Roofing sheets, paints and bath fittings are made in different plants but sold through the same kind of network: dealers, plumbers, painters and contractors. The people side stretches well beyond the factory gate.
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Share your requirementsThese businesses make products that a household buys once in years, so sales run through dealers, architects, plumbers, painters and contractors rather than direct. Inside the plant, roofing lines run coil and sheet, paint units mix, tint and fill under solvent and dust controls, and bath fitting units cast, machine, plate and test taps and sanitaryware. Outside, field sales staff and technical representatives visit dealers and sites, handle complaints and train applicators. Plant people and market people seldom meet. Demand follows construction and festival seasons, so hiring is uneven. A tinting machine error or a leaking tap reaches a customer through a dealer, and everyone blames the nearest person. See also HR for manufacturing.
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 roofing, paints and bath fittings. 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 factory runs on shifts and targets, the field on visits and orders. Neither understands the other's problems, and complaints bounce between them.
A wrong shade or a leaking joint is found by a customer. Tracing it back to a batch, shift and operator depends on records that are thin.
Paint blending, plating and casting expose people to vapours and heat, and training and health records vary from unit to unit.
Representatives manage dealers across districts, and visit plans, targets and expense claims are hard to check.
Tinting machine operators and counter staff at dealers are not yours, yet a wrong match or poor advice lands on your brand.
Painters and plumbers recommend brands. Training them is a people task, but there is no record of who attended or how it helped.
Pre-festival and post-monsoon surges mean overtime and day hands, then slack months where good operators are let go.
Representatives learn products from a brochure, and customers notice the difference.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Learning and Development; Health, Safety and Wellbeing. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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.
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 roofing, paints and bath fittings business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A simple batch record that names who blended, filled or tested, so a complaint can be traced and the cause fixed.
A simple batch record that names who blended, filled or tested, so a complaint can be traced and the cause fixed. The hr documentation process covers what to keep.
Joint reviews where field staff bring complaints and plant staff explain causes, with actions written down.
Joint reviews where field staff bring complaints and plant staff explain causes, with actions written down.
A clear plan for dealer visits, reporting and expense claims, reviewed monthly.
A clear plan for dealer visits, reporting and expense claims, reviewed monthly. The performance management process can link targets to quality of work, not only volume.
A tested course for new sales hires, dealer counter staff and applicators, with attendance recorded.
A tested course for new sales hires, dealer counter staff and applicators, with attendance recorded. See learning and development.
Extraction, masks, break rules and medical checks in blending, plating and casting areas.
Extraction, masks, break rules and medical checks in blending, plating and casting areas. The health, safety and wellbeing work sets the routine.
A hiring plan tied to the order book, with a bench of known day hands.
A hiring plan tied to the order book, with a bench of known day hands. The recruitment process supports it.
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.
Product and application training for sales hires, dealer staff and applicators, with attendance on record.
Targets for field staff that balance volume, dealer health and complaint handling.
Routines for fumes, heat and heavy handling across blending, casting and plating areas.
Job descriptions, appointment letters and training records that stand up when a batch or a claim is questioned.
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 manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator often struggles as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
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 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 articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Keep batch records that name the shift and operator, review complaints with the plant team monthly and fix training or method before blaming anyone. Over time the pattern shows where help is needed.
Yes, even though they are not your employees. A short course on products and tinting or fitting advice, with a record of who attended, protects your brand. Dealer agreements should be checked by a qualified professional.
Agree a visit plan, a reporting format and a monthly review of dealer health, collections and complaints. Do not judge only by sales volume.
Build a list of past day hands, plan induction before the season and fix a standard pay and conditions note. That removes most last-minute scramble.
Fumes, spills, fire risk and handling of heavy drums. Training, extraction, protective gear and records of who was trained keep these under control.
We would ask how a complaint is traced, how field staff are managed and who trains dealer staff. A good opening project is a batch-record routine plus a product course for new hires. Scope is then written down for you to accept or change.
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