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Industrial Automation and Robotics · Industrial Automation Companies
HR for Industrial Automation Companies: Projects, Engineers, Site Teams and Support
Industrial automation companies design, supply and commission control systems for factories, earning from projects, resale and service. Their people are engineers, and clashing project deadlines and weeks on site are what wear them down.
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Share your requirementsAn industrial automation company builds control systems for plants: PLC and drive systems, instruments, control panels, SCADA screens and sometimes machines or robot cells. Income comes from projects, product resale and annual service contracts. A project runs from enquiry and quotation through design, panel wiring, programming, factory acceptance test and installation, to site commissioning and handover. Sales engineers, designers, programmers, project managers and service engineers each carry a piece. Skills are tied to brands and industries, so a good programmer is hard to replace. Site work means travel and long days, and service teams take calls at odd hours. Projects bunch up, with a bench between them. For the wider sector picture, read HR for manufacturing.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in industrial automation companies, you may see
- Brand and industry know-how cannot be copied quickly
- Deadline weeks land on a few shoulders
- Weeks at a customer site wear engineers down
- Plant stoppages ring at night
- Quotes promise more than the team can deliver
- The gap between projects is hard to carry
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in industrial automation companies
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.
- Sales and application engineers
- Design and drafting engineers
- PLC, HMI and SCADA programmers
- Project managers
- Commissioning and site engineers
- Service and support engineers
- Panel wiring technicians
- Purchase and stores staff
Where HR strains in industrial automation companies
Brand and industry know-how cannot be copied quickly
A programmer who knows one PLC brand deeply and one process industry well cannot be found on the market in a month.
Deadline weeks land on a few shoulders
When several factory acceptance tests and site handovers fall together, the same project managers and commissioning engineers carry all of them.
Weeks at a customer site wear engineers down
Long stretches away from home and twelve-hour days at a plant lead to fatigue, and then to a search for a desk job.
Plant stoppages ring at night
A line that halts after dark means a call, and service engineers go on call with no clear rule on rest or pay.
Quotes promise more than the team can deliver
A hurried quotation fixes scope and dates that the engineers later struggle to meet.
The gap between projects is hard to carry
Engineers sit under-used after a handover, and when the next order lands there is a scramble to staff it.
HR topics for industrial automation companies
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Organisation Design. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a industrial automation companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Map skills by brand, industry and role
A simple grid of who can program, commission and support each major PLC brand and plant type.
What this coversHide
Map skills by brand, industry and role
A simple grid of who can program, commission and support each major PLC brand and plant type.
What this coversHideA simple grid of who can program, commission and support each major PLC brand and plant type. See competency and talent management.
Review project loading every month
One shared view of all projects, who is on each and how many hit a test or handover date together, reviewed by the owner and project managers.
What this coversHide
Review project loading every month
One shared view of all projects, who is on each and how many hit a test or handover date together, reviewed by the owner and project managers.
What this coversHideOne shared view of all projects, who is on each and how many hit a test or handover date together, reviewed by the owner and project managers.
Set rules for site stretches and rest
A maximum stretch away, rest after long trips and allowance rules, written and applied equally.
What this coversHide
Set rules for site stretches and rest
A maximum stretch away, rest after long trips and allowance rules, written and applied equally.
What this coversHideA maximum stretch away, rest after long trips and allowance rules, written and applied equally. The attendance and shift process can hold them.
Agree an on-call rota for service
A named rota, a clear call-out and rest rule and pay for on-call hours, so the night burden is shared out.
What this coversHide
Agree an on-call rota for service
A named rota, a clear call-out and rest rule and pay for on-call hours, so the night burden is shared out.
What this coversHideA named rota, a clear call-out and rest rule and pay for on-call hours, so the night burden is shared out.
Bring engineers into the quote review
A short review by sales and engineering before a quotation goes out, so scope and time are realistic.
What this coversHide
Bring engineers into the quote review
A short review by sales and engineering before a quotation goes out, so scope and time are realistic.
What this coversHideA short review by sales and engineering before a quotation goes out, so scope and time are realistic. See role design for who signs off what.
Start by checking where you stand
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 requirements- List your engineers and mark which PLC brands and plant types each can handle alone.
- Count how many projects reach a test or handover date this month and who is on each.
- Check how many nights each commissioning engineer spent away last quarter.
- Ask your service engineers how many night calls they took last month.
- Look at your last three quotations and see whether an engineer reviewed the scope.
- Confirm with a qualified professional the labour, registration and record-keeping rules that bind your controls and automation business.
Confirm 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.
How GullyHR helps
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.
- Competency and talent management
A skills grid for engineers by brand, industry and role, so gaps and single points of failure show.
- Employee retention and attrition management
Finds why engineers move and what would keep the ones you cannot replace.
- Attendance, shift and leave process
Travel, on-call and rest rules for site and service engineers.
- HR strategy and workforce planning
Headcount planned against the project pipeline and the gap between handovers.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Management
How to recognise and address employee workload problems
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 article
HR Management
"We need two more people": the headcount plan nobody wrote
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 min readRead article
HR Management
Everyone reports to the founder: when and how to redesign the structure
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 articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Recognise the skill with pay and role, give them ownership of important projects and help them teach a second person. Write down key knowledge so it does not leave with them.
Look at all projects together each month, cap how many one person carries and add help before test dates collide.
A written limit on stretches away, rest days after long trips and clear allowance rules, applied to everyone alike.
Make a rota, set rest after night calls and pay for on-call hours. Check the arrangement with a qualified professional.
Bring engineers into the quote review and check scope and time before it goes out. It saves pressure later.
We would ask which engineers hold skills nobody else has, count projects due together and see how travel and on-call are handled. A good opening project is a skills grid with a monthly project loading view. Scope is put in writing after the first conversation.
More on HR for manufacturing
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