and was convicted of forming a gang to steal, break and sell the stolen goods.
Cheshire Cleaner
The self-employed cleaner was convicted of stealing from 7 of her clients, caught through a suspicious client's actions.
So how can we bring people into these high trust positions and reduce our risk of becoming a victim of crime, losing property and assets, the loss of an efficient home environment, having secrets disclosed and the psychological impacts from these incidents; distress, upset and reluctance to trust and re-employ.
There may always be some element of risk when employing staff for high trust positions.
As a supplier of security and chauffeur professionals for these environments, we understand the concerns, and this is an area that is always in the forefront of our mind, requiring particular diligence and thoroughness to ensure we don’t bring risk to our customers lives.
In this article we will introduce you to a number of simple measures which we use when recruiting for our team and have seen successfully used to reduce risk when recruiting for very high risk and trust environments, along with our infographic to making less risky recruitment decisions.
In this guidance we will focus on the security and trust aspect rather than role competence.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to discuss your options or should you have any questions or require support.
There are a number of options when recruiting, self-employed workers seem to be favoured over employed at the moment, but you also have contractors to consider too. We will revisit this later on, but once you have decided which route you would like to proceed with the method can be applied to all.
Usually but not always, we see good practice in the office environment, but this gets left at the office and when at home, practices can become more relaxed and less structured.
Introducing these good work practices to the home environment needn’t impact how relaxed you feel at home, in fact the aim is to make you feel more relaxed and have greater peace of mind. It is important to remember though, that while you may be at your home, you’re in fact creating a work environment for someone else.
1. PRIMARY INTERVIEW
The first step in our recommendations is the interview process.
The aim here is to filter candidates for suitability at reach, and gradually bring them closer as you move along the process, with reduced numbers and increased knowledge of the applicants. This applies equally to engaging with a business as it does with employing someone.
You should conduct as many interviews as you need to feel comfortable and shouldn’t feel pressured in to rushing. It is important to remember that you are not just looking to verify that the person can do the job to an exceptional standard or that their personality fits with you.
We are trying to understand who they are beyond the work, motivations, pressures and vulnerabilities.
Starting with a phone interview or screening is a good way to conduct a primary filter and get some information to work on. You will be able to get a good feel for their knowledge, passion and motivation in a short call.
This can be done by you or on your behalf by your team. You may wish to consider withholding your name at this stage to preserve your anonymity. Next you might move to a “First Interview,” one or two meetings in person.
We would recommend conducting this away from your home or business so as not to give away where you live and work. Controlling information about where you live, home information and protocols is good security practice.
Making good notes is a highly recommended and may sound obvious, but you will need to refer to and cross reference the information gathered in these interviews later in the process and notes will avoid any accidental information cross-over in your mind.
2. VETTING & SCREENING
Once you have narrowed down your numbers and identified some potential candidates you can start to look at conducting the vetting and screening process.
This may seem like hassle, but we are looking to conduct some basic checks here, financial background, criminal convictions, work history and also, some basic reference checks, personal and work. You could conduct these yourself after seeking the required permission, it is very important to obtain permission, but there is an efficient industry around vetting and screening now.
For £200 you can save yourself some time, governance and data headaches and use a third party to conduct this on your behalf. Usually this is a simple online process which the candidates undertake.
Although basic in nature these checks will allow you to develop your picture of the applicants further by identifying potential risk and vulnerabilities. For example, a history of debt issues and convictions would raise concerns which would need to be allayed for any applicant who was going to have access to your family, home and valuables.
You should be particularly concerned if information uncovered in these checks is not disclosed or is actively denied. Open social media profiles can provide a, through the keyhole, insight in to people’s lives, their true character, opinions and behaviours.
If engaging with a company, you would undertake due diligence at this point. Check their financial accounts and directors on Companies House, see if the business is viable and if the directors are legitimate. Conduct a credit check, view their insurance and request to see their internal employment processes including their vetting and selection procedure, which should reflect the levels of diligence you would show in employing.
3. REFERENCE CHECKS
Your candidates should have provided you with a number of referee’s, if not obtain some. A mixture of work and personal life. Whilst references on a CV provide initial reassurance, they must be validated. If your candidate cannot provide referees, we would suggest this is a big red flag.
You should look to speak with the referees and ideally meet them in person or at least video call, to prove their authenticity. Again, do this away from home if meeting in person.
I heard a tale of a CEO being recruited at short notice, only for the business to find out when they tried to obtain their passport details, that the CEO was in fact a fraud, and that the referee, spoken to over the phone, had been the applicant themself, acting.
When checking references consider going back past the most current to gain a better picture. It may be the current employer just wants to offload the candidate on you.
Checking referees allows you to build up a much better picture of the candidate’s actions and behaviour over time and you may hear snippets of information which you do or don’t like, but which seemed unimportant to the referee.
