A packaged drinking water supplier fills and delivers jars, bottles and pouches to homes, offices and shops. Plant hygiene and on-time delivery depend on plant operators, drivers and loaders who must follow clean routines every day and turn up before dawn.
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Share your requirementsA packaged drinking water supplier treats water, fills it into 20-litre jars, bottles or pouches and delivers it to homes, offices, shops and events. A small plant crew runs the treatment and filling lines, a quality person tests samples, and a larger group of drivers, helpers and loaders moves jars on routes that start early and end late. Orders rise sharply in summer and for weddings and functions. The plant must stay clean and records must show it, while delivery must be reliable or customers switch to the next supplier. Staff are mostly local, paid by day or by jar, and turnover in the delivery team is high. The wider HR for energy, utilities and environment page covers what water and utility businesses share.
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 packaged drinking water suppliers. 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 skipped wash step or a tired line worker leads to a complaint, and the owner has no record showing who did what on that shift.
Routes begin early and a late helper delays a whole truck, so homes and offices ring the owner while the plant waits to load.
Peak weeks need extra loaders and drivers hired in days, with little induction and a high chance of breakage and accidents.
Delivery staff paid per jar or per trip argue over counts, returns and empties, and the clerk spends hours reconciling slips.
Jars are carried up stairs and loaded all day, and back and shoulder problems go unrecorded until the person stops coming.
If the one person who understands the treatment stages is absent, the batch waits or is run carelessly.
Collection money and returned jars are handled by drivers and helpers, and gaps surface only at month end.
People handling jars and filling lines need to be well and clean, but nobody tracks illness, hand hygiene or protective items.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Employee Administration; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for energy and utilities, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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.
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 packaged drinking water suppliers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Each shift signs for cleaning, sanitising and sampling steps, so a complaint can be traced to a shift.
Each shift signs for cleaning, sanitising and sampling steps, so a complaint can be traced to a shift. The HR documentation process keeps these records tidy.
Every treatment and filling step has two trained people, with a short sign-off in the learning and development process.
Every treatment and filling step has two trained people, with a short sign-off in the learning and development process.
Drivers and helpers sign in at the plant before loading, and late arrivals are noted, using the attendance and shift process.
Drivers and helpers sign in at the plant before loading, and late arrivals are noted, using the attendance and shift process.
Counts are taken at loading and at return, signed by the helper and the clerk, and the rule is shared in writing.
Counts are taken at loading and at return, signed by the helper and the clerk, and the rule is shared in writing.
A short practical session on carrying, stair use and truck loading, with a reminder before the summer peak.
A short practical session on carrying, stair use and truck loading, with a reminder before the summer peak. The health and safety work covers it.
Names of earlier seasonal staff are kept so they can be called back with a short refresher instead of a fresh induction.
Names of earlier seasonal staff are kept so they can be called back with a short refresher instead of a fresh induction.
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.
Shift hygiene sheets and joining papers that answer a complaint or an inspection.
Cross-training with sign-offs so no single operator holds the plant.
Route start records and a fair way to cover absence without delaying loading.
Lifting, loading and personal hygiene routines that cut injuries and absence.
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
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
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 founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
At least two for every treatment and filling step, so illness or leave does not stop a batch. Sign off each person after they have shown the step.
Count at loading and at return, have both the helper and the clerk sign, and settle differences the same day rather than at month end.
Either can work if the rule is written, the counts are checked and basic pay is not left uncertain. Confirm the structure with a qualified professional.
Daily cleaning and sanitising sheets by shift, sampling entries, who was on the line and any illness reported. Keep them signed and dated.
Plan seasonal hiring early, recall past seasonal staff, give a half-day induction and put each new person with an experienced driver.
We would ask how complaints are traced back to a shift, how many deliveries started late last week and who can cover the plant. A good opening project is a hygiene sheet plus route sign-in. Scope is written for you to accept or change.
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