Journal · May 14, 2019
What we mean by live-in
A live-in position is a residence, not a shift. What that means for the staff we place, and for the households they live with.
Roughly a third of the permanent placements we make each year are live-in, and roughly a third of the questions candidates ask us at interview are about what that means. It is worth setting down.
A live-in member of staff has a room, usually a small suite, in the house or on the property, and lives there for the length of the placement. They have hours of work and hours of rest, and both are written into the agreement they sign with the household. They have days off, which are their own, and holidays, which are their own too.
But they live where they work. A household has a night as well as a day, and the people who live in are part of both. When a child is ill at three in the morning, when the alarm company calls, when a guest arrives from the airport six hours after the flight was due, the person who answers is the person who is there. Good households are careful about how often that happens. The best staff are gracious about it when it does.
What we ask of candidates
We ask candidates for live-in positions to think honestly about whether they want a home that is also a workplace. Some of the finest house managers we have placed have lived in for twenty years and would not have it otherwise. Some excellent butlers have tried it once and told us, kindly, never again. Neither is a failing. A placement that suits neither side helps nobody.
We also ask candidates to understand that, while they live in, the household’s arrangements are theirs. The house manager will know where they are. Visitors to staff quarters are by arrangement. The household’s rules on telephones and photographs apply in the staff wing as they do in the drawing room. These things are set out in the Residence Code, which every member of staff we place reads and signs.
What we ask of households
We ask households to put the hours in writing, to keep to them, and to tell us when they cannot. A live-in arrangement that works is one in which the household knows what it has asked for and the member of staff knows what they have agreed to. We have been arranging them since 1961 and have found no better rule.