Property services
Household Staff
Housekeepers, butlers, nannies and estate managers.
Placement on the network Lake Como
The scarcity here is not skill; it is people willing to live at the lake through a winter for a house that is closed. The villages that fill in August are largely shuttered by February, the good housekeepers and cooks are already placed with families who have kept them for a decade, and the candidates who look strongest on paper are frequently based in Milan and have no intention of moving to a village where the last bus leaves before dinner. This is why the classic Como solution is a couple: one running the house, one running the grounds or the boat and driving, living in, present all year. The second solution is a small permanent core with seasonal reinforcement, and the honest warning attached to it is that the seasonal reinforcement is competing with every hotel on the lake for the same people in the same eight weeks.
The employment side is where foreign owners most reliably get into trouble, and it is entirely avoidable. Domestic work in Italy sits under a national collective agreement that sets the framework for hours, rest days, holiday, notice, categories of role and the treatment of board and lodging, alongside statutory contributions and payroll obligations. It is a formal employment relationship with paperwork, not an informal arrangement settled in cash at the end of the week, and offering accommodation at the house has consequences of its own that need to be documented rather than assumed. We do not publish figures for any of this. What we will say plainly is that a properly constituted contract, run through a payroll, protects the household as much as the employee, and that the alternative tends to surface at the least convenient moment, usually when somebody leaves.
What actually breaks these placements is rarely competence. It is fit. An owner present six weeks a year who expects the standards of a hotel and gives no instruction for the other forty-six; a house where nobody has drawn the line between what the housekeeper decides and what the property manager decides; a household run in a language the staff do not fully share; a village where everybody is related and nothing said in the kitchen stays there. When we assess a candidate we look for references from houses of the same shape rather than the same size: seasonal, remote, foreign-owned, with long stretches of quiet. We do that because somebody who has thrived in a fully occupied city household may find eight months alone with a closed villa intolerable, and will leave in the spring, which is the worst possible moment.
01What they actually do
Defining the roles before the search
Working out what the house actually needs across the whole year, where the seasonal peaks are, and who reports to whom when the owner is not here.
Search and referencing
Finding candidates who will live at the lake year-round, and taking references from houses of a similar shape rather than a similar budget.
Contracts and payroll
Engaging staff under the national collective agreement for domestic work, with hours, rest, accommodation and contributions properly documented.
Running the household
Rotas across the season, the boundary with the property manager and the gardeners, and handling arrivals, guests and the closing of the house.
02How we choose
We meet candidates in the houses where they work, and we speak to previous employers rather than reading letters. The questions that matter are about the quiet months: what they did in February, how they handled a failure with nobody to ask, whether they raised the damp in the north bedroom or waited to be told. For placement agents, we look at how long their placements last, since a placement that ends in its first spring was not a placement, it was an introduction.
Nobody pays to be listed here and we take no share of any placement fee, which in this trade is the norm rather than the exception and is worth stating for that reason. Our interest is that a household still works in its third year, not that a position was filled quickly.
We stop working with anyone who puts a candidate forward without proper references, who proposes an informal arrangement in place of a contract, or who represents the same candidate to two of our members at once. The listing is small and covers the villages where we know the ground well enough to be useful; elsewhere we will say honestly that we cannot help.
Household Staff: questions
What staff does a Lake Como villa actually need?
For most houses, one or two people year-round, often a couple living in, with seasonal help added for the summer, rather than a full team held all year.
The shape depends on whether there is a boat, a pool, a garden of any size, and how much of the year the family is here. Start from the winter requirement and add for the season; owners who staff for August and keep it in place all year usually end up dismantling the arrangement within two years.
How much do household staff on Lake Como cost?
Pay is framed by the national collective agreement for domestic work, which sets categories, hours, rest and the treatment of board and lodging, and employers also carry statutory contributions on top of pay. We do not publish figures.
What moves the total is the role and its category, whether accommodation is provided, the hours actually worked including the peak weeks, and whether you are employing directly or through an agency. Budget for the employer costs alongside the pay, and take advice on the payroll before anyone starts.
Should household staff live in?
For a house used seasonally, usually yes for the core one or two people, because there is very little local housing and an empty villa benefits from being occupied.
Accommodation provided as part of an employment relationship has consequences that need to be documented, and a staff flat needs to be genuinely habitable in winter rather than a converted outbuilding nobody has heated. Where living in is not possible, the practical constraint becomes how far the person has to travel on the shore road in February.
Can I employ someone casually just for the summer?
Seasonal employment is possible, but it is still employment: it needs a proper contract, payroll and contributions under the applicable rules, not a cash arrangement.
The informal version is common and is a liability that sits with the employer, not the worker, and it surfaces when somebody is injured, leaves badly or claims for the period they worked. If you want the flexibility of seasonal help without the administration, engage it through a firm that employs the staff itself.
By village
Other people worth knowing
Before you instruct anyone
For people who work on the lake
Are you the bestat what you do here?
The list we introduce from is short and grows slowly: by working with somebody, seeing how a job goes, and only then adding them. If that is the standard you hold yourself to, tell us who you are. We read every one. We check work before we introduce anybody, and no money passes in either direction.
Put yourself forward