Rolling shutters and garage doors are installed once and called about for years. Here is how to run the technicians who fit them and answer the repair calls.
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Share your requirementsA garage door and shutter installer supplies, fits and repairs rolling shutters, sectional and sliding doors, automatic gates and motors for shops, warehouses, factories, apartment parkings and homes. The business has two halves. Installation is planned work that needs measurement, fabrication and a fitting team. Repair and service is unplanned: a shutter jams, a spring snaps, a motor fails, often at closing time or early in the morning, and the customer wants someone now. Technicians work from vans or bikes, carry tools and spares, and visit many sites in a day, mostly alone or in pairs. Springs, motors and heavy panels create real injury risk. Annual maintenance contracts with apartments and shops give steady income if service rounds are kept. See also HR for construction and real estate.
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.
Breakdowns come at shop closing, early morning and over weekends, and nobody has set who is on call or how that is rewarded.
A technician spends the day among customers with no supervisor, so time, spares, cash and conduct depend on one person.
Springs, motors, remotes and cash collected at the door are hard to account for, and small differences repeat.
Tensioned springs, heavy curtains and motors cause hand and eye injuries, and training depends on who showed the newcomer.
Annual contract visits are postponed when repair calls and new installations pile up, and customers drift away quietly.
A technician who knows the customers and the parts suppliers often leaves to work on his own, taking regular clients.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Employee Administration; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
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.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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.
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 garage door and shutter installers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Who covers evenings and weekends, how much notice they get and what they receive for it, kept in the attendance and leave process.
What this coversHideWho covers evenings and weekends, how much notice they get and what they receive for it, kept in the attendance and leave process.
A job card with time, spares used, work done and amount collected, signed by the customer, so time and cash are visible without watching each technician.
What this coversHideA job card with time, spares used, work done and amount collected, signed by the customer, so time and cash are visible without watching each technician.
A hands-on session with an experienced technician, a check and a record against the person.
What this coversHideA hands-on session with an experienced technician, a check and a record against the person. The health, safety and wellbeing work covers the routine.
A calendar of contract visits with a named technician and a monthly review of those missed, so they do not lose to repairs and installations.
What this coversHideA calendar of contract visits with a named technician and a monthly review of those missed, so they do not lose to repairs and installations.
Grades from helper to senior technician to service lead, with a share in service contracts, so staying is more attractive than leaving.
What this coversHideGrades from helper to senior technician to service lead, with a share in service contracts, so staying is more attractive than leaving. See compensation and rewards.
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 on-call rota and a clear reward for after-hours work.
Hands-on safety training for spring, motor and heavy-panel work.
Grades and incentives that make staying as attractive as setting up alone.
A simple way for field staff to log time, claims and leave from a phone.
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 construction and real estate, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Site engineers, supervisors, crews and sales teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between projects.
8 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
A laminated notice, an annual drill, and an incident register with three entries in two years. What workplace health and safety looks like when it is real.
7 min readRead article
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Set a rota, give people notice, pay a clear rate and keep a record of the call. Check any working-time limits with a qualified professional.
Use a signed job card for every call, reconcile spares daily against the store and collect cash at a set time. Visible routines protect honest technicians too.
Practical handling of springs, curtains and motors with an experienced person, a check of competence and a record. Refresh it regularly and follow advice from a qualified safety professional.
Keep customer relationships with the company through job cards and contracts, reward long service and offer a path within. Any restriction on leaving should be checked with a qualified professional.
Schedule them in a calendar, give each to a named technician and review missed visits every month. Protect a fixed share of time for them.
We would look at how after-hours call-outs are shared, how cash and spares are tracked when technicians travel alone, and what spring and motor safety training exists. A practical first piece of work is an on-call rota with a clear reward and a close-every-call record. Scope and cost are then set out in writing for your agreement.
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