Most trouble between a household and the person who cleans it does not begin with a broken vase or a missed morning. It begins weeks earlier, in everything that was assumed rather than said. From 1 September 2026 that habit carries a legal cost: under Botswana’s Employment and Labour Relations Act of 2025, a family that pays someone to clean its home is an employer, and the law now expects the shape of that job – hours, pay, duties, notice – to have been settled before the first morning rather than discovered during it.

The gap between that expectation and ordinary practice is wide. Domestic hiring in Botswana still runs largely on word of mouth and goodwill, and the cost of leaving things vague tends to surface later, in a dispute nobody can resolve because nobody agreed the terms. Presenting the new framework, Industrial Court Registrar Tefo Goitseone Bogosi noted that the court already carries more than 900 unresolved cases, most of them unfair dismissals, unpaid wages and severance disputes – the predictable residue of arrangements nobody wrote down. The Commissioner of Labour, Ms Veronica Moloko, has said that under the new law salaries must be paid on time, with strict penalties for non-payment. None of that protection helps a household that never agreed what the wage actually was.

The remedy is neither complicated nor new. It is a short conversation held before work starts. Introduction platforms such as Kleana formalise it as a Professional Charter that both sides accept: a plain statement that the engagement is work and only work, that terms are agreed up front, and that either side can end it or report a breach. You do not need a platform to have the conversation. You do need to have it. Here are the seven things worth settling before you hand over a key.

1. What the work actually is

Write down the specific tasks, not the vague ambition of a clean house. Sweeping, mopping, ironing, dishes, windows, the yard, the dog – each is a decision, not an assumption. The commonest quarrel in domestic work is scope creep: a job hired as cleaning quietly becoming cleaning plus childcare plus cooking for the same money. Naming the duties protects both sides, and it lets you agree in advance what happens, and at what rate, when you need something extra.

2. Which days, and which hours

Agree the working days, the start and finish times, and what a public holiday means for both of you. Is this two mornings a week or five full days? Does she arrive at seven or at nine, and is lunch counted? The Act caps probation and regulates working time for a reason; a household that has not fixed the hours cannot honestly claim to be inside the law it is now subject to.

3. What she is paid, and when

Settle the amount, the interval – weekly, fortnightly or monthly – and the exact pay day, then keep it. Late payment is now an offence, not a favour deferred. Agree how she is paid, whether transport is added, and what happens to pay when she is sick or you are away. A cleaner who knows the number and the date can plan a life around it; vagueness here is where goodwill curdles fastest.

4. Access, keys and the off-limits rooms

Decide how she gets in, whether she holds a key or is let in each time, and which parts of the house she is not expected to enter. Clarity protects her as much as you: if a room is never her responsibility, nothing that goes missing from it can later be laid at her door. Say plainly what is hers to clean and what is not, and the question of trust stops being a daily anxiety.

5. Conduct, visitors and privacy on both sides

Agree the ground rules while they are still abstract and easy to discuss: phones during work, visitors to the house, what is private to the family and what is private to her. The point is symmetry. She owes you discretion about your home; you owe her dignity in hers – somewhere to eat, clean water, a decent break. Fixing this early spares both of you the awkwardness of raising it after something has already gone wrong.

6. How you will talk to each other

Decide how instructions and problems travel – a note on the counter, a WhatsApp message, a quick word at the end of the day. Most breakdowns are not dramatic; they are small irritations that were never voiced until they hardened into resentment. Agree that either side can raise a concern without it being treated as an attack, and you have built the one thing a long working relationship actually needs.

7. How either of you can end it

Talk about the ending at the beginning, when neither of you is angry. Agree the notice period each side will give, what a final week looks like, and how a reference will be handled. The new law makes non-renewal and dismissal contestable, so a household that has agreed notice in advance is far better placed than one improvising in a bad moment. A clear exit is not pessimism; it is what lets people work together in confidence.

Agree first, in writing

The move that matters can be made this week, before anyone starts. Sit down for twenty minutes, work through these seven points, and write the answers on a single sheet you both keep. If you are hiring through a platform, the Charter already frames the conversation; if you are hiring the way most families still do, you simply have it yourselves. From September, a household that agrees the terms before the first morning is no longer just being decent. It is doing what the law now assumes it has already done.

Source: Kleana Africa – kleana.africa