Home improvement firms sell and carry out repairs, upgrades and small makeovers inside people's homes. Here is how to staff visits, crews and follow-ups.
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Share your requirementsA home improvement company handles the jobs a family calls about after moving in or when something has worn out: a bathroom upgrade, waterproofing, a new kitchen counter, wardrobes, a repainted room. Work starts with a sales or survey visit, moves to a quote, and then a crew arrives at the customer's door, often for just a few days. The people involved are surveyors, estimators, small crews of carpenters, plumbers and painters, and a coordinator who juggles dates. Homeowners are present throughout, so how staff speak, arrive and clean up counts as much as the repair. Demand rises before festivals, weddings and after the monsoon. See also HR for construction and real estate. What marks this business is that each employee is, in effect, the company in someone's living room.
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 job overruns, the next customer is kept waiting, and the coordinator spends the day apologising by phone.
Late arrival, careless language, unclean work areas or an unwanted request for extra money are remembered and repeated in the neighbourhood.
The surveyor promises one scope, the crew finds another, and the dispute lands on the coordinator.
A good carpenter takes private jobs from the firm's customers, and the firm loses both the work and the relationship.
Complaints about a repair are handled by whoever picks up the phone, so the same issue reaches a customer's door three times.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Onboarding and Probation; Performance Management; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
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.
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 home improvement companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Arrival time, introductions, shoe covers, cleaning, no side deals and who to call.
What this coversHideArrival time, introductions, shoe covers, cleaning, no side deals and who to call. Handed over at joining and refreshed through the onboarding process.
The surveyor's scope becomes the crew's job sheet, signed off by the customer at the end, so extras are agreed rather than argued.
What this coversHideThe surveyor's scope becomes the crew's job sheet, signed off by the customer at the end, so extras are agreed rather than argued.
Jobs grouped by area, with buffer for overruns, so a late crew is the exception.
What this coversHideJobs grouped by area, with buffer for overruns, so a late crew is the exception. Attendance and shift management can track on-site hours.
A crew's incentive that includes customer feedback and repeat visits, so speed does not come at the expense of finish.
What this coversHideA crew's incentive that includes customer feedback and repeat visits, so speed does not come at the expense of finish. See performance management.
One person or small team responsible for return visits, with a log of complaints and how each was closed.
What this coversHideOne person or small team responsible for return visits, with a log of complaints and how each was closed.
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 short induction on conduct inside customer homes, so every new fitter and executive starts with the same standard.
Records of who was on which job and for how long, so scheduling and wages are based on fact.
Incentives that reward finish, customer feedback and repeat work along with speed.
Practical training for crews and surveyors on dealing with homeowners politely and clearly.
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
A practical joining checklist covering documents, assets, system access and statutory enrolments, with owners and timings, so nobody's first salary is wrong.
8 min readRead article
A review can only judge what was agreed beforehand. How to set expectations that are specific, written and revisited, so the review stops being a surprise.
5 min readRead article
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Set a clear rule, pay fairly and give your best fitters a stake in the firm's reputation through steady work and incentives. Rules alone rarely work if the fitter sees no reason to stay loyal.
Note it on the job sheet, call the coordinator and agree the price before starting. Extras agreed on the spot and paid in cash are a common source of later disputes.
Many firms use a mix. Salaried staff give steadier quality and conduct, while per-job pay suits peak periods. Whichever you choose, write down the terms and the conduct standard.
Ask every customer a few simple questions after the job and read them with the crew. A few short answers, tracked over months, tell you more than occasional complaints.
Keep a list of reliable part-time fitters you have worked with before, and bring them in through the same short induction as everyone else.
Expect questions about how crews are scheduled and what customers have complained about, especially behaviour inside the home. We would also compare a few quotes with what was actually done, and ask what keeps your best fitters from working on the side. A sensible first piece of work is a visit code and job sheet for each crew. Scope and fees are agreed in writing afterwards.
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