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.
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 industrial automation 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.
A programmer who knows one PLC brand deeply and one process industry well cannot be found on the market in a month.
When several factory acceptance tests and site handovers fall together, the same project managers and commissioning engineers carry all of them.
Long stretches away from home and twelve-hour days at a plant lead to fatigue, and then to a search for a desk job.
A line that halts after dark means a call, and service engineers go on call with no clear rule on rest or pay.
A hurried quotation fixes scope and dates that the engineers later struggle to meet.
Engineers sit under-used after a handover, and when the next order lands there is a scramble to staff it.
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.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
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.
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.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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 industrial automation companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A simple grid of who can program, commission and support each major PLC brand and plant type.
A simple grid of who can program, commission and support each major PLC brand and plant type. See competency and talent management.
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.
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.
A maximum stretch away, rest after long trips and allowance rules, written and applied equally.
A maximum stretch away, rest after long trips and allowance rules, written and applied equally. The attendance and shift process can hold them.
A named rota, a clear call-out and rest rule and pay for on-call hours, so the night burden is shared out.
A named rota, a clear call-out and rest rule and pay for on-call hours, so the night burden is shared out.
A short review by sales and engineering before a quotation goes out, so scope and time are realistic.
A 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.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
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 skills grid for engineers by brand, industry and role, so gaps and single points of failure show.
Finds why engineers move and what would keep the ones you cannot replace.
Travel, on-call and rest rules for site and service engineers.
Headcount planned against the project pipeline and the gap between handovers.
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 manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator can struggle as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
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What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
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How a D2C founder can decide which digital marketing work to hire for, which to buy from an agency, and which to split, with a worksheet and a five step plan.
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A founder's guide to building job grades, titles and billing levels for a growing IT services firm, with a step-by-step method and a grade description outline.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
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.
All 7 business types in industrial automation and robotics · Find another business type
Tell us your industry, team size and the issue you want to address. Bring one example of where work gets delayed or ownership is unclear, and the deadline or decision you are working towards.
