Plotted development companies buy land, lay out plots with roads and utilities, and sell them to buyers. This is how to run land, approvals, site and sales teams when income depends on layout sell-through.
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Share your requirementsA plotted development company buys land, gets approvals, builds internal roads, drains and utilities, and sells plots. The team includes land acquisition staff who negotiate with owners, an approvals team that works with offices, site engineers who build the layout infrastructure, and a sales force that includes direct staff and channel partners. Customers pay in instalments, so collections and follow-up matter as much as sales. After sale, buyers need registration support, boundary marking and updates on infrastructure. The firm is small on construction and heavy on paperwork and persuasion. Market cycles change quickly, and a slow quarter can strand staff on commissions. Because land is local, teams depend on a few people who know the area and its owners. For the wider sector, read HR for construction and real estate.
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 plotted development 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.
The land manager who knows the owners can take the relationship, and the next purchase, with them when they leave.
A pending approval stops sales and site work, and the approvals team is blamed for delays outside its control.
A quiet quarter leaves commission staff with no income, and a good one burns the team on site visits.
Independent agents sell plots under the company name, make promises, and the firm answers for them.
Sales staff move to the next layout and nobody chases overdue buyers until the pile is large.
Buyers were told roads and lights would be ready and call the sales team when they are not.
A plot marked wrongly or a neighbour's complaint pulls engineers and sales staff into conflict.
One engineer looks after several layouts across districts, with little supervision.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Employee Relations; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
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.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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 plotted development companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A record of owners, brokers and past deals, shared with a second manager, and a clear rule for pending deals on exit.
A record of owners, brokers and past deals, shared with a second manager, and a clear rule for pending deals on exit. Use your employee records.
A sales script and brochure checked by the site team for what can be promised on roads, drainage, lights and handover dates.
A sales script and brochure checked by the site team for what can be promised on roads, drainage, lights and handover dates.
A written code of conduct, approved materials, a commission schedule and a process for complaints.
A written code of conduct, approved materials, a commission schedule and a process for complaints. Introduce it in onboarding for staff and partners.
A separate follow-up desk with reminders, buyer status and escalation steps, so instalments do not lapse.
A separate follow-up desk with reminders, buyer status and escalation steps, so instalments do not lapse.
Plain rules for direct staff, with payment dates and clawbacks, linked to payroll steps.
Plain rules for direct staff, with payment dates and clawbacks, linked to payroll steps.
One engineer accountable for each layout with weekly progress notes visible to sales.
One engineer accountable for each layout with weekly progress notes visible to sales.
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.
Commission, clawback and incentive rules that keep sales staff steady through quiet quarters.
Records of land relationships and roles so exits do not break deals.
Training sales staff and partners on what can and cannot be promised.
A fair route for complaints about partners, mis-selling and disputes between staff.
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 construction and real estate, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Site engineers, supervisors, crews and sales teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between projects.
8 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
An employee brings you a complaint about their supervisor. What happens next should not depend on who is in the room. A grievance procedure a small company can actually run.
8 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.
Give them a written code, approved material and a clear commission schedule, and act on complaints quickly. Ask a qualified professional about the legal status of such arrangements.
Offer fair pay, a share in results and a clear career path. Record relationships in a firm file.
A base that covers essentials plus commission for closed sales, with clear rules for part credit and clawbacks.
Have engineers approve sales material and share weekly progress with sales.
A dedicated collections desk with reminders and escalation, not the same person who sold the plot.
We can help with commission rules, a partner code, role maps for land and approvals, and staff records. Legal matters go to a qualified professional.
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