Panels, inverters, mounting structures, water heaters and street lights are made for homes, farms and utility projects. This page covers cell and module line staff, electronics assembly, fabrication and the field teams who install the product.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsA solar equipment business may make panels, inverters, batteries, water heaters, lights or mounting structures, and often more than one. A module line has stringers, laminators, framers and testers working in clean, fixed steps. An inverter bench has electronics assemblers, testers and burn-in staff. A structure shop has fabricators, galvanisers and painters. Orders swing with government schemes, tenders and seasons, so teams grow fast and then wait. Installation crews work at heights on rooftops and fields, and their work reflects on the brand. Technology changes quickly, and staff need regular retraining. Related reading: 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 solar equipment manufacturers. 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.
Volumes rise and fall with policy and project timing, and hiring plans lag behind.
Cells and glass break easily, and handling skill depends on training that new hands rarely get.
Technicians who read IV curves and burn-in logs are scarce, and exits leave a gap in quality.
Roof and field installation brings falls, electrical and heat risks, and training records are weak.
Service staff travel to far sites with limited records of earlier installs.
New cell types and inverter models arrive, and staff are shown changes informally.
Assemblers, fabricators and installers differ in pay and status, causing friction.
Project dates cause late nights, with errors in wiring or labelling.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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.
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 solar equipment manufacturers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A quarterly view of orders, line hours and trained cover, with trained extra hands inducted in advance.
A quarterly view of orders, line hours and trained cover, with trained extra hands inducted in advance. See recruitment process.
A short course on handling cells and glass, with supervised practice and sign-off.
A short course on handling cells and glass, with supervised practice and sign-off. See the learning and development process.
A path from helper to technician to lead, with documented test methods.
A path from helper to technician to lead, with documented test methods. See HR documentation.
Training, harness checks, permit steps and a record of who is cleared for roof work.
Training, harness checks, permit steps and a record of who is cleared for roof work. See health, safety and wellbeing.
A record of installs, faults and visits, shared across engineers.
A record of installs, faults and visits, shared across engineers.
A common grade structure so assemblers, fabricators and installers see fair steps.
A common grade structure so assemblers, fabricators and installers see fair steps. See compensation benchmarking.
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.
Height, electrical and handling routines with training records.
Training for line, test and installation teams as products change.
Planned hiring for order swings, with technicians and installers sourced early.
A fair pay structure across assembly, fabrication and field 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 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
How a D2C founder can decide which digital marketing work to hire for, which to buy from an agency, and which to split, with a worksheet and a five step plan.
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
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.
Keep a core crew, a trained pool of extra hands and a quarterly view of the order book.
Height, electrical and tool safety with records. Ask a qualified professional about certificