A home renovation company coordinates masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters and tilers inside a family's home. Delivery depends on gangs arriving in the right order, and the owner's HR task is managing site supervisors and a changing set of trades.
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Share your requirementsA home renovation company takes on kitchens, bathrooms, full flats and villas, from design to handover. It has a small core of designers, project managers and site supervisors, and uses many trade gangs on contract. Masons, tilers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers and painters arrive at different times, and a delay by one holds up the next. Households continue to live nearby or return daily to inspect. Customers judge by finish, timeline and cleanliness, and a single bad week can sour a project. Materials are bought for each job and kept on site. Labour is paid by the day or the job, usually through gang leaders. The firm earns when projects close on time, so sequencing and supervision are what count. 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.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in home renovation companies. 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.
Painting is started before electrical work finishes, and rework follows.
The firm pays a leader, who pays workers, and if the leader walks the whole gang goes with him.
Each site gets a quick visit and minor errors are repeated.
Variations are agreed by word of mouth and then disputed at billing.
Smoking, noise, language and toilets are used badly and the family complains to the owner.
Tiles, fittings and paint are taken or wasted, and counts are rough.
Ladders, scaffolds, grinders and electric tools are used without checks or gear.
Day rate, overtime, rework and advances differ between gangs and are rarely written.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Operations and Governance; Employee Administration; Health, Safety and Wellbeing. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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.
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 home renovation companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A trade-by-trade schedule shared with supervisors and gangs, with a daily check of the next day's start.
A trade-by-trade schedule shared with supervisors and gangs, with a daily check of the next day's start. See the attendance process.
A list of each worker's name, trade and phone, even when paid through a leader.
A list of each worker's name, trade and phone, even when paid through a leader. The employee information management work helps.
A realistic number and a visit schedule that covers the first and last days of each trade.
A realistic number and a visit schedule that covers the first and last days of each trade.
A short written change note with cost, signed by the client before work begins.
A short written change note with cost, signed by the client before work begins. See HR documentation.
Dress, language, noise, smoking, toilets and cleaning, repeated at each gang's first day.
Dress, language, noise, smoking, toilets and cleaning, repeated at each gang's first day.
Ladders, scaffolds, tool checks and gear, with a weekly walk.
Ladders, scaffolds, tool checks and gear, with a weekly walk. See workplace health and safety.
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.
Daily attendance and sequence plans for gangs and supervisors.
Names and trades of all site workers, including those paid through leaders.
A weekly site walk that covers ladders, tools and gear.
Written variation notes and site rules that reduce disputes.
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
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 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 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 articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
It depends on the size and stage of each project. Test a number against the problems you see and cap it. Supervisors should visit at the start and end of each trade.
Yes, at least names, trades and phone numbers. Seek professional advice on responsibility for workers engaged through leaders.
Brief the gang on behaviour, plan a clean-up routine and give the client one contact. Resolve small complaints the same day.
In writing, with cost and time impact, signed before work begins. Keep the paper with the project file.
Fix the sequence, give clear drawings, check each stage before the next trade starts and review causes after each project.
We would ask how trades are sequenced, how many sites a supervisor carries and how gang workers are recorded. A good opening project is a trade schedule and a gang register. Scope is written down for you to accept or change.
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