Fair Pay and Staff Welfare

Why We Publish This

Domestic work in Pakistan sits largely outside formal labour protections, which means the terms a staff member works under are set almost entirely by the household that hires them. That is a real responsibility, and most households want to get it right without being certain what right looks like.

This page sets out the standards we think are reasonable and that we encourage every household we work with to meet. None of it is legally mandated across the board. All of it is what a fair arrangement looks like in practice.

Pay a Market Rate, Not the Minimum Someone Will Accept

A candidate in a weak bargaining position may accept considerably less than their work is worth. That a person will accept a figure does not make the figure fair, and households that hire this way tend to discover the cost anyway through turnover, disengagement and the disruption of repeated searches.

Our published salary guide reflects what households are actually agreeing with staff, and it is deliberately a floor rather than a target. Adjust upward for household size, experience and workload rather than treating the starting figure as the ceiling.

Pay On Time, Every Time

Most domestic staff have little financial buffer, and a salary arriving three days late is not a minor administrative slip to the person waiting for it. It may mean a missed rent payment or a child school fee.

Agree a pay date and treat it as fixed. Paying on the agreed day without needing to be reminded is one of the most straightforward things a household can do, and one of the most noticed.

A Real Day Off

One day off per week is the widely accepted standard, and it should be an actual day off rather than a lighter day on which someone remains available. Live-in staff in particular need genuine time when they are not on call in the place they also sleep.

The same applies to annual leave. A set number of paid days per year, commonly used to travel home, plus recognised holidays like Eid, is reasonable and should be written down rather than negotiated case by case each time.

• One full day off per week, genuinely off duty
• A stated number of paid annual leave days
• Recognised public holidays, including Eid
• Advance notice respected in both directions for leave requests

Working Hours That End

The most common welfare problem in Pakistani domestic staffing is not underpayment, it is hours quietly expanding without limit, particularly for live-in staff whose physical presence makes additional requests easy to make and hard to refuse.

Agree a start and end time and hold to it. Where extra hours are genuinely needed, treat them as exceptional and compensate for them rather than absorbing them into a salary that was set for a shorter day.

Dignity in Daily Treatment

Adequate food, a clean place to eat it, somewhere to rest during a break, and access to a bathroom are basics rather than concessions. For live-in staff, private accommodation with a door that locks is the baseline.

Address staff by name. Speak to them as you would to anyone else doing skilled work. These cost nothing and they shape whether someone stays for years or leaves at the first alternative.

Never Hold Identity Documents

Retaining someone CNIC or passport as security is not a legitimate practice, whatever the intention. It restricts a person freedom to leave an arrangement they are unhappy in, which is precisely why it should not happen.

Keep photocopies for your records, as our document checklist sets out, and return originals immediately. If an arrangement is only holding together because someone cannot leave it, the arrangement is the problem.

Children Should Not Be Domestic Workers

Staffly does not place anyone under 18, in any role, in any city. We verify age against CNIC records as part of identity checking, which is one of the practical reasons that check matters beyond confirming a name.

If any agency offers a household a child for domestic work, that is not a service with a legitimate version. Households approached this way should decline and should not treat it as a normal part of the market.

Ending an Arrangement Fairly

Give the notice period you agreed, or pay in lieu of it. Settle everything owed, including salary to the last day worked and any leave customarily paid out, before the final day rather than after.

For live-in staff, remember that ending the job also ends their housing. Reasonable notice matters more here, and rushing someone out of accommodation with no time to arrange an alternative turns a justified termination into something considerably worse.

Common Questions