Many people earning even median salaries in Hong Kong choose to have someone at home to manage their home, whether a stay-at-home spouse or a domestic helper. This can seem like a real cost efficiency, but have you ever thought about what your spouse or domestic helper could be charging you for staying at home?

A blog post by Steven Nelms' recently went viral when he calculated he could not afford his stay-at-home wife if she were to charge him for her services. In his post, he praises the value his wife brings to the family by itemizing the work his wife does and tries to put a dollar value on it.

By his calculations, a personal assistant who would run errands like his wife does would charge around $13,520 a year. A cleaner would charge another $5,200 a year. A comparable chef would charge $12,480 a year. And most significantly, he figures that a nanny would charge him $36,600 a year, bringing his grand total to $67,860 a year! This is way out of his price range.

And that is not even including the other possible "services" he needs for a financial assistant, a PR assistant and laundry services, which raises his figure up to a whopping $73,960 a year!

His conclusion: His wife is worth much more to him than he could ever pay.

Of course, while this blog expresses a beautiful sentiment toward his overworked and under-appreciated wife, most of us would have to laugh at his flawed accounting.

For one, Nelms would be double counting to spend for time that his wife is efficiently using days to act as both a nanny and a cook. Nelms' numbers are also intentionally padded to disregard the marginal utility of having one person with limited professional training charge the same fees that a high-end professional services provider would charge.

Most importantly, he is confusing an employee with a particular role. In simple terms, every person working for you is your employee, but employees often have multiple roles. For many of us, wearing several hats, either interconnected and unrelated, is so familiar that balancing these different roles has become a job in itself.

It is hard to imagine someone who has only one role in their company or personal life. In fact, since Nelms is himself also performing the role of being a father, I hope he isn't recharging his wife for his own nanny services when he comes home and hugs his son!

But I don't mean to criticize Nelms' obviously bombastic blog. In fact, there is a real kernel of wisdom that Hong Kong families can gain a greater appreciation of the people they employ to manage their homes.

For many people in Hong Kong, the person (or people) they employ to manage their homes is not a $74,000 suite of personal shoppers, chefs and PR assistants, it is a domestic helper.

Right now there are an estimated 320,000 foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, many of them working for the very people reading this article.

The current statutory minimum wage for a foreign domestic helper is HK$4,010, making it a very attractive alternative to Nelms' inflated figures.

But much like Nelms does in his blog, it would be good for all of us employing domestic helpers to stop every now and then to consider the high value we are getting for the very small minimum wage many of us pay.

This came home to me recently when a friend of mine, who is herself a stay-at-home spouse, reflected on their decision not to have a domestic helper. More important in her mind than her ability to take on the work herself, she credited the decision to not want to be in a position where she feels she is taking advantage of another human being.

I was moved by my friend's statement, because I think that a lot of us also see domestic helpers in this way: Either we guiltily employ a domestic helper for the minimum wage, or else we just don't hire anyone at all.

But in reality, there is a lot of leeway in between these two options where an employer can choose to pay an above-minimum wage that reasonably takes into account the expertise, experience and commitment a helper may be bringing to the table (literally). It may not be $74,000 a year, but it may still be above HK$4,010 a month.

But even if you are not ready to increase your domestic helper's wages, it is good to remember there are lots of important ways to compensate someone besides paying them.

When I advise clients on their employment and communication practices, I commonly refer to the total rewards. This is the concept that employees intrinsically value and demand much more than just competitive wages; they also need what Frederick Herzberg calls motivation and hygiene factors. These can include everything from safety to development opportunities to flexible work to a good relationship with the boss.

The author is a communication consultant in Hong Kong specializing in Chinese corporate culture and change management.

(HK Edition 06/12/2015 page11)