A granite quarry earns by lifting clean blocks out of the hill and getting them onto trucks. Drillers, operators, cutters and loaders must work in step, and one missing operator can idle the whole bench for the day.
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Share your requirementsA granite quarry opens the hill in benches, drills and splits the rock, lifts blocks with excavators and cranes, and loads them for polishing units or export. Some owners also run a cutting and dressing yard beside the pit. The crew is a mix: permanent operators and mechanics, drillers and wedge-men paid by output, and contractor gangs who come and go with the order book. Work is outdoors, noisy, dusty and hot, and rain can stop it for days. Orders arrive in lumps, so crews swell and shrink. This page sits under the wider energy and utilities sector and the mining and quarrying hub.
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.
Gangs arrive from villages by truck, and the number who start work differs from the number on the list. Wages and output both rest on a figure nobody counted.
When the only trained excavator operator is absent, drilling, lifting and loading all wait. Nobody has been shown how to stand in.
Wedge-men on output pay sit beside helpers on a day wage, and arguments start over who cut what and who carried what.
Workers leave for farms and villages with little notice, and returning dates are uncertain, so planning a loading schedule becomes hard.
New hands learn the pit edge, blasting hours and truck movement from whoever is nearby. Who was told what is rarely written.
The gang leader collects the money and the owner often has no record of who actually worked or was paid.
Trucks queue for blocks at odd hours, and drivers and loaders stretch shifts without rest or a proper roster.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Employee Administration; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for energy and utilities, not in general.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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.
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.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a granite quarries business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A simple entry by name, gang and bench each morning, checked by a mate at the bench.
What this coversHideA simple entry by name, gang and bench each morning, checked by a mate at the bench. The attendance, shift and leave process sets the routine.
Choose a person for every excavator, crane and rig who can stand in, and give them supervised hours on it each month.
What this coversHideChoose a person for every excavator, crane and rig who can stand in, and give them supervised hours on it each month.
State which tasks pay by day, by block and by tonne, and how disputed output is settled.
What this coversHideState which tasks pay by day, by block and by tonne, and how disputed output is settled. The compensation and rewards strategy work covers the logic.
Look at the last two years of absences and plan a larger reserve before harvest and festival weeks.
What this coversHideLook at the last two years of absences and plan a larger reserve before harvest and festival weeks.
A short practical session at the bench edge, with a sign-off by a supervisor.
What this coversHideA short practical session at the bench edge, with a sign-off by a supervisor. The workplace health, safety and wellbeing service covers the routine.
A list of each contractor gang, its leader, its members and the dates worked, kept at the site office.
What this coversHideA list of each contractor gang, its leader, its members and the dates worked, kept at the site office.
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.
One gate-and-bench record of who worked, on which shift, so wages and output rest on a counted figure.
A pit-edge induction and a record of who has been taught what, which holds up when a contractor gang changes.
A way to find and trial operators and drillers early, with a bench of standby names before the season starts.
A clear pay basis for day wage, block rate and tonne rate, so gangs stop arguing over every sheet.
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 energy and utilities, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Engineers, technicians and operators leave energy and utilities firms for reasons that differ by project and plant. How to listen, ask better questions and act.
6 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 article
How to design incentives for operators, setters and inspectors in fastener, gear, spring and valve units so that accepted lots, not piece counts, earn the bonus.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Enough that one absence never stops a bench. Look at how often each machine was idle for want of a person last year, then train one backup per machine and add more for the heaviest equipment.
Keep a register at the site office with each gang leader, the names of members and the days they worked. Ask the leader to sign it weekly. It gives you a record when payments or disputes are raised.
Where the pit edge is, how trucks and machines move, blasting hours and signals, and what protective items must be worn. Show it on the ground, in the local language, and note who was shown.
They can, if each task has one stated basis and disputes go to one named person. Put the basis in writing before the work starts. Confusion about who is paid for what is the usual source of trouble.
Mark the weeks of high absence from the last two years, then line up extra hands and reorder loading before those weeks. Speak to gang leaders early about who will return and when.
We would ask how many people were in the pit on a recent day against the wage sheet, which machines have no backup operator and how contractor gangs are recorded. A gate count plus a standby operator plan is a good first project, with scope written down for your approval.
All 5 business types in mining & quarrying businesses · Find another business type
See all HR topics for energy and utilities, or another industry.
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