The First 90 Days with a New Helper
Onboarding, shared standards and check-ins for Singapore employers.
The Shared Standard, Book 2. 90 pages, 6 x 9 inches, designed to be written in.
Ordering opens shortly. The paperback is printed and shipped through Amazon and the PDF workbook sells direct from this site. Both links go live when the store is connected. Write to hello@thesharedstandard.com to be told when.
This book is for you if
She has arrived, or arrives soon. Or she has been with you for two months and something is not quite working and you cannot name it.
Not for you if you have not hired yet. Book 1 first, because the job description this book uses is the one you write there.
The problem it solves
The job usually gets communicated in fragments, mostly as corrections, over the first six weeks. By the end of it she has assembled the role out of forty small failures, and every conversation the two of you have had about the work has been a conversation about something that went wrong.
Nobody chose that. It is simply what happens when a job is transmitted by correction rather than stated in advance.
What is in it
Part 1. The fortnight. Day by day for the first fourteen days. What to cover on day one, what can wait, and the Settling-in Programme deadline that runs from the day she arrives.
Part 2. Standards, written together. How to agree a standard rather than issue a rule, the standards pages for the areas that matter most, and why a standard she helped write is the only kind that gets used.
Part 3. The cadence. Weekly then monthly check-ins, the three questions, the ninety day conversation, and what to do the first time something goes wrong.
Part 4. When it is not working. Diagnosing whether the problem is the specification, the standard or the structure, and what to do about each. The corridor material sits at the back of this part.
Starting late. A section for households already two or three months in, because that is where most readers actually are, and because the fortnight works when it is started deliberately at any point.
What you have at the end
A set of written standards you both agreed to, a check-in schedule in the calendar, and a documented ninety day conversation. The thing you can look at in month eight when something feels off.
What these books do not do
They do not certify anyone. The Shared Standard is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by the Ministry of Manpower or any government agency.
They do not give legal advice. Every regulatory figure is sourced to the agency that sets it, with the date the source page was last updated, and requirements change. Check the source before you rely on a number.
They do not tell you what people from any country are like. Where country of origin matters it is because a regulator has set a rule that binds you, and those rules are stated with their source.
Which book do you need
Not hired yet. Book 1. Define the job, price the year, run the interview.
She arrives soon, or arrived recently. Book 2, this one.
She is settled and you want the practical standards in her hands. Book 3.
Every book also opens with a one page version of this, so a reader who has bought the wrong one can find the right one.
How it was made
Written by Lisa Gewald, founder of The Shared Standard, out of an MBA thesis on trust in cross-cultural teams graded 1.2, and a survey of employers in Singapore published in full.
Read in draft by a panel of first readers before release, and revised against what they found.
The interview and values tool is free.
It defines the job, generates your question set, and tells you which popular questions to drop. No account needed.