Hiring someone to manage your household or estate remains a wise strategy, considering your busy schedule and workload. Having an experienced person in either role ultimately provides more time for your businesses or even traveling the world. However, you ultimately need to onboard someone with relevant experience and a trustworthy nature.
Taking the time to advertise your open position, including vetting and interviewing candidates, requires a significant amount of time. However, hiring the wrong candidate might result in someone without the right managerial skills – a risky proposition. Additionally, you need to understand the critical differences between the estate manager and household manager roles.
Let’s examine the roles of the estate manager and household manager. In addition to covering both job descriptions, we also explore which one is the best for you. Simply put, luxurious properties benefit more from an estate manager. We also cover recruiting for this position, including why partnering with a staffing agency makes perfect sense.
What is an Estate Manager?
Simply stated, an estate manager serves as a leader, responsible for managing nearly all aspects of a luxurious property. Their wide range of duties and responsibilities requires a professional with a strong mix of skills. For example, an estate manager typically handles the human resources function for the rest of your household staff.
You want an estate manager that knows computing and networking technology as well as audio-visual systems. An understanding of the culinary world also matters, especially when responsible for vetting and hiring private chefs. Financial and business acumen also remains relevant, as an estate manager effectively serves as your personal business manager. This listing of skills highlights the wide range of capabilities possessed by the top estate managers.
Additionally, an estate manager might have other duties, depending on the nature of your personal estate. Some manage fine art collections, classic cars, yachts, jets, and even your wine cellar. Let’s explore the typical responsibilities of an estate manager in more detail. Understanding these duties informs your decision-making throughout the staffing process.
What are an Estate Manager’s Responsibilities?
An estate manager’s leadership responsibilities include supervising staff at your estate and any other properties. As noted earlier, this includes HR functions, such as recruiting and hiring. Of course, partnering with an experienced household staffing agency alleviates some of this workload. These roles range from housekeeping to gardening, in addition to chefs and maintenance personnel.
If you plan on expanding your estate or other properties, the estate manager oversees this construction effort, hiring the relevant contractors. When hosting an event at your estate, they play a similar leadership role, working with planners and caterers. They also manage the upkeep of your properties, including the security footprint, landscaping and building maintenance.
An estate manager also needs strong financial and budgeting skills. Remember that they effectively serve as a business manager for your estate and other holdings. As such, they handle any budgets, expense tracking, and financial reporting related to your properties.
What don’t Estate Managers Do?
It’s important to note that estate managers essentially act in a supervisory role. While they might become hands-on in extremely rare occasions, they essentially lead the entire staff of your estate. As a result, you want their time to be spent ensuring your estate and associated properties run smoothly.
You want to hire someone with exceptional leadership and people skills. They need to understand all the duties performed by estate staff, without necessarily being skilled in them. After all, you wouldn’t expect to vet a potential estate manager on their gardening or food prep skills.
Because of their duties, focus on candidates with significant experience in an estate manager role. Pay close attention to their work history, looking for previous positions similar to what you currently need. If this task seems too time-consuming, partner with a staffing agency with a relevant background recruiting exceptional estate managers.
What is a Household Manager?
A household manager shares many of the same responsibilities as an estate manager, albeit on a much smaller scale. For example, they typically manage a single property as opposed to an array of mansions, vacation homes, and yachts. As a result, their managerial work focuses more on the meal prep, landscaping, and property maintenance.
Somewhat similar to estate managers, they primarily oversee household operations in a leadership role. However, they may have to get their hands dirty on occasion, depending on the specific situation. As a result, you want someone with a wide range of skills, including managerial experience, but leadership is less of a focus.
Seamlessly juggling various tasks remains critical for a household manager, but at a smaller scale compared to estate management. In fact, a career path transitioning from a household manager to an estate leadership role becomes logical. You want someone with a similar skill set, but perhaps an experience level focused more on smaller properties. In the end, large luxury property holdings benefit the most from an estate manager.
What are a Household Manager’s Responsibilities?
Depending on the size of the property, a household manager handles a wide variety of duties for their client. As noted earlier, they might lead other staff, like housekeepers, chefs, and landscapers, but they occasionally perform these duties. The size of the property and the requirements of the client dictates the service level they provide.
Some typical duties for a household manager include making appointments and travel arrangements for the client and family. They also handle much of the grocery shopping or other similar errands. Part of this shopping includes inventory management and maintaining the household’s wine and spirits collection.
A household manager might pay bills and perform simple financial management, at a smaller level than estate managers. As such, you want someone with basic bookkeeping skills and experience. Other administrative duties like handling home automation, security, and audio-visual equipment fall under this banner.
Having a measure of leadership and managerial experience definitely helps when interviewing and hiring other household staff. Basic event planning skills also come into play. Exceptional people skills also matter when hosting events and greeting guests, as well as leading any household staff.
What don’t Household Managers Do?
As opposed to those responsible for a full estate, household managers sometimes need to directly handle certain tasks. As noted earlier, they might manage a smaller household without a full array of staff. As such, they need a full range of skills and capabilities, able to perform all the duties mentioned above. Simply stated, household managers have few if any restrictions on their task list.
One area they typically contract to third-party staff involves housekeeping and laundry tasks. However, they do handle the process of finding and vetting these professionals. They may even use the same staffing agency that placed them in their current role to find housekeeping help.
Additionally, don’t expect a household manager to handle many business-related activities like estate managers. As noted earlier, they typically stick to simple bookkeeping and bill paying responsibilities for their clients. This also includes not managing estates with more than one property, as noted earlier.
Is an Estate Manager or Household Manager right for your household?
As highlighted above, deciding between an estate manager or a household manager largely depends on the properties involved. Luxurious estates that include multiple properties, yachts, classic automobiles, and more benefit from an estate manager. They have the top-shelf managerial skills and business management experience to handle the needs of their wealthy clientele.
Household managers are more appropriate for singular properties without the extra duties typical of the large estate. Since they may handle grunt work in property upkeep, their skill set lacks the high-end expertise of estate managers. In fact, many household managers don’t have any other full-time staff reporting to them.
Ultimately, your estate and associated holdings deserve the best managerial talent. Hiring an experienced estate manager makes perfect sense for this scenario. They provide high-end expertise in areas spanning audiophile stereo equipment to the best Napa Valley wines. Of course, their exceptional people skills help them hire and manage a top-shelf household staff.
How to Find Household Staffing for Your Home or Estate
Managing your household staffing needs by yourself requires an inordinate amount of time better spent living your best life. This is especially the case when filling a critical role, like an estate manager. Why spend all that time reviewing résumés, interviewing candidates, and checking references?
In this situation, partnering with a household staffing agency makes perfect sense. The best agencies boast well-honed processes for recruiting and vetting estate managers and other household personnel. It offers an efficient way to source the talent you need in a more effective manner. Get the estate manager your properties deserve as quickly as possible!
Find an Estate Manager or Household Manager Today!
When searching for an exceptional Bay Area household staffing agency, look no further than the experts at Aunt Ann’s In-House Staffing. We provide the household talent you need, including estate managers, fully vetted and ready to make a difference for you. Schedule some time with us to discuss what you need in estate management and other household help.