7 Important Steps for Domestic Helper Onboarding in Singapore

To hire a nanny or a helper, you have to organize a rather complex process, which often has little documentation, and people often cannot manage this effort, as they are busy finding someone to replace a previous helper or dealing with workplace stress and sleepless nights with a newborn baby.

Step 1: Audit your household before choosing a helper

The first and foremost mistake, which you can make, is to begin from looking for helpers, rather than checking your household first. Take a seat at the dining table, and thoroughly consider all your needs. Where are the weak points in your household routine? Are the 7 am rushes around school drop-off every day the problem? Or perhaps, your elderly family member needs help waking up, getting out of bed, and going to the bathroom twice a day? Is it too difficult for you to cook dinner for four people in two hours?

You can review helpers depending on their work experience and filter out those, who have experience in certain types of work. If you need someone who could help to care for your sick parent, a helper with experience of taking care of the babies may not be a good option. Also, you need to list all non-negotiable points, such as pet care, dietary cooking, known allergy requirements, and driving.

Step 2: Understand the transfer maid concept correctly

In Singapore, families can hire someone from overseas or someone who is already in the country and wishes to change employers. This is called a transfer maid, and the timeline is much shorter and the cost can be lower.

Overseas hires usually take around 6 to 10 weeks in order to be hired; this process includes quarantine measures, mandatory courses, and higher fees paid to the agency. However, a transfer maid is in the country, already has a work permit and can start work within days after the previous permit has been cancelled and a new one has been applied for.

Not only the process is much shorter, but also you can choose this helper based on your interview, as opposed to choosing someone from overseas. You can observe their communication skills, reaction to certain situations and whether their temperament fits the pace of your household. It can be difficult to judge based on video calls, so use the opportunity to conduct a full interview.

By working with a reputable transfer maid agency in singapore, you can simplify the whole process of paperwork and find a suitable transfer maid within two weeks. It would be a good idea to use this option in case your current arrangement has broken down or your previous helper quit.

Step 3: Conduct a structured interview

When interviewing your potential transfer helper, you should treat this conversation seriously. The interview should be competency-based and professional.

Prepare a series of situational questions, based on your own experience. For example, instead of just asking “Can you cook?”, ask them to describe how they would manage tasks such as taking children to school at 7:15 am, loading laundry and preparing breakfast for three children with different dietary needs. The answer will give you much more information than the answer to the simple question.

If there are elderly people in the household, ask specifically about their experience related to helping people with mobility problems and managing medication. If your parent has dementia or mobility issues, it is better to confirm this experience before they begin working for you.

Ask your transfer helper why they left their previous position. Experienced helpers will be very open and honest about this issue, and their answer is worth knowing. A helper whose family relocated overseas is very different from someone who left due to misunderstanding or miscommunication. Nevertheless, none of the answers means that this candidate is unacceptable for you, but it gives you an idea of the questions you should ask further.

Observe the helper’s communication skills directly. Can she ask for clarification, or does she just nod?

Step 4: Complete the legal paperwork

There are a lot of mandatory steps you should perform to legally hire a domestic helper in Singapore. In the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) website, you can find the list of the actions you should do.

The work permit has to be valid for the whole period when the helper stays in the country. If you are hiring a transfer helper, you should check whether the current permit has been cancelled by the previous employer and a new one has been applied for – your agency will take care of this, but you should check the dates so that you are not left with a helper who does not have a valid permit.

You are also obliged to buy a $5,000 security bond for non-Malaysian helpers, personal accident insurance and medical coverage, which would meet MOM’s requirements and in case you hire a helper for the first time, you should attend the Employers’ Orientation Programme (EOP).

The EOP is a compulsory course on the legal and other aspects of employer-employee relationship. If the helper arrives in Singapore for the first time from abroad, he/she should attend the Settling-In Programme (SIP). If the helper has previously attended the SIP, you do not need to repeat it.

Consider the contract a clear written agreement. Everything that you agree upon concerning the payment, number of rest days, job scope, notice period and special rules of your household should be mentioned in the contract. Do not leave rest days as something to negotiate after the helper starts working.

Step 5: Prepare the home environment before the first day

 A room for your helper is not only a legal requirement but also determines the atmosphere in the house for a long period of time. MOM requires that the helper’s room has a proper bed, is well-ventilated and private, and contains all necessary furniture.

Since July 2023, there are new rules for employers, stating that the employer should have a $60,000 minimum amount of active medical insurance covering their helper.

Think about what you would want in your own room. Privacy, storage, comfortable access to the basic things, and a room comparable to the rest of the home. A room where you would be comfortable is unlikely to prompt complaints about its condition.

Apart from making sure that your helper has appropriate living conditions, try to improve the environment in the household. Fix a leaky faucet, change the broken lock, go through all the home essentials, do not leave the helper’s room preparations to the last minute. Leaving the extra room in your house as a storage room until the day she arrives is not the best idea.

If there are children in your household, explain to them what to expect from a new person in the house. Children, especially young ones, need some preparation for that, and doing that will avoid the problems on day one.

Step 6: Organize the schedule for the first month

Do not leave the first month to improvisation. Write the schedule for the first two weeks that would include all of your helper’s duties: school runs, meal preparation, laundry cycle, cleaning, shopping and other duties, if there are any for children and elderly family members.

Remember to write down all rest periods, meals and sleep time in that schedule. The helper, who will be guided by a structured schedule for the first month, is less likely to burn out and to make mistakes, which come from the lack of understanding of priorities.

With this schedule, you can refer to a certain time slot when talking about your expectations. This will reduce misunderstanding on both sides.

Make the first two weeks the period of supervised training. Show her how to do every task correctly. Demonstrate how to prepare the family recipes, show correct temperatures for laundry of children and other important details. Most of the problems in the first month occur because the helper may make assumptions about how to do the tasks, but never learned that before.

Step 7: Start giving feedback immediately

The first three to six months are often a period of success or failure for a placement. The biggest factor of failure is minor misunderstandings or hurt feelings, which in real friendship you would ignore, but in the live-in helper relationship, if you ignore them, these feelings can accumulate and create a difficult atmosphere. They can lead to clashes that damage your relationship if you do not find a way to resolve them.

It is easiest to deal with this problem to conduct three check-ins in the first months. Schedule them for the end of week one, the end of month one and month three. These checks should be short and low pressure. You should ask your helper what works, what is unclear and whether she has some questions regarding your household’s expectations. Be clear about what is wrong, but say this in the form of an instruction – at this stage, it might be your mistake.

Any experienced transfer helper will tell you that, even after the new pattern is established and the training is done, she will have a smaller learning curve due to the fact that the environment and people in it are different from her previous employer’s. Your household’s pace may be different. Your communication style may not be the same. Your child’s personality and quirks – or your elderly parent’s – are not the same. The list of things to do and how to do them is not the same as the list from the previous employer. Your preferences for how to do one task rather than another are not the same. She will learn this, but it takes time and should not be mistaken for a lack of ability or care.

Establish the clear protocols from the very first days on the most frequent sources of tension: mobile phone usage during work time, handling money, visitors and medical emergencies involving children or an elderly family member. Discussing these issues at the very beginning will prevent misunderstandings at the worst moment.