Training a new helper: what to teach first
Two different things get called training. One is teaching a person how a task is done. The other is teaching a person how your household does it. Most difficulty in the first months comes from confusing them.
Week one covers only what is unsafe or expensive to get wrong: the home itself, anything medical, the non-negotiables about the children, the appliances and fabrics that do not survive a mistake, and how she tells you something is wrong.
The routine, the standards and the preferences come in weeks two to four. A person taught fifteen things on day two retains about three.
Most of what gets called training is not teaching a task. She knows how to clean a bathroom. It is agreeing which of the reasonable versions your household uses, and writing that down.
Most people searching for this type the word maid, so if that is how you found this page, you are in the right place.
The distinction that saves you three months
She almost certainly knows how to clean a bathroom. What she does not know is which of the four reasonable ways to clean a bathroom is the one that will be assessed in your home.
So very little of the first weeks is instruction in the ordinary sense. Almost all of it is establishing which version you are both using, and writing it down so that neither of you has to remember it.
The households that struggle are usually the ones running an unstated comparison: she does a task competently, it is not how you would have done it, and you experience that as a training gap. It is not. It is a specification gap, and no amount of demonstration fixes it, because the thing that is missing was never said.
What to teach in week one
Keep it to what is unsafe or expensive to get wrong. Everything else can wait, and a person taught fifteen things on day two retains about three.
Safety and the home itself. The gas, the electrical points, where the water shuts off, what to do about a smell of burning, how to lock up, what to do if she is locked out, who to call in an emergency and in what order.
Anything medical. Allergies, in writing, on the fridge. Medication, who takes what and when. What she should do if a child is hurt, including when to call you and when to call an ambulance rather than waiting to reach you.
The children, if there are children. Not preferences yet. The non-negotiables: pick-up arrangements and who is authorised to collect, what they cannot eat, the sleep rules, whether they are allowed out of the flat and with whom.
Anything expensive or irreversible. The appliances that break if used wrongly. Fabrics that cannot be machine washed. The one pan that must not go in the dishwasher.
How to tell you something is wrong. Say it explicitly, and mean it, because it will not be obvious to her that telling you early is welcome. Then protect it the first time she uses it.
That is week one. Not the routine, not the standards, not the preferences.
When the routine does get written, write it as minutes rather than as a list of tasks, and add it up. The day, block by block
What to teach in weeks two to four
Now the household, and now together.
Take the three or four areas where a difference would genuinely bother you. For each one, ask how she was taught to do it, watch her do it once, then agree the version the two of you will use and write it on one page.
Three reasons this works better than demonstrating your own method.
You often learn something. A person who has run several households has usually solved problems you have not.
It surfaces the disagreements while they are cheap. The moment to discover that you have opposite views about how the kitchen is left overnight is week three, not month seven when it has accumulated meaning.
And a standard she helped write can be referred back to without either of you feeling it as a reprimand. That is the whole difference between a standard and a rule. A rule is complied with. A standard is used.
Write in the finished state, not the effort. "Bathroom floor dry, no products left on the counter, mirror clear" is a standard. "Clean the bathroom properly" is a wish.
Why written standards beat repeated correction
Correction as a training method has a structural problem: it delivers the specification only after it has been violated. Forty corrections over six weeks teach the job, eventually, and they also teach that conversations about the work are conversations about failure. By the time she knows the job, the relationship has a shape neither of you chose.
A written standard moves the specification before the work. It also does something a correction cannot, which is hold still. In month eight, when something feels off, you have a document you both agreed to rather than two memories of a conversation.
We asked employers in Singapore what the hardest part of hiring was. 59% of those who answered named managing their own expectations, ahead of reference checks and ahead of the agency. Written standards are what managing expectations looks like in practice. There is no other version of it.
What she should have of her own
She needs a reference she can consult without asking, in a form she can use.
That is what the training handbook is: professional standards for cleaning, laundry and home health, written for a household in a humid, air-conditioned climate, addressed to her rather than about her. She keeps it. She writes your household's specifics into it.
It matters that the reference is hers and not a list you handed over. A document she owns gets used at nine on a Tuesday evening when she cannot remember whether the wool goes in the machine. A list on the fridge gets read once.
What training does not mean
It does not mean supervision. The regulations are worth reading carefully on this: MOM states that an employer is not liable for a helper's breaches where the employer can show they informed her of the work permit conditions and reported a breach once they became aware of it. (MOM, security bond requirements for migrant domestic workers, page last updated 2 February 2026.) The requirement is to inform and to report. It is not to monitor. The common inference from the security bond to a right to control her phone, her movements or her friendships is not supported by the rule.
MOM's own framing of the employer's duty is responsibility for her wellbeing, and it goes as far as considering conditions that would impair an employer's ability to look after it. (MOM, employer requirements for hiring a migrant domestic worker, page last updated 11 March 2026.) Care, not control. Households that get this the wrong way round generate most of the friction they then attribute to the person they hired.
The handbook
The Domestic Helper Training Handbook. Professional cleaning, laundry and home health standards for humid and air-conditioned homes. Written for her, bought and printed by you, and designed to be written in.
The Shared Standard, Book 3.
If you are still in the first weeks, Book 2 covers the onboarding fortnight, the standards you write together and the check-in rhythm. The first 90 days
Figures on this page were checked on 10 September 2026 against the sources named. Requirements and fees change. Check the source before you rely on a number.