Often this will depend on your profile and the number of household staff that you are engaging. If you are employing a number of staff or are well known to the outside world and wish to retain some distance between yourself and your employee, you would be advised to hire through a company.

Basic (template) terms of engagement do not provide you and your family with adequate legal protection, nor do they provide  the employee with any guidelines on what you expect from them. To ensure your household quirks don’t become the talk of the town, tabloid headlines or go viral on social media, you need the employee to sign up to strict confidentiality terms and retain rights over all pictures.

From 6 April 2020, an employee or worker must be provided with a statement of terms before, or from day one, of employment. They have a legal right to receive this statement, which should contain a number of specified provisions. 

You will have a greater degree of control over the activities of an employee than a self-employed contractor. You will expect greater commitment, loyalty and trust from them, but you will also be ‘saddled’ with employer responsibilities such as holiday pay and tax.

Self-employed contractors have control over the way they deliver the service and remain responsible for  their own tax. Engaging your new recruit

on a self-employed basis may appear an attractive option.

However, if you are expecting them to act like employees but be paid like contractors, you may be treadinga dangerous path in terms of potential employment and tax claims against you. You would be well advised to seek legal advice on this point if you are unsure.

Ensure you (or your recruitment agency) have carried out Right to Work1 checks for each employee. If you are planning to bring your domestic worker from abroad, be aware that the immigration rules are more stringent than they used to be. Ensure you seek legal advice prior to bringing them into the UK

to work. From 1 January 2021, free movment of people within the EU will end and the UK will introduce a points-based immigration system. The Home Office has issued guidance for employers on the new proposed points-based immigration system. The new system assigns points for specific skills, salaries, qualifications and shortage occupations. Visas are then awarded to those with sufficient points. 

Protect your family by ensuring that adequate screening and checks have taken place and that your staff are suitably qualified for their roles. For instance, close protection staff must hold the appropriate Security Industry Authority license and your nanny should be Ofsted registered.

You should ensure that a basic criminal check has been undertaken (usually doneby the agency) in respect of all staff as per the Disclosure and Barring Service. Other screening may be required if they are not from the UK or are going to be working closely with any vulnerable members of the family such as any elderly family or children.

Furthermore, you should ensure that references, from previous employers, have been obtained and checked *(usually done by the agency).

Always negotiate in terms of gross pay, not net pay. This must be clear from the outset to avoid confusion and set the right expectations. Dealing in gross terms provides you with greater certainty over what it will cost you.

Information about your employees is personal data. If you are responsible for determining the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal data is to be processed and used, you are the data controller of that data. It is likely that you will need to register with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a data controller; failure to do so is a criminal offence.

You should also provide your employees with a Privacy Notice, prior to obtaining any personal information from them. In lightof recent legislative changes, you should have provisions in place to demonstrate that you are protecting the data of your employees, having such provisions and policies should also protect you, as a data controller. Furthermore, when you pass data to third parties such as pension providers, payroll, security firms etc. in respect of your employees, you must ensure that those third parties also have adequate provisions in place to protect your employees’ data, otherwise you may be held liable as the data controller.

You should ensure that you have adequate insurance cover for your employees. This might be covered within your existing household insurance, or you may require a separate employer’s liability insurance policy. This is designed to cover any claims by an employee who is injured in the course of their work. If they will be travelling with you as part of their role, you should check that there is adequate travel insurance cover too.