Glass and carbon fibre, resin, moulds and ovens make strong, light parts. Laminators, mould technicians and cure operators work with chemicals and exact timings, and one bad layup can scrap a day's work.
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Share your requirementsA composite manufacturer builds parts from fibre reinforcement and resin: fibreglass tanks and panels, carbon fibre parts, pultruded sections and moulded shells. Work includes cutting fabric, laying it in moulds, applying or infusing resin, curing in ambient conditions or ovens and autoclaves, trimming, finishing and testing. Much is manual and depends on the hand: wrinkles, air pockets and uneven resin are caught by experienced laminators. Staff handle resins, hardeners and fine fibre dust, wear protective gear for long hours and work to cure windows that do not wait. Orders are often small batches or custom shapes, so each job brings a new learning curve. Related reading: 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 composite material 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.
A new hand takes months to lay fabric without wrinkles or voids, and the best laminators are few and sought by rivals.
Skin, eyes and breathing suffer over years of exposure, and masks and gloves are used unevenly, especially in warm halls.
A resin mix has a working time, so a late supply or a long break mid-job scraps the part and the blame falls on the operator.
A scratched or neglected mould spoils every part, yet mould care is nobody's formal job and handling habits vary by shift.
Each new part brings new fabric schedules, so supervisors repeat the same instructions to different hands and quality varies by crew.
Warm, resin-scented halls tire people quickly, and productivity and temper both slip late in the day.
Cutting and sanding cured parts creates itchy dust, work is seen as low status and the turnover there is highest.
When a part fails a test, records of who laid it, which batch of resin and what the cure schedule was are often missing.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
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.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
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.
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.
The pieces a composite material manufacturers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A graded skill ladder from cutting to simple layup to complex layup, with a supervised sample at each step.
A graded skill ladder from cutting to simple layup to complex layup, with a supervised sample at each step. The learning and development process can support it.
Written use of gloves, masks and ventilation, a store for protective gear and a record of who works in which area.
Written use of gloves, masks and ventilation, a store for protective gear and a record of who works in which area. Part of a workplace health, safety and wellbeing routine.
A job card with resin batch time, assigned crew and the next step due, so late materials are flagged before mixing starts.
A job card with resin batch time, assigned crew and the next step due, so late materials are flagged before mixing starts.
A named mould keeper per shift with a checklist for cleaning, release and storage, and a log of damage and who handled the mould.
A named mould keeper per shift with a checklist for cleaning, release and storage, and a log of damage and who handled the mould.
Record fabric lot, resin batch, laminator and cure details for each part.
Record fabric lot, resin batch, laminator and cure details for each part. See HR documentation process for how staff records can follow the same discipline.
A simple rota so trimming and sanding are shared, with fair rates and a route into laminating for steady workers.
A simple rota so trimming and sanding are shared, with fair rates and a route into laminating for steady workers.
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.
A graded skill ladder for laminators and mould staff to shorten the learning curve.
Exposure records and protective-gear routines for resin, fibre and dust.
Clear job cards and role notes so work and responsibility can be traced.
Ways to raise the standing of finishing and trimming work and reduce turnover there.
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 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
A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
7 min readRead article
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Use a graded ladder with real samples at each step, pair new hands with a patient senior and give feedback on the same day. Expect months, not weeks.
Provide gear that fits, improve ventilation where you can, explain the reason and let supervisors set the example. Ask a qualified professional which standards apply to you.
Often the cure window, resin batch or mould condition changed, not the people. Keep job cards that record these so the cause can be found.
Name one person per shift, give them a checklist and keep a damage log. A mould is as valuable as a machine.
Rotate the work, pay a fair rate, supply good dust control and show a route into laminating. Low status is a cause of exits, too.
We would ask who your best laminators are, how exposure is recorded and who owns mould care. A good opening job is a laminator skill ladder with a simple job card. Scope and fee are agreed in writing.
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