A painting contractor sends gangs to repaint homes, offices and buildings. The result is judged by finish, cleanliness and speed. The owner's challenge is a workforce of daily-wage painters, ladders, and customers who inspect everything.
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Share your requirementsA painting contractor repaints flats, villas, offices, shops and buildings, inside and out. Work moves through surface preparation, putty, primer, paint coats and touch-ups. Painters are usually engaged by the day or the square foot, often in gangs led by a head painter who brings his own men. Work at height on ladders, planks and rope cradles is routine, as are fumes and dust. Customers inspect finish, edges, spills and cleanliness, and often live in the house during the job. Timelines are tight, especially before festivals and moves. The owner buys paint or has the customer supply it, and disputes arise over coats, coverage and wastage. A good head painter is the key to quality. See also HR for facility management.
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 painters. 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.
Putty and sanding are cut short and the finish shows every flaw within months.
Ladders, planks and cradles are rigged by habit and not checked, and a fall is a serious injury.
Workers breathe thinner and fine dust without masks or ventilation.
What counts as a coat, how rework is paid and who pays for touch-ups are argued after the work.
If he leaves or demands more, the whole crew goes.
Floors, glass and furniture are stained, and the owner pays for cleaning.
Quantities are estimated and leftovers vanish, so material cost is hard to control.
Faults are noticed on the last day, and rework wipes out the margin.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
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.
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.
The pieces a painters business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Steps, drying times and a supervisor check before each coat.
Steps, drying times and a supervisor check before each coat. See HR documentation.
Ladder and plank checks, harness for cradles, and a stop rule for weather.
Ladder and plank checks, harness for cradles, and a stop rule for weather. The health and safety work covers it.
Gear for fumes and dust, with a short demonstration on joining.
Gear for fumes and dust, with a short demonstration on joining.
What a coat includes, how rework is paid and what is deducted, shown to each painter.
What a coat includes, how rework is paid and what is deducted, shown to each painter. See payroll process management.
Each painter's name and phone on a list, with a second head painter who can lead.
Each painter's name and phone on a list, with a second head painter who can lead. The employee information management work helps.
A short checklist with the customer present, so faults are caught early.
A short checklist with the customer present, so faults are caught early.
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.
Work at height and fume care taught and checked.
Clear piece-rate and rework rules for painters.
Gang lists and a second head painter for each key site.
Surface-preparation standards and inspection checklists.
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 facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
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
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead article
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Fix a surface-preparation standard, check each stage before the next, inspect with the customer midway and note causes of rework. Most rework comes from rushed preparation.
Checked ladders and planks, harness for cradle work, masks for fumes and dust, ventilation and no work in bad weather. Teach and enforce.
By day or by area, but write down what a coat, a patch and rework mean. Share the rule before the job starts.
Know every worker, develop a second head painter and treat the head painter fairly. Do not rely on a single leader.
Issue quantities per room, record returns and compare with quote coverage at job end. Review gaps with the head painter.
We would ask how preparation is checked, how work at height is made safe and how painters are paid. A good opening project is a preparation checklist and a pay rule. Scope is written down for you to accept or change.
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