A home repair business sends carpenters, plumbers, electricians and painters into customers' homes at short notice. Your technicians enter strangers' homes alone, so skill testing and conduct matter more to your reputation than they would in a shop.
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Share your requirementsA handyman and home repair service takes small jobs from households and small offices: a leaking tap, a fan that will not start, a cracked tile, a door that sticks, a wall that needs paint. Requests come by phone, app or a neighbour's recommendation, and work is scheduled in slots across a city. Technicians are plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters and general helpers, many of them from the informal trades with skill gained on the job rather than certificates. They work alone or in pairs inside a customer's home, often carrying their own tools. The owner sells trust and speed, and both depend on who turns up. See also HR for facility management.
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.
A man says he is an electrician and is sent to a home, and the first sign of a gap is a customer complaint or a damaged fitting.
A job runs long and every later slot slips, so the day ends with angry callers and a technician who has not eaten.
A technician who meets a customer directly can offer a cheaper private visit next time, and the business never hears about it.
Who owns the drill, who pays for a cracked meter and who buys the washers is unclear, so disputes build quietly.
Work at height, live wiring and gas fittings happen daily, and training on safe practice is informal and unrecorded.
Customers, often women alone at home during the day, judge the business on how the technician behaves, and one complaint can undo months of goodwill.
Some people are on payroll, some are paid per job, some work for two companies, and attendance, rates and responsibilities differ for each.
Few jobs are inspected, so poor workmanship is found by the customer, not the supervisor.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Organisation Design; Employee Relations. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
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.
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.
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.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a handyman and home repair services business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A short practical check by a senior tradesperson for each skill claimed, with a grade that decides which jobs the person is sent to.
What this coversHideA short practical check by a senior tradesperson for each skill claimed, with a grade that decides which jobs the person is sent to. The role design work turns it into clear job levels.
Dress, greetings, shoe covers, behaviour with women and children, what not to ask for and how to leave a home, taught at joining and repeated.
What this coversHideDress, greetings, shoe covers, behaviour with women and children, what not to ask for and how to leave a home, taught at joining and repeated. The policies and governance work gives it weight.
A written list of what the company supplies, what the technician owns, who pays for loss and how spares are billed, so there is nothing to argue about later.
What this coversHideA written list of what the company supplies, what the technician owns, who pays for loss and how spares are billed, so there is nothing to argue about later.
Time allowances per job type from your own history, and a rule that a dispatcher re-books early rather than letting the day slip.
What this coversHideTime allowances per job type from your own history, and a rule that a dispatcher re-books early rather than letting the day slip. The attendance and shift process holds the schedule.
A supervisor visit or a customer call-back on a share of jobs each week, with the findings fed back to the technician.
What this coversHideA supervisor visit or a customer call-back on a share of jobs each week, with the findings fed back to the technician.
A clear, fair line on private work for the business's customers, plus a reason for staying: steady jobs, fair rates and recognition.
What this coversHideA clear, fair line on private work for the business's customers, plus a reason for staying: steady jobs, fair rates and recognition.
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.
Clear trade levels and a grade for each technician, so jobs go to the right person.
A practical routine for work at height and electrical jobs, with training recorded per person.
A fair way to handle a customer complaint about conduct, from the first report to the outcome.
Slots, job times and leave brought into one view so the day does not slip.
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 facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
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
A flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead article
An employee brings you a complaint about their supervisor. What happens next should not depend on who is in the room. A grievance procedure a small company can actually run.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Use a short practical test by a senior tradesperson for each trade claimed, and start new people on simple jobs with a supervisor's callback. Record the grade so dispatch follows it.
Either can work, but the mix should be deliberate. Whatever you choose, write down rates, attendance and responsibilities, and confirm the correct treatment with a qualified professional.
Take it seriously, listen to the customer, hear the technician and decide through a written process. Keep a record, even where the outcome is only a warning.
Make staying worth it with steady work, fair rates and recognition, and set a clear rule on private work. Lock-in by threat rarely works.
Safe practice for the highest-risk tasks, the customer-home conduct standard and basic skills for the trade. Keep it short, practical and recorded.
We would ask who has tested each technician's claimed trades, how booked job times compare with actual times, and who owns tools and pays for breakage. A reasonable first piece of work is a grading test for each trade with a written home-conduct standard. Scope is then agreed in writing before any work begins.
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