As part of our efforts to shine a light on issues of estate management and high-net-worth services, we are featuring the following

article contribution by Starkey International Institute for Household Management, which provides training, education, and
placement services in the area of estate management and private services. We hope you enjoy this educational article.

After negotiating with your new employer, the fine details of your contract, it’s time to start your position. Starting a new position can be stressful the first day when you discover the amount of work and organization it will take to put the residence in order. Especially when the previous House Manager, Chef, or Estate Manager did not leave any documents or information or left outdated documentation that does not reflect the principal preferences, vision of their life style, flavor profile or even up to date vendor contacts.Every one before you worked on their own agenda, each staff member probably never really communicated between themselves, nor worked as a team.
Walking throughout the property, trying to best prioritize all the information you collected can be a daunting experience. What
should be done and how it should be done in order to begin seeing results should be your first order of business. This is what an
employer would expect of you.
Some principal’s feel exasperated from seeing the un-organize situation in their house. Some residences can be as large as
30,000sq.ft. and require many staff to maintain standards. If the position is well paid, they may expect early miracles.
Unfortunately, when they finally hire an educated in Private Service professional, it’s usually too late for a quick organization. It’s
essential that your have the right service management tools in hand do a good job. Starkey’s Service Management System will help
you gather all the essential information and also presents a process of evaluating each staff person.
It’s essential that each staff member have the right technical skills for their position or you may also find yourself spending valuable
time training in addition to assisting the family with their needs. A normal time for fully organizing a residence is from 3 months to one year depending upon its size and the knowledge of the current staff. This needs to be communicated to your Principal when you are hired to set up appropriate expectations.

As you will be seen as the expert and are being well paid to be one, let them know you will be providing as needed: Identifying
individual Service Standards in ten service categories, learning about vendors, ascertaining priorities and special projects, overall
staff training or hiring new staff, setting up discipline, correct hours, and schedules to meet the families and environments needs,
and developing team work before real positive changes will be seen. Household Management is“ Service as an Expertise”.
This article was contributed by:
Xavier Medecin
Executive Director of Development Starkey International
Starkey Certified Household Manager
The International Butler Academy Certified Butler
http://www.StarkeyIntl.com

FAMILY OFFICE MONTHLY, November 2014