Private households, small, medium and large estates, will regularly face challenges within their household hierarchy, from setting up a completely new property (after a re-location or renovation), through to re-organising and re-shifting existing household hierarchies in place.
Lucy saw that many households faced challenges, and whilst standard recruitment and training certainly provided solutions for many of these challenges, when clients brought Lucy and her team in to observe and report on what was actually happening, this is where the real shifts of household dynamics began.
Although it is extremely worth noting that each client has individual needs and specific outcomes with the processes and we work in a reactive, rather than fixed sense.
We meet with you via Zoom video (our preference) or we can meet you in our HQ in Mayfair or at your household itself (the latter are both chargeable meetings, whereas Zoom is complimentary). We discuss the project, and what challenges are being faced.
Following our meeting, if you wish to commence the consultancy agreement, relevant T&Cs and service contracts are provided to you to review and sign. With fees discussed and disclosed.
During this timeframe, we will undertake a large number of routes, depending on the timezone and location of the properties. We will look at multiple strands to ‘fix’ the challenges at the site including:
1. Video and Site visits. We begin to get ‘under the hood’ of the issues at play. From video conferencing and where appropriate site visits. This allows for us, and for you to deepen our understanding of what their household might need in order to achieve the desired outcome. We use a number of techniques including:
a. Interview with the principals
b. Interview with the household
c. Detailed analysis of situations and daily occurrences in the property, looking at both positive and negative outcomes
d. Surveillance day(s) where we observe and watch the staff at work
2. Following on from our Video and Site Visits, we enter into a report building stage, where we assemble all our data, and produce a vital report based on our findings in the property. From here we discuss the road ahead which can include:
a. Recruitment support for new team members
b. Training support where we implement specific training for existing team members
Our services are entirely created around your needs. Each client we work with is unique, with their own lives, focuses and challenges. Below are a number of case studies which may allow you to see the type of work we have consulted with previously, however, these are only a small fraction of the breadth of clients we have supported over the years.
Dean was a newly divorced gentleman with grown children. Hugely successful, he owned multiple properties around the world, but his main residence was in the Hamptons. He realised that staffing his house was an issue and yet he had tried (and sadly failed) to recruit the right people for his household. He didn’t have time to spend or waste more time on this.
After a month of video consultation support, he flew Lucy and her head trainer over to visit his home. Lucy and Alexandra spent a week reviewing the house and watching the existing staff.
They also conducted interviews with the staff, Dean and his children when they visited the property that week.
On returning to the UK, Lucy and her team developed a detailed report advising on which staff needed to be restructured and who needed to be recruited. They then entered an intensive recruitment process and recruited five new members of staff.
Finally once the staff were in place, Alexandra returned to conduct on site training with his new staff. We continue to support Dean, but much more infrequently as he requires our support only from time to time when household staff occasionally move on and we recruit for him again.
Natasha was a married woman, who lived with her husband and three younger children in Hampstead in a stunning 7 bedroom property. They had 4 housekeepers, 2 nannies, 1 Chef and 1 PA. But Natasha was frustrated. The housekeepers kept dropping the ball and letting her down, and mistakes were being made. Clothes were damaged, items were lost, and despite the family increasing the salaries each year, the staff didn’t seem happy.
It all came to a head when Natasha’s daughter’s birthday party was being held over a weekend and two of the housekeepers didn’t turn up for work, leaving the family in the lurch with a household full of guests. Something had to be done. She reached out to Lucy and her team.
Over the following months, Lucy supported Natasha remotely with staffing management. It was apparent that Natasha treated her staff like her friends, rather than employers, and Lucy coached her to become more confident with managing boundaries and communication.
She also helped Natasha start to break down toxic behaviour amongst the staff. Lucy supported Natasha with a new hire, of a house manager, who was brought in to start to put a more formal hierarchy in place, and allow Natasha to bow out of daily dramas in the house.
Lucy also put a small training plan in place, for when the new house manager started, to help bring the team together. Lucy visited the property a total of 6 times during the course of a year, to watch the staff work, and this affected the training plan, and also the type of house manager she recruited for the household.
Now two years down the line, Natasha is happy, the staff are happy and the house is harmonious.
Sarah had just purchased a stunning mansion and spent millions on renovations. Her husband and she were originally from Switzerland and the USA, and were planning to use this home as their main base in the UK. She had recruited locally and the new housekeeper had damaged the brand new marble in the bathroom and she was devastated.
She came to us, looking for support to find the highest quality of staff, but it became apparent that she was severely understaffed and the existing staff were unskilled and underqualified
Over the consultation process, we conducted multiple site visits, giving her both practical and emotional support on the process to hire new staff, helping with all aspects of interviewing the new staff, and being present for these interviews as she conducted them. We also added additional vetting steps as her husband was high profile and as such needed to have complete peace of mind when it came to security risks.
We also brought in a specific security consultant to support us with the technological overhaul of the house, as this was severely lacking and was noticed in our early reports. Over the years that followed we continued to support Sarah and her husband as they needed us.
Our consultancy services are continually evolving around the clients we work with. We don’t understand the word ‘no’, we only understand ‘yes, how can we solve this’. As is the nature of our business, we work with the most highly functional, highly successful individuals, couples and families around the world.
We don’t look at obvious solutions, we look at the solutions that give our clients the greatest ROI and also the greatest life happiness.