Domestic Helper Duties 2026: Fair Scope vs $10,000 Fine
Most helper arrangements do not fall apart over salary. They fall apart over the job itself — an employer who assumed the helper would help pack orders for the family's online shop, a helper who assumed "take care of Grandma" meant sitting with her rather than bathing and toileting her, a household where nobody ever wrote down who cleans the balcony. The duties feel obvious to the person writing the list and completely different to the person reading it.
The useful part is that Singapore's rules are unusually clear about where a helper's job starts and where it ends. Below is what counts as domestic work, the handful of tasks that need MOM's approval before you allow them, the ones that can cost an employer up to $10,000, and how to put the whole scope in writing so nobody has to guess.
At a glance: what a helper's job should cover
• A helper's job is household work at the address you declared to MOM: cleaning, laundry, cooking, groceries, and the care of the children, elderly family members or pets who live there. • Domestic chores are the only work allowed. Your helper cannot work at your shop, stall, office or home-based business, even if she volunteers or you pay her extra. • Cleaning another property — your parents' flat, a unit you rent out — is illegal deployment, with a financial penalty of up to $10,000 and the possibility of being barred from hiring helpers. • One exception is worth knowing: she can care for your child or parent at a relative's home, but only after you notify MOM and she agrees in writing. • MOM sets no cap on daily working hours, but the law requires adequate daily rest and one rest day a week, with at least one rest day a month that cannot be bought out with pay. • Write the scope in four sections — household, core duties, hours, exclusions — then review it at day 30 and again at every renewal.
Why this matters more than the salary conversation
Most employers spend their preparation on salary and days off, because those are the numbers written into the contract. Duties usually get a sentence or two, and that is exactly where the risk sits. A vague scope is what turns a willing helper into a resentful one, and it is also what produces the illegal-deployment cases MOM penalises: the helper who covers the family stall for one weekend, or cleans a parent's flat because nobody thought to ask whether that was allowed. An hour spent on the document is cheaper than a penalty, a replacement, or both — and a household that has to start the search again.
What domestic chores actually covers
MOM's wording is short, and it has held for years: a helper can only work for her employer at the residential address declared to MOM, and she can only perform domestic chores. In practice that means the running of a home — cleaning, laundry, ironing, cooking, marketing, and the care of the people and pets who live in it. MOM's own guide for helpers describes the work as usually household chores, and adds that depending on the household's needs it may extend to caring for children, elderly persons or persons with disabilities.
That scope is wider than cleaning, and employers tend to undersell it. A helper who cooks three meals, holds a toddler's routine together and keeps an eye on an elderly parent is doing work that used to be split between a part-time cleaner, a caterer and a day-care centre. What she is not doing — what no contract can make her do — is work that belongs to a business, or work at an address that is not yours.
Duty area | Typical tasks | What done well looks like |
Cleaning and tidying | Sweeping, mopping, dusting, bathrooms, kitchen surfaces, rubbish | A written weekly rhythm, so the same things are not deep-cleaned twice and the balcony is cleaned never |
Laundry and wardrobe | Washing, drying, ironing, folding, seasonal storage | Care labels followed, whites separated, school uniforms back in the wardrobe the same evening |
Cooking and kitchen | Meal planning, marketing, cooking, packing lunch, kitchen reset | A weekly menu agreed in advance, and leftovers used rather than quietly thrown away |
Childcare | Feeding, bathing, naps, school run, play, homework supervision | Routine written down, and a clear answer to what happens when the child is ill |
Eldercare | Mobility help, medication reminders, meals, toileting support, company | Known care needs, training completed, and an agreed plan for nights |
Pets | Feeding, walks, litter or cage cleaning, vet visits | Feeding amounts and walk times posted, with the pet's quirks written beside them |
Errands | Groceries, parcels, dry cleaning, pharmacy runs | A spending limit and a receipts routine, agreed before the first trip |
The line the law draws, and the $10,000
This is the part employers get wrong, usually with good intentions. Illegal deployment is not only the dramatic case of a helper running a stall. It is any domestic helper doing non-domestic work, or domestic work at the wrong address — including the small favours that feel like ordinary family life: packing orders for a home business during a busy week, covering the counter for an hour, cleaning your mother's flat because you are both there anyway.
MOM's guidance is blunt about willingness. It does not matter that she offered, that she is happy to help, or that you compensate her for it. The work sits outside what a work permit allows, and the exposure falls on the employer: a financial penalty of up to $10,000 and the possibility of being barred from employing helpers. Employing someone without a valid work permit is a separate and heavier matter — a fine of $5,000 to $30,000, up to a year in jail, or both.
