Manage your household staff with Nines

Whether you’re an estate manager overseeing 20 household employees or a homeowner with a couple of babysitters and a housekeeper, you need a way to keep track of all of the details that come along with managing people.

You have to keep important information on file, like emergency contacts, job descriptions, and non-disclosure agreements.

At the same time, your staff members need training and access to household protocols to be successful. On a daily basis, you need an easy way to share task lists and communicate back and forth.

With Nines, you can manage all of the information about your employees, as well as all of the information you need to share with them, in one place. Think of Nines as your digital house manual — an interactive place where you can put all of this information to work.

Let’s explore how Nines can help you manage your household staff.

Keep track of household employee information

When you’re onboarding a new household staff member, you need to collect a bunch of details from them, including:

• Emergency contact information
• Birthdays
• Preferences and allergies

You’ll also want to keep copies of their resume, NDA, job description, and other important documents where you can find them over time.

Nines gives you an easy way to organize all of your employees’ information. When you add an employee to Nines, the first step is to add a photo, their name and job title, and their contact information. Then, you can add notes and upload documents.

It’s flexible, so you can write a quick overview of each employee’s role and responsibilities, add their full job description, note whether they’re full-time or part-time, and make note of the household staffing agency who helped you find them.

Moving forward, you can also log any interactions with this employee, like time off requests, HR updates, etc.

It’s easy to update, so you can keep everything accurate as things change, for example, if your housekeeper is promoted to executive housekeeper.

And, the information you need is always right at your fingertips. You can see an overview of your employees in one click, or run a quick search to find the right person. Whether you’re running large estates with lots of employees, or working with one housekeeper who’s been with your household for 20 years, the ability to sift through all of that information and find exactly what you need in seconds is invaluable.

But all of this information becomes even more powerful when you use it to get work done, which brings us to our next tip.

Connect employee information with the rest of your household manual

Now, let’s look at employee management in the context of your household manual. It’s important to lay out an org chart, even if your household staff is only made up of a few employees.

Everyone needs to know the reporting structure and where to turn with questions. Being clear about who’s responsible for the different roles in your household helps everyone operate more efficiently.

In Nines, it’s easy to build out your household’s standards and procedures. Our protocols are pre-organized into chapters from household management expert Marta Perrone’s tried and true system for building house manuals. These chapters give you a starting point for creating a manual that keeps everyone in your household on the same page. You can add your own custom chapters, and you can add your own sections within each chapter.

In the Staff chapter, you can @ mention your employees so you can save time building your manual and keep relevant, up-to-date information at your fingertips.

For example, you could create a section for your org chart, and say, “@Anna Smith, a lady’s maid at Downton, reports to our head housekeeper @Elsie Hughes.” When you hover over Anna and Elsie’s names, you can get a quick preview, or click to see their full employee profiles.

In the culinary chapter, you could @ mention your private chef, who is responsible for menu planning, and note each family member’s favorite cuisines. Or, in the childcare chapter of your protocols, you could @ mention all of the staff members who are responsible for childcare.

When you @ mention these employees, all of the information you’ve already added to their employee pages is at your fingertips — no need to re-enter it again. This saves you time when you’re building the manual, and long into the future, every time you need that information.

Turn information into action with tasks and lists

When all of that useful information is connected, you’re armed with a dynamic manual that’s as flexible and fast moving as your household itself. And now, you can put it to work.

Once you’ve added an employee to Nines, you can assign them tasks. If you’re used to sending endless back and forth text messages with your houseman or printing out lists for your handyman, this is a game changer.

Let’s say you have a part-time laundress. You can make simple tasks, like “wash the linens,” and assign them to her. Or, you could build a whole list of tasks, covering everything she does in a week, from ironing to running errands like “drop off the dry cleaning.”

She’ll get a notification when you’ve assigned tasks to her, and you can watch in real time as she completes them. Plus, you can filter your tasks dashboard by employee, so you can follow along with each person’s progress.

If you’ve given your household staff members full access to Nines, they can log in and see all of the information you’ve added. Only a few trusted people should have full log-in access. In some cases, it might just be the estate manager and perhaps a principal. On large estates, it might be the broader estate management team, including the director of residences, a house manager, a personal assistant, and perhaps an executive assistant.

If you haven’t given an employee full access, they’ll only be able to see the tasks and information you’ve shared with them, which means you can make their jobs easier without losing control of sensitive information. When you assign them a task, your employee will get a simple text message or an email that allows them to see any information you’ve shared in the task. That way, they can get all the answers they need in one click.

Get support on payroll, professional development and more

At Nines, we believe in empowering the private service professionals who support your household with the respect, tools, and resources they need to get work done and grow in their careers. That’s why, beyond cutting-edge technology, we also provide support and services for private service professionals.

Our Easemakers community helps PSPs connect and learn from each other. Whether you need real-time answers to a question only another estate manager can answer, recommendations for a domestic staffing agency to help you find a new nanny, or inspiration from people who get it, Easemakers gives people who are passionate about private service a place to turn.

Meanwhile, with an in-house team of estate management experts as well as a network of trusted providers in household management and the household staffing industry, we provide services to support your household staff, from hands-free payroll and taxes to house manual consultation. We’ll help you troubleshoot any challenge, so everyone in your household can live with ease.

Empower your employees with better tools

Armed with smarter tools that are built to work for private service professionals, your team can work faster, with fewer headaches. Plus, employee management is just one part of effective household management, and Nines helps you manage everything to do with your household in one place.

Want to keep exploring? Check out how Nines can help you with property management, building a digital house manual, and creating smarter checklists for your employees and vendors.

Learn more about Nines and schedule a demo today.