Roofing is skilled work done at height and in the weather. Here is how to staff crews, keep them safe and manage the swings of the season.
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Share your requirementsA roofing contractor lays and repairs roofs on houses, warehouses, factories and sheds: sheet metal, tiles, waterproofing membranes, RCC treatment and insulation. The work depends on weather. Before the monsoon, there is a rush to fix leaks and replace sheets, and in the rains most exterior work stops. Crews work on slopes and edges, carry heavy material up ladders, and face heat on exposed surfaces. A firm usually has a small core of supervisors and fitters, plus gangs brought in by a lead roofer for larger jobs. Customers often judge the roofer by whether the roof stops leaking the following rainy season, months after payment. See also HR for construction and real estate. The defining point of this business is that safety at height and a reliable team are the first conditions of every job.
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.
Harnesses are available but not worn, edges are unprotected, and everyone has a story about a close call that was never recorded.
Every customer wants the roof done before the first showers, so the firm overbooks, rushes crews and has little work afterwards.
Summer work on metal sheets brings exhaustion and dehydration, and long hours are worked without breaks or water points.
A leak that returns is blamed on whoever did the job, but no record shows which crew did it or what was used.
New hands learn by watching, and a lead roofer who leaves takes decades of technique and the confidence of his gang.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Learning and Development; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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.
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.
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 roofing contractors business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A short briefing before every job, a check by the supervisor and a record of who was on the roof, set out in the health and safety routine.
What this coversHideA short briefing before every job, a check by the supervisor and a record of who was on the roof, set out in the health and safety routine.
A booking limit for the pre-rain rush, a list of indoor and workshop tasks for rainy weeks and a retainer for the best roofers.
What this coversHideA booking limit for the pre-rain rush, a list of indoor and workshop tasks for rainy weeks and a retainer for the best roofers. See workforce planning.
Work shifted to early mornings and late afternoons, water points and rest breaks, with attendance noted through the shift and attendance process.
What this coversHideWork shifted to early mornings and late afternoons, water points and rest breaks, with attendance noted through the shift and attendance process.
Crew names, materials, sealant batches and photos, so a leak next year can be traced and learned from.
What this coversHideCrew names, materials, sealant batches and photos, so a leak next year can be traced and learned from.
A defined apprenticeship over several jobs with skills ticked off, so technique is passed on rather than lost.
What this coversHideA defined apprenticeship over several jobs with skills ticked off, so technique is passed on rather than lost. The learning and development work shows how.
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 routines and heat precautions that are used on every job, with simple records.
Planning around the pre-rain rush and the slow months so crews do not drift away.
An apprenticeship route that passes the lead roofer's skill to the next generation.
A look at why roofers leave and what keeps your best crews returning every season.
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
A laminated notice, an annual drill, and an incident register with three entries in two years. What workplace health and safety looks like when it is real.
7 min readRead article
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead article
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Provide good equipment that fits, make the supervisor responsible for checking before work starts, and treat a missed check as seriously as a missed measurement. Habits follow what the supervisor insists on.
Count what your crews can finish safely in the weeks available, not what customers want. Overbooking leads to rushed work and leaks in the first heavy rain.
Offer workshop fabrication, indoor repair or a small retainer for the best hands, and tell them early what work is coming. People leave when they cannot see income ahead.
Both models exist. Whichever you choose, write down rates, safety duties and who is responsible for rework. Confirm the legal position with a qualified professional.
Pair a junior with a lead roofer on several jobs, with a short list of skills to be learned and signed off. A paid mentoring role makes the senior more willing to teach.
Harness use on your recent jobs would be the opening topic, followed by how many pre-monsoon bookings your crews can truly handle. We would also trace one roof that leaked again back to its crew and material. A sensible first piece of work is a simple edge-protection rule with a job file for each roof. Scope is then confirmed with you in writing.
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