Don’t be shy and ask searching questions about personal and work life.
4. CONFIRMATORY INTERVIEW
Now you are armed with a great deal of background information about your potential candidates, it is a good idea to have another interview with them.
Again, conducting this away from home protects over disclosure about your personal life.
In this interview you can ask questions around any potential vulnerabilities you have found to either confirm or deny their validity and satisfy yourself with the answers as well as revisit details given in previous interviews to confirm continuity.
When exploring vulnerabilities, we are trying to confirm:
Is this person trustworthy?
Do they have a proven track record of being in positions of trust and not abusing their position?
Do they have any internal or external pressures which might lead them to abuse their position such as uncontrollable debt, expensive tastes outside of their means, family medical conditions with spiralling private treatment costs? Can they be leveraged by someone else to exploit you?
Do they have certain controversial habits or connections, which others could use against them? These may be substance abuse, pornographic taste, infidelity, relatives or social circles linked to criminal actors.
This area must be approached with caution and sensitivity and while asking outright is a tactic used in screening, other less direct questions can be asked, with behaviours monitored and assessed for validity.
Wicklander-Zulawski are experts in his field and offer guidance and training on behavioural patterns and the clusters of these used to identify dishonesty.
As a rule of thumb, concealment, while possibly understandable given the personal and sensitive nature of the information, is a negative indicator. It is important in reducing risk, that a member of your team would be open with you when they are facing a challenge, which if left unchecked could resort in them abusing their position. Even good people can do bad things when seemingly left with no alternative.
5. AGREEMENTS
Confidentiality agreements (NDA’s) should be signed.
There has been much conversation about the misuse of these, and rightfully so. NDA’s are though, a valid and excellent tool which allows the employee to understand what is private and confidential, what can and can’t be disclosed and the repercussions of breaching these.
Agreements should be in place prior to any of the candidates coming to your home. At this point you will be disclosing much more about you, your family and home to the potential candidates, although by now you will have a much better feel for them.
6. TRIAL
A trail might well be the first chance the candidate gets to see you in your home and meet your family.
This will allow both them and you, to get a better idea of what working life together might feel like, whether it suits all parties and for them to meet other team members.
You can get feedback from them later if you require. Following the trial would generally be your selection point.
7. CONTRACTS
Contracts play a hugely important part in the process.
From experience, setting out the rule book on day one is not only good for you, but it’s good for the employee or company.
For a company they may want to issue a service agreement, ensure the detail you require is in this document, if not get it added. Outside the role specific tasks, consider establishing rules around boundaries, i.e. private areas for both you and for the employee. It is important to clearly define spaces and a good idea for your staff to have somewhere they can call their own and to relax.
Often, and with cleaning especially, this becomes a blurred line as the staff member may have access to the whole home and feel comfortable over time.
8. INVEST
Good staff can turn bad. Once you have found a great employee it is important to look after them.
Failure to do so can lead to a deterioration in the relationship and could end up in bitterness and resentment. These in turn could increase risk of crime, whether by the employee or through other means.
Finance has already been highlighted as a potential vulnerability and is recognised as a stressor in most people’s lives. You may have the ability to remove this stressor and for a relatively insignificant amount. An employee without a debt issue is an employee less likely to steal from you.
Emotionally supporting your employee may sound unappealing to many but this is a very effective way to identify issues and mitigate them before they become a problem. This is not a suggestion that you become friends, although this works for some, boundaries are important, but by taking a genuine interest in your staff, you will establish a baseline of behaviour and be able to identify changes from this baseline which could be symptomatic of a problem.
They may also feel able to come to you with problems which left unresolved may land back at your doorstep more negatively.
You can empower and develop you staff through simple training. Often personal development is overlooked in these types of roles and stagnation is not a human’s friend.
At BluSkills we deliver training to our clients and their staff members.
This not only develops the individuals but provides the additional benefit to the homeowner of increasing their capabilities in other areas such as security or first aid.
9. TEST PURCHASE & INTEGRITY TEST
Trust is earnt on both sides and care should be taken not to break trust. You will lose an employee if you treat them will little respect.
Should you however suspect an integrity issue, test purchasing is a method, often used in retail, which can validate the integrity of a member of staff.
You may provide the employee with an opportunity to take something of value in a controlled environment which might be hard to resist, cash for example, and measure the response.
Hopefully the topics and procedure discussed in this guidance will relieve some of the uncertainty and concern that may currently be preventing you from employing domestic staff, allowing you to take on staff with a risk based approach, feeling more relaxed confident and trusting while you build your team and improve the efficiency of your home.
If you would like to us to help you with any of the topics covered in this guidance, get in touch with us today on 0333 3056615 or [email protected] we would be delighted to help.