Situation | Allowed? | What MOM says |
Helping at your food stall during the lunch rush | No | She can only perform household chores at your residential address |
Packing orders for your online store at home | No | Business activity, even when the work is light, voluntary or paid extra |
Data entry or admin for your home-based business | No | Her willingness does not change the rule |
Baking for your home bakery | No | Encourage the interest privately, not as production work |
Cleaning your parents' flat, occasionally | No | Wrong address — compensating her does not fix it |
Caring for your child or parent at a relative's home | Yes, with conditions | Notify MOM first, get her written agreement, keep the housework light in both homes, and meet the accommodation rules if she stays over |
That last row is the exception worth filing away, because it is genuinely useful for families where a grandparent provides day care. The sequence matters: notify MOM through its online form before the arrangement starts, get her agreement in writing, keep the second household's housework light, and make sure the room she sleeps in if she stays overnight meets MOM's accommodation requirements — a mattress, pillow, blanket, proper ventilation, and privacy that does not put her in the same room as a male adult or teenager.
Where job scopes usually go wrong
Three patterns account for most of the friction I see. The first is a duty list made of virtues instead of tasks: "hardworking, honest, good with children" tells a helper nothing about whether she cooks dinner on Saturdays. The second is the slow drift — one extra task a week, each one reasonable on its own, until the load is noticeably heavier than the job she agreed to. The third is the assumption that a live-in helper is available at every hour simply because she is in the building.
MOM has spoken to this directly. In a 2024 reply to press letters on helper workloads, the ministry said employers should make clear the duties expected before hiring, hire someone suitable for that work, and be reasonable about the load. It also noted that because helpers are excluded from the Employment Act, there are no legal limits on their working hours — which makes the employer's judgment the only real limit. Read plainly, the law will not rescue a badly designed job. Only the job description will.
Our guide to setting boundaries with your helper covers the conversations around phone use, privacy and house rules. This one is about the document underneath those conversations.
A realistic scope, by household
Household composition changes the job more than any other variable, and it is worth writing duties for the household you actually have rather than the one you might have in three years.
Household | Duties that come standard | Duties employers often add | The watch-out |
Couple, both working | Cleaning, laundry, cooking, groceries, ironing workwear | Meal prep for the week, parcels, caring for a parent's flat | A duty list that quietly includes a second address |
Family with a baby or toddler | Child's routine, sterilising, baby laundry, family meals | Night feeds, cooking for the whole family, toddler outings | Night duty stacked on a full day — rest and rest days still apply |
Family with school-age children | School run, lunches, laundry, homework supervision | Ferrying to activities, coaching weak subjects | Teaching expectations nobody trained her for |
Elderly parent at home | Mobility help, medication reminders, meals, toileting, company | Nursing procedures, round-the-clock monitoring | Clinical tasks need training, and high needs need a second caregiver |
Pet household | Feeding, walks, litter or cage cleaning, vet trips | Dog training, full grooming | Time and skill — both are learnable, neither is automatic |
Writing it down: four sections that matter
A job description does not need to be long. It needs to be specific enough that a stranger could read it and know what a normal Tuesday looks like. Four sections carry almost all of the value, and a fifth line decides how the document stays alive.
Section | What to write | Sample line |
Household | Who lives there, ages, pets, property type, any mobility or medical needs | "Four-room flat in Punggol. Two adults, one three-year-old, one cat." |
Core duties | The recurring work, with frequency attached to each item | "Daily: living areas swept and mopped, laundry, dinner cooked. Weekly: bathrooms twice, bedsheets changed, ironing." |
Hours and rest | Start and end of the working day, breaks, rest day arrangement | "Working day 7am to 9pm with a two-hour afternoon break. Rest day on Sunday unless we agree otherwise." |
Exclusions | What is not part of the job, stated plainly | "No work at our shop and no work for the online store. No cleaning at any other address." |
How changes happen | The rule for new duties | "New duties are discussed first, then added in writing with a start date." |
Attach this to the MOM FDW contract rather than replacing it — the standard contract is the legal floor, and a schedule of duties sits comfortably alongside it. If you have ever wondered what you actually signed, that plain-English translation walks the contract line by line, including the parts about repatriation and the security bond.
