The first 90 days with a new helper
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 hiring is the part that gets the attention. The first ninety days is the part that decides the outcome. Almost every household that ends up unhappy in year two was set up in the first fortnight, by default rather than by decision.
What usually happens
She arrives. You show her the flat, where things are kept, how the washing machine works. You explain the routine as it comes up, because explaining all of it at once seems overwhelming and there is a lot going on.
For the next few weeks she does things and you adjust them. Not the towels like that. We don't put the pan in there. He doesn't eat that at breakfast. Each correction is small, reasonable and delivered kindly.
By week six she has assembled a picture of the job out of roughly forty corrections. You have formed an impression of how quickly she learns. Neither of you has said anything unfair and the relationship is already slightly defensive, because every conversation you have had about the work has been a conversation about something she got wrong.
That is not a personality problem. It is what happens when a job is transmitted by correction instead of stated in advance.
The alternative, in three phases
Days 1 to 14: state the job
The aim of the first fortnight is that she should be able to describe the job back to you, including what matters most when things collide.
Day one is not a work day. Arrival, the home, where she sleeps, food, the wifi, how to contact you, what happens tomorrow. If this is her first job in Singapore she cannot start work until the Settling-in Programme is done, which must happen within seven days of arrival, not counting Sundays and public holidays, and not on the arrival day. (MOM, Settling-in Programme for first-time migrant domestic workers, page last updated 1 September 2025.)
Go through the job description together, out loud. If you wrote one before hiring, this is where it earns its cost. If you did not, write it now, with her. How to write it
Agree the standards for the three or four things that matter most. Not everything, or the exercise collapses. Pick the ones where a difference would actually bother you: how the kitchen is left, how the children's laundry is handled, what happens at bedtime.
Do this by asking how she was taught to do it, then agreeing which version you are both using. Sometimes hers is better. What matters is that the standard is written down, that both of you know what it is, and that she had a hand in it. A standard she helped write can be referred back to without it feeling like a reprimand. A standard she was handed is complied with, which is a different and weaker thing.
Agree the rest day arrangement explicitly. One rest day a week. At least one a month must be taken and cannot be compensated in money. Any additional rest day compensated in money requires her agreement and at least one day's salary on top of the monthly wage. (MOM, mandatory rest days for migrant domestic workers, in force since 1 January 2023.)
Say what happens when something goes wrong. How she should tell you if she cannot finish something, breaks something, or does not understand. Say explicitly that telling you early is what you want. Then, the first time she does it, react in a way that makes it safe to do again. That single moment sets the pattern for two years.
Book the check-ins in the calendar now. Fifteen minutes, weekly for the first month, then monthly. Put them in as recurring entries before you need them.
If your helper has already been with you for two months and none of this happened, you have not missed the window. Start the fortnight late and say plainly that you want to set some things down properly because you did not do it at the start. That framing works, and it is more honest than pretending it is routine.
Days 15 to 45: run it and adjust
The standards you wrote will be wrong in places. That is expected and it is the point of writing them down, because a written standard can be revised and an assumed one can only be violated.
Use the weekly fifteen minutes for three questions. What went well. What is not working. What do you need from me.
That last question does most of the work. It gives her a legitimate route to raise something, which she otherwise will not do, because the power difference in this relationship is substantial and permanent and no amount of warmth removes it.
Expect the first real problem somewhere in this window. Handle it at the check-in rather than at the moment it happens, unless it is urgent. A problem handled at a scheduled time is a working conversation. The same problem handled at the moment of discovery, at the end of a long day, is an argument.
Days 46 to 90: settle the pattern
Move the check-ins to monthly. Revise the standards where reality has diverged from them, together, and note what changed.
At the ninety day mark, sit down properly. Is the job description still accurate. What has she taken on that is not in it. What is not working that neither of you has said out loud. What does she want the next year to look like.
This conversation costs half an hour and it is the highest-return half hour in the whole arrangement, because it catches the things that would otherwise surface in month fourteen as a resignation you did not see coming.
What this is really doing
Everything above is the same structure any functioning operation uses: a defined role, an agreed standard, a scheduled review, and a safe route to raise a problem. It is not more caring than the usual approach. It is more precise, and precision turns out to feel like fairness to the person on the other side of it.
We asked employers in Singapore what the hardest part of hiring was. Of the twenty-seven who answered, sixteen named managing their own expectations. The first ninety days is where expectations either get written down or become the thing you argue about later.
The workbook
Book 2 is the fortnight, the standards pages, the check-in forms and the ninety day conversation, with worked examples and a section on starting late.
The First 90 Days with a New Helper. The Shared Standard, Book 2.
Figures on this page were checked on 3 August 2026 against the sources named. Requirements and fees change. Check the source before you rely on a number.