What to check before you hire help for your home

Hiring someone to work in your home is not like buying a thing. You are agreeing a relationship, usually a long one, usually without a contract, often after a ten-minute conversation at your door. A few minutes of care at the start saves most of the trouble that follows.

This is the list we would use ourselves.

Talk to the person who will actually come

Ring the number on the listing and ask for the person who will do the work, not the office. If you are hiring through an agency, ask who they will send and whether that person changes week to week. A cook who suits your household and a rotating pool of cooks are different arrangements, and they should be priced differently.

If the number does not answer, or the person on the phone does not match the listing, tell us. We would rather fix a listing than have you waste an afternoon on it.

Ask to see identification, once, at your door

You are entitled to look at someone's identity document when they first arrive. Look at it, check the name matches, and hand it back.

Do not photograph it. Do not ask anyone to send you a copy in advance, over WhatsApp or otherwise. A copy in your phone is a liability for both of you, and a request for one is the oldest trick in the domestic-work scam book — usually followed by a request for a deposit.

This is also how we work. Where one of our checks involves a document, our representative looks at it in person and gives it straight back; we record that it was seen, what type it was and when it was issued, and nothing else. Nobody's documents sit on our servers. See how verification works for what each badge actually covers.

Settle the scope before the first day, not after

Most disputes we hear about are not about money. They are about a job that quietly grew — the cook who started doing the utensils, the maid who was suddenly expected to iron.

Go through the work item by item. The listings here show what a provider includes, what they charge extra for and what they do not do at all, in the provider's own words: bathroom cleaning, floors, dusting, utensils, laundry, ironing for cleaning work; veg, non-veg, and the regional cooking they actually know for a cook; child, elderly or patient care for a carer. Read that list out loud with them and agree what is in and what is out. Write it down, even if it is only a message on your phone that you both keep.

Agree the hours and the days off in the same conversation. "Mornings" is not an agreement. "Seven to nine, Monday to Saturday, Sunday off" is.

Agree the money in the same breath

Say the number out loud and have them say it back. Ask what happens on a festival day, what happens if you are travelling for two weeks, and what a month's notice looks like on either side. These are the three questions that turn into arguments six months later.

Pay after the work, or in stages for a long job. Do not pay a large advance to someone you have not worked with. Nobody needs your UPI PIN, a bank one-time password or a card number, ever — a request for one of those is a scam whoever it appears to come from.

The first two weeks

Be present for the first few visits, especially if a child or an elderly relative will be alone with the person later. Put away documents, spare keys and cash before the first day, as you would for any tradesperson. None of this is an accusation; it is what you would do for anyone new in the house.

Give feedback early and plainly. Most people would rather be told in week one that you like the floors done before the dusting than discover in month three that you have been quietly unhappy.

If something goes wrong

Tell us. Every listing has a report link, and every report reaches a person on our team — the content policy explains what happens next.

Report a dead phone number, a wrong price, or a person who turned up who was not the person listed. Those are the reports that make the directory worth using. If something was taken, or you were threatened, that is a matter for the police first; tell us afterwards and we will take the listing down while we look into it.

There is more detail in staying safe when you hire.