Hours, rest, and "just one more thing"
Singapore does not cap your helper's daily hours, so the shape of the day is yours to design. What the law does require is adequate daily rest, one rest day a week, and at least one rest day a month that cannot be compensated away. If she agrees to work on a rest day, you pay her at least one day's salary on top of her basic pay, or give her a replacement day within the same month. A rest day can be taken as one full day or two half days, and where a month goes sideways it can be deferred — but only by one month, and it should be by her agreement rather than your instruction.
Two consequences follow. First, plan the week so the rest day is real: a helper who spends her Sunday answering messages about where the mop is has not rested, and the arrangement stops being credible. Second, price extra work honestly. Night duty, weekend care and a second household's worth of expectations all consume the same 24 hours, so if the scope has grown, the schedule has to shrink somewhere. Our guide to rest day rules handles the mechanics, and the home schedule template gives you a week that already has breaks built into it.
When the job grows: four fair options
Scope creep is normal in a home with children or an elderly parent, because needs change faster than contracts. The mistake is treating each new request as a test of your helper's loyalty rather than a resourcing decision.
Re-sequence instead of adding. If a new duty matters more, name what it replaces: "please take over Grandpa's medication reminders, and we will move the ironing to twice a week".
Buy the work outside. Weekly deep cleaning, catering, dog walking and day care exist so that one person does not have to become four.
Add capacity for care. Where needs are clinical or constant, a second caregiver or a day-care placement is safer than stretching one helper, as our piece on the myth of the omnipotent maid sets out.
Revisit the agreement in writing. If duties genuinely change, say so, agree a date, and update the schedule — an undocumented change is how a fair job turns into an unfair one.
And when a request sits outside what a work permit allows — the shop, the stall, the family business — the answer is not "only occasionally". It is no. That guardrail protects her as much as it protects you: a helper deployed illegally has very little recourse if something goes wrong in work that was never supposed to be hers. Households that need genuine flexibility, such as a helper working part-time for another family, are better served by the MOM rules on sharing or lending a helper, which explain what is possible and what is not.
Frequently asked questions
What duties can a domestic helper do in Singapore?
Household chores at the address you declared to MOM: cleaning, laundry, cooking, groceries and errands, and the care of children, elderly family members or persons with disabilities who live there. MOM's guide for helpers puts the work as usually household chores and says it may extend to caregiving depending on the household's needs. Anything outside domestic work, or domestic work at another address, falls outside the work permit.
Can my helper clean my parents' house?
No, not even occasionally and not even with extra pay. MOM's guidance is explicit that cleaning a parent's home or another property is not allowed, because a helper can only perform household chores at your declared residential address. What is allowed is caring for your child or parent at a relative's home — after you notify MOM, with her written agreement, and without her carrying the full housework load in both households.
Can my helper help with my home-based business?
No. MOM's own examples cover helping at a food stall, packing orders for an online store, doing data entry and baking for a home bakery, and every one of them is disallowed, including where the helper volunteers or is compensated. The risk sits with the employer: a financial penalty of up to $10,000 and the possibility of being barred from hiring helpers.
How many hours a day can I ask my helper to work?
There is no legal cap, because helpers are excluded from the Employment Act. MOM's stated position is that helpers must get adequate daily rest and one rest day a week under the work pass regulations, and that employers should be reasonable about workload. In practice that means a defined start and end to the day, real breaks, uninterrupted sleep, and at least one rest day a month that is never bought out with pay.
Can my helper look after my dog or cat?
Yes. Pet care inside your own home is domestic work, so feeding, walks, litter and vet trips are all within scope. Training makes a real difference with dogs, and a certified pet-care course gives you a helper who can read an animal's stress signals instead of guessing. What she should not be doing is paid grooming or walking for other households.
What should I include in a helper job description?
Five things: the household, the core duties with a frequency beside each one, the working hours and rest arrangement, the exclusions, and the rule for how new duties get added. Keep it to a page, attach it to the MOM contract, review it at day 30, and revisit it at every renewal. A scope that is written down is the cheapest form of protection either of you has.
The bottom line
A helper's job in Singapore is easier to define than most employers expect: household work at the address you declared to MOM, with clear hours, clear exclusions, and a written rule for how change happens. Four sections, one page, attached to the standard contract and reviewed on day 30 — that document does more for the relationship than any amount of goodwill, because it means neither of you has to guess.
If something still feels off after that, the usual problem is not the helper but the wording. And where a request genuinely falls outside the work permit, the answer stays no — the rules are there to protect her as much as you.
If you are about to hire and would like the duty list looked over before it becomes a misunderstanding, send it to us — we would much rather read a job description than referee a dispute six months later.
Contact iHome Agency:
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đź“Ť Punggol & Northshore Specialist
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