The pandemic changed everything about how households function, and one of the biggest shifts we’ve seen at Seaside Staffing Company is the number of families who now have one or both parents working from home most or all of the time. Pre-2020, most of the families we worked with left for the office every morning and their household staff had the run of the place. Now? You’re in back-to-back Zoom calls in your home office while your housekeeper is trying to vacuum the hallway, or you’re walking through the kitchen for coffee during your estate manager’s scheduled time to do inventory, and everyone feels awkward and weird about it.
We’ve had so many conversations with families about this over the past few years, and the core issue is always the same – your staff got used to working in the house when you weren’t there, and now you are there, and nobody knows how to adjust. Your housekeeper feels like she’s being watched and judged. Your house manager feels like he can’t move freely through the house without bothering you. You feel like you can’t relax in your own home because there are employees around. Everyone’s uncomfortable and nobody knows how to talk about it.
Here’s the first thing you need to understand – this discomfort is totally normal and it doesn’t mean you hired the wrong people. The dynamic of having employers physically present in the home changes everything about how household staff do their jobs. When you weren’t there, they could work at their own pace, take breaks when they needed to, move through the house however made sense for their workflow. Now they’re hyper-aware that you might see them sitting down for a minute or hear them talking to a vendor on the phone or notice that they’re spending 20 minutes on one task. It creates this constant low-level anxiety that they’re being monitored and evaluated, even if that’s not your intention at all.
At the same time, you probably feel weird about it too. You’re trying to take a work call and you’re self-conscious that your housekeeper can hear you. You want to grab lunch from the kitchen but your private chef is in there prepping dinner and you don’t want to get in the way. You need to ask your house manager a question but you don’t want to interrupt what they’re doing. Everyone’s tiptoeing around each other and it’s making what should be a comfortable home environment feel tense and strange.
The solution is not to just power through the awkwardness and hope everyone gets used to it. The solution is to actually talk about the change and establish new norms that work for this new reality. At Seaside Staffing Company, we’ve helped dozens of families navigate this transition, and the ones who handle it well are the ones who address it head-on instead of pretending it’s not happening.
Start by having a direct conversation with your staff about the fact that your work situation has changed and you want to make sure everyone’s comfortable with the new arrangement. Don’t frame this as “I’m going to be watching you now so you better stay on task” because that’s not what this is about. Frame it as “We’re both going to be here during the day now, and I want to make sure we figure out how to make that work smoothly for both of us.”
Talk about logistics. Are there certain rooms or times when you absolutely need quiet for calls or meetings? Let your staff know. Are there tasks your housekeeper should save for when you’re not home, or times when she should definitely plan to work on certain areas of the house? Figure that out together. Does your house manager need to be able to interrupt you sometimes with urgent questions, and if so, what’s the best way to signal that something’s urgent versus something that can wait? Establish those communication norms now.
One family in Seattle told us they created a “do not disturb” system where they’d put a small sign on their office door during important calls, and their house manager knew that unless something was literally on fire, he should not knock during those times. Simple, clear, and it eliminated the constant anxiety on both sides about whether it was okay to interrupt or not. Outside of those specific times, the house manager was free to pop his head in if he needed a decision or had a question.
You also need to explicitly give your staff permission to do their jobs normally. A lot of household staff will start acting weird when employers are home – they’ll get really quiet, they’ll try to be invisible, they’ll skip their normal break times because they don’t want you to think they’re slacking off. You need to directly tell them “I trust you to manage your own time and I don’t need you to perform for me. If you normally take a 15-minute coffee break mid-morning, please keep doing that. If you need to have a phone conversation with a vendor, that’s fine. I’m not monitoring every minute of your day.”
This is especially important if you have younger or newer staff who might be intimidated by having the boss around. We worked with a family in Nashville who had a relatively inexperienced house manager who literally stopped eating lunch when the husband started working from home because he didn’t want to be seen “not working.” The wife finally noticed and had to explicitly say “You need to take your lunch break. I don’t care if we’re both here, you still get lunch.” The guy was so relieved that he almost cried. He’d been working straight through for weeks because he was afraid of looking lazy.
On your end, you need to get comfortable being in your home while staff are working and not feeling like you have to explain or justify everything you do. If you want to wander downstairs in your pajamas at 2 PM to get a snack between meetings, do it. You live here. You don’t need to apologize for existing in your own space. Your staff are professionals who are being paid to work in an occupied home, and part of their job is being able to do their work without making you feel uncomfortable in your own house.
That said, there are some courtesies that make this work better for everyone. If you know your housekeeper is planning to clean your office this afternoon and you’ve got back-to-back calls, give her a heads up that you’ll need to reschedule that room for tomorrow. If you’re going to be on a really sensitive or difficult call, maybe close your office door so your staff aren’t inadvertently overhearing things they shouldn’t hear. Basic courtesy goes both ways.
Some families find that adjusting the schedule helps. If your staff used to work 9-5 and you’re now home during those hours, maybe they shift to coming in earlier or later to have some solo time in the house, or maybe they do some of the louder tasks on days when you’re out of the house and save the quieter work for when you’re there. There’s no one right answer, but flexibility and willingness to adjust is key.
We placed an estate manager in San Diego for a family where both parents work from home full time, and they completely restructured the role around that reality. The estate manager comes in at 6 AM, has the house to himself for a few hours to handle the tasks that require moving through multiple rooms or making noise, and then shifts to more project-based work during the day that he can do from his own office or outside the house entirely. It’s worked beautifully because everyone was willing to think creatively about how to make the arrangement function.
Here’s something a lot of families don’t think about – you might actually need to hire differently now if you’re going to be home all the time. Some household staff are excellent at independent work when left alone but really struggle with the constant presence of employers. They get self-conscious, they can’t relax into their rhythm, they feel micromanaged even when you’re not managing them at all. That’s not a personality flaw, it’s just a different working style. If you’re hiring new staff and you know you’ll be home most of the time, that’s something to discuss during interviews and assess during the trial period.
On the flip side, some staff actually prefer having employers home. They like being able to ask questions in real time instead of waiting for you to get home from work. They like the social interaction of seeing you throughout the day. They feel more connected to the family and more clear on what you want because they’re observing how you live instead of trying to guess. For these people, the work-from-home situation is actually better than the old arrangement.
One thing we’ve noticed is that families who successfully navigate this tend to be the ones who can separate “I’m the employer” from “I’m a person who exists in this space.” Yes, you’re paying someone to work in your home. But you’re also a human being who lives there, and you can’t spend eight hours a day performing “boss” any more than your staff can spend eight hours performing “perfect employee.” Everyone needs to be able to relax a little bit and just exist in the space.
At Seaside Staffing Company, we encourage families to think of this as an opportunity to actually build a better working relationship with their staff. When you’re gone all day, communication is limited to notes and quick check-ins. When you’re home, you have the chance to really understand how your household functions, what challenges your staff are dealing with, and how you can support them better. We’ve seen so many families tell us that having employers work from home actually improved their relationship with their staff because they finally saw everything these people do and gained real appreciation for it.
But you have to be intentional about it. You can’t just suddenly be home all the time and expect everyone to magically adjust. Have the conversation, set the expectations, give it a few weeks to settle in, and then check in again to see how it’s going and what might need to be tweaked. This is a significant change in your household’s operations, and it deserves to be treated as such.
If your staff really can’t adjust to having you home and it’s making everyone miserable, that’s information too. Maybe this person is better suited to a situation where they have more autonomy. Maybe you need to shift their schedule so they’re there when you’re not. Or maybe this just isn’t the right fit anymore and you need to find someone who’s comfortable with your current work situation. That’s not anyone’s fault – work situations change, and sometimes employment arrangements need to change too.
The families who handle this transition best are the ones who acknowledge the weirdness instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, who communicate clearly about needs and boundaries, and who extend grace to both their staff and themselves while everyone figures out the new normal. Your home is both your private residence and your workplace and your staff’s workplace. That’s complicated, and it’s okay to acknowledge that it’s complicated while you all figure out how to make it work.
