A home service franchise network sends plumbers, cleaners, pest control staff and repair technicians into customers' homes under one brand. Here is how to keep trust, standards and technician quality high across independent franchise partners.
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Share your requirementsA home service franchise network sells repairs, cleaning, pest control, appliance service, painting, plumbing or similar work to households, delivered by franchise partners who operate in a city or zone. The brand team runs the booking app and call centre, sets prices and quality standards, and trains partners. Partners employ the technicians, cleaners and helpers who enter customers' homes, often alone and often when a woman or an elderly person is at home. Customers choose the brand because they trust it, so one misconduct case or one badly finished job can damage the whole network. Technicians are paid per job or by a mix of fixed pay and incentives, travel across a zone and carry tools and chemicals. Many are young, newly migrated and quick to move to the next platform that offers more. See also HR for professional services.
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 service franchise networks. 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.
Hiring checks, conduct rules and complaint handling vary by partner, and one serious incident is shared with the whole brand.
Technicians paid per job rush visits or skip checks, and customers call the brand for rework.
A skilled senior and a newcomer wear the same uniform, but customers receive very different standards.
Jobs scattered across a zone mean long journeys, late arrivals and customer calls, with no fair allowance for time lost.
Agents promise time slots that technicians cannot meet, and technicians blame the app for poor routing.
A trained technician moves to another partner or platform for a small pay increase, taking the training with them.
Pest control and cleaning chemicals, ladders and electrical work are used with limited gear and instruction.
Technicians face rude or unsafe situations in homes and have no clear rule on when to leave or whom to call.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Employee Relations; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
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.
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.
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 service franchise networks business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Identity and reference checks done through proper channels, a conduct code for working in homes and a clear route for complaints.
Identity and reference checks done through proper channels, a conduct code for working in homes and a clear route for complaints. Confirm with a qualified professional what checks are lawful.
A structure that mixes fixed pay with incentives for customer rating, first-time fix and repeat work.
A structure that mixes fixed pay with incentives for customer rating, first-time fix and repeat work. See compensation benchmarking.
Levels from helper to senior technician with tests, tools and jobs assigned by level, using the learning and development process.
Levels from helper to senior technician with tests, tools and jobs assigned by level, using the learning and development process.
Travel time built into slots and a feedback loop between agents and technicians, reviewed weekly.
Travel time built into slots and a feedback loop between agents and technicians, reviewed weekly.
Protective gear, safe storage and a clear instruction for each service type, with refreshers.
Protective gear, safe storage and a clear instruction for each service type, with refreshers.
When to stop work, whom to call and how the brand supports the technician after a difficult visit.
When to stop work, whom to call and how the brand supports the technician after a difficult visit. HR documentation helps put it in writing.
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 view of pay and incentive that supports quality, not just volume.
Skill ladders and refreshers for technicians and cleaners.
Clear handling of customer complaints and technician conduct.
Safety gear, chemical handling and personal safety in customers' homes.
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 professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
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Set clear conduct rules, handle complaints quickly and fairly, and train for respectful behaviour. Confirm with a qualified professional what pre-hire checks are lawful.
Add incentives for customer rating and first-time fix, and make rework unpaid only if the fault was the technician's. Fair design matters.
Provide a skill ladder, fair pay and recognition within the network. People stay when growth is visible.
Add travel time and review slot accuracy weekly with call centre and field staff. Realistic slots reduce customer anger.
Have a written rule on when to stop, whom to call and how the brand will support them. Fear should not be left to individuals.
We would look at how technicians are hired and paid, how slots are set and how complaints are handled. A sensible first piece of work is a conduct code and a quality-linked pay structure. Scope follows in writing, so you can accept or trim it.
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