Hand-knotted, tufted and woven carpets rely on skilled weavers and long production times. Export orders come with firm dates and tight quality tests. This page covers the people side of carpet making.
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Share your requirementsA carpet maker works with wool, silk or synthetic yarn that is dyed, then woven or tufted on looms to a design. Hand-knotted work takes weeks per piece and is done by weavers at looms, sometimes in sheds and sometimes in homes. After weaving, carpets are cut, washed, dried, clipped, repaired and finished before export. Each stage needs skill: dyers match colour, weavers hold tension and pattern, washers treat the pile and finishers clip and mend. Export buyers set colours, sizes and delivery dates, and reject pieces that fail inspection. Work is often paid by the square foot, which suits skilled weavers but makes records of output and quality crucial. See also HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in carpet manufacturers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Young people are less willing to take up the craft. Without an apprentice route, skill thins and rework rises.
Work given out to homes is paid by area. Progress, quality and dates are known only when the piece returns.
A dyer's error shows when the carpet is nearly done, and the whole piece may be downgraded.
Weavers who rush to earn leave uneven edges and loose knots, and menders carry the burden.
Slippery floors, dyes and detergents need gloves, ventilation and training, which are patchy.
Slow weaving means overtime in finishing and packing, and tired inspectors miss faults.
When a buyer rejects a carpet, it is rarely clear which weaver, loom or dyer lot was responsible.
Orders arrive in clusters, so work and income swing, and trained weavers leave for other trades.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Career and Succession Management; Learning and Development; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a carpet manufacturers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Stages from trainee to junior to master weaver, with skill checks and a visible pay step.
Stages from trainee to junior to master weaver, with skill checks and a visible pay step. See learning and development.
Issue and return records by weaver, design, area and quality, with payments tied to accepted pieces.
Issue and return records by weaver, design, area and quality, with payments tied to accepted pieces.
Approved shade cards, lot numbers and a second check before dyed yarn is released.
Approved shade cards, lot numbers and a second check before dyed yarn is released.
Pay by area that passes inspection, with mending shared where the cause is the weaver's.
Pay by area that passes inspection, with mending shared where the cause is the weaver's. Compare rates with compensation benchmarking.
Gloves, footwear, ventilation and training in washing and dyeing.
Gloves, footwear, ventilation and training in washing and dyeing. See health, safety and wellbeing.
Loom, weaver, dye lot and inspector against each carpet, so rejections can be traced and learnt from.
Loom, weaver, dye lot and inspector against each carpet, so rejections can be traced and learnt from.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
An apprentice ladder so weaving skill passes on before masters retire.
Rates by area and quality compared with other units, to hold good weavers.
Records of given-out work, rates and payments, kept by weaver and piece.
Routines for wet floors, dyes and long hours at the loom.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator often struggles as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Offer a paid training route, a clear step to master weaver, regular payment and respect for the craft. Describe the route before they join.
Record each piece out and in, check progress on a schedule and pay on accepted work. Confirm obligations to home-based workers with a qualified professional.
Use shade cards, dye lot numbers and a second check before release. Record the dyer and the checker.
Set the rule in advance. A clear scale for accepted, mended and downgraded work works better than case-by-case argument.
Plan from the weaving stage, track each piece's progress and avoid pushing all the strain onto finishing. Late visibility is the cause.
We would ask how weaving skill is passed on, how given-out work is tracked and how pay links to quality. A good opening project is a weaver ladder plus a piece-level record. Scope is then written down for you to accept or change.
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