What Should Happen During a 90-Day Employment Trial Period

When it comes to hiring new staff, does it ever feel like you’re jumping off a cliff into the abyss? Like you and a private service professional are getting married without knowing each other really well?

I can tell you from experience as a former estate manager, and from the estate managers and house managers I speak with, that this feeling goes both ways.

The solution to this for both parties: a 90-day trial period

Beyond making sure that a new city and housing situation is going to work for the private service professional in this scenario, a 90-day trial provides both parties with the chance to find out who the other person is and how well you both work together in your home. This period tends to:

• Allow everyone to see each other when they're tired.

• Flush out some stressful situations.

• Reveal everyone’s truest personalities, allowing you to see if they work together, or don’t.

Now, you don’t need to be friends with your new hire. But at the same time, you want to understand what they're going to do for you and how they're going to improve your life. This is the best way to do that.

Think of this as dating — with homework due from your partner

If you’re working with a seasoned estate manager or house manager, you can ask them to outline what you're going to receive in the 90 days. This helps both parties to understand what they’re walking into.

It’s often at this phase that 24-7 services are discussed. If it’s outside of normal working hours and your estate manager is at their home or engaged in a personal commitment, are they expected to drop what they’re doing when you text or call, for example? That’s important to discuss — and if that’s the expectation, be cautious and cognizant of the fact that you need to compensate them for the shuffle and the pivot from their personal lives.

The first week: the “getting to know you” phase

Whether you have one or multiple properties — but especially if you have more than one home your new estate manager is responsible for successfully managing — you need to have them have their eyes on it (them). Finished or under construction, they need walk each property. Among other areas, they need to see your closets, inside the mechanical rooms, and the landscaping. They need this information so that, later, they can be effective in answering your questions as well as questions from other staff and contractors, and in making decisions on your behalf.

Then complete by the second week: staff one-on-ones with your new estate manager

Your estate manager needs to know personalities, tricky situations, difficult relationships, what the communication challenges are, and so on. They can accomplish this with one-on-one meetings with your other staff members. You should also let them run team meetings, so your EM can see how staff interact with each other.

Let your EM do their thing with both one-on-ones and team meetings at all of your properties.

By the end of the first month, take it to the next level

At this stage, your estate manager is going to leverage the information they’ve gathered so far and work with key contractors. This especially applies for any home that's in a remodeling, construction, or project mode. For example, who are the key players? Is it a general contractor? Is it an IT guy? Is it security?

You benefit from this in that your EM will have a point of contact so that they can contact the appropriate contractor if something:

• goes wrong,

• is not on schedule, or

• is over budget.

Aside from that, you’ll want to write staff and contractor memorandums of understanding (MOUs). We sell templates for these two documents, or you can create your own with the help of an attorney.

Not having these two MOUs is the number one miss that I see on every single property. They are incredibly valuable because they give everybody the same information about:

• principal preferences,

• household protocol, and

• property protection measures that are required to be successful in your home.

Let’s talk more about property protection

Realize that some homes need to go over the top with property protection. I've coated driveways with a heavy construction paper before so that no tires leave marks on the freshly poured concrete. I've also done clean up every single evening when the homeowner lives at home, during construction.

So contractors need to be aware of what the expectations are, and they need to be able to charge for those services. Why? Because it's extra hours on their day, every day, to do a full cleanup and then a full setup the next morning to get back into functionality. This takes time out of their day, so you don't want to push a contractor to pay their employees overtime during this or your costs are going to go through the roof. So while this shortens your construction day, you're going to get what you want with property protection and full accessibility to your property during that time.

You’ll also want to see this within your first month

You're going to want your estate manager to start providing weekly property summaries. This is a one-page document that includes:

• What was completed that week?

• What are the ongoing projects?

• What's coming up next week?

• Anything that is stuck. For example: we're waiting on a part; we're waiting on decision for you to make.

• And any staff updates. For example, who's got vacation time? Who's out sick? This can also include some pats on the back about what's going really well at each one of the properties.

Into months two and three

Beyond that first month, you're going to want your estate manager to start capturing the above information. Let's say this person doesn't stay past 90 days. All of that information gained by that estate manager needs to be bundled up in one tidy little system.

This system can be Google Drive folders. However, I suggest using an online project management system such as Trello, Asana, or Monday.com so that the information gathered, and the time spent gathering it, is not wasted.

With everything bundled properly in a neat, tidy system — including contractor points of contact, housekeeping standards, and signed staff and contractor MOUs — in the event that, after the 90 days, the estate manager does not come back, when you onboard the next candidate, they don't have to dig so deep. They can hit the ground running with the information that's been collected by that first candidate.

As soon as that system starts collecting information — like the housekeeping checklist — you need to onboard staff with that new system so they can start utilizing the checklists, communicating, and tracking project information. This is where a project management system with a phone app, like Trello, works really well. (I’m not an affiliate for Trello, but I’ve used it to set up my systems for EMs, and I like that it’s intuitive even for the lowest-tech staff members.)

In summary, why the 90-day trial is a good investment

Whether or not the EM you hired works out for you, you will have gotten something for your money and your risk. To tie it further to where I started this post, you’ve gotten something of value while stepping off the cliff into the abyss with this EM candidate.

Additionally:

• The candidate got paid for their time.

• They get to see you during this process.

• And you both get to determine whether you like each other and whether this is a good fit or not.

With communication and feedback built into this process, everybody wins with the 90-day trial — whether or not that relationship extends beyond this time frame.