Your household staff know everything about you

Think about what your nanny knows.

When you're travelling, and for how long. Which school the children go to, and what time they come out. The alarm code. Where the spare keys live. Which nights the house is empty. What's in the safe, roughly, and where it is.

Now think about your housekeeper, your driver, your gardener, the dog walker and the person who comes to service the boiler.

The people who look after your home know your life in more detail than almost anyone. That's exactly why they're so valuable. It's also why, every now and then, it's worth asking a slightly uncomfortable question: has anyone ever talked to them about keeping all of that safe?

Usually, the answer is no

It isn't just a hunch. In a 2026 survey of more than 100 estate managers, family office staff and security professionals by Presage Global and Nines, 62% said they receive no formal annual security training. And these are the people whose job is to run the household.

For most families, the nanny, housekeeper and driver have had even less. Not because anyone was careless, but because nobody thought it was their job to bring it up.

It's almost never about trust

Let's be clear: this isn't about suspecting your staff. In our experience, the people who work in private homes are some of the most loyal, discreet and decent people you'll ever meet.

The risk is almost always innocent. It looks like:

• A lovely photo on social media of the children in the garden, with the house, the street or the school uniform in the background.

• A friendly chat with a delivery driver, a tradesperson or another nanny at the school gates about the family being away for half term.

• A family WhatsApp group with travel dates, door codes and flight numbers, on a phone that then gets lost.

• A convincing message that looks like it's from you, asking for a door to be opened, a parcel to be handed over or money to be sent. Fraudsters have become very good at this, and AI now lets them copy a voice.

Nobody in any of these stories has done anything wrong. They just didn't know it mattered.

Who to call

A security specialist for a proper risk assessment of the house, the routines and the people. They'll look at the things you've stopped noticing: who has keys, who knows codes, and how predictable the family's week is.

A cyber security specialist for the home network, the cameras, the smart locks and the family's devices. Your home technology is often the easiest way in.

An employment lawyer to make sure contracts include sensible confidentiality terms, explained kindly, not just buried in the small print.

Your insurer, who may have their own requirements, and sometimes offers support.

Simple habits that make a big difference

None of this needs to feel like a fortress. Most of it is just good habits, explained properly on someone's first day:

• Talk about social media early. A friendly conversation about not posting the house, the children or the family's whereabouts goes a long way.

• Share travel plans on a need-to-know basis. The people who need the dates get them. Everyone else doesn't.

• Agree a code word for unusual requests, so anyone can check that a message really came from you.

• Change codes and collect keys whenever someone leaves, however well it ended.

• Keep staff and guests on a separate wifi network from the cameras and smart home systems.

• Refresh background checks, with consent, rather than relying on the one done on day one.

How we think about it

For us, discretion isn't a feature. It's how we work: confidentiality agreements as standard, information shared only with the people who need it, and most of the people in our clients' lives never knowing we exist. So we tend to notice when a household is more exposed than it needs to be.

We're not security experts, and we'd never pretend to be. What we do, as part of looking after our clients, is bring in the right specialists from our network, make sure the habits actually stick when new staff join, and keep it all running in the background, so the family can get on with living in their home rather than guarding it.

The people who look after your family deserve to know how to look after themselves, too.

Speak to our team → tenahead.com/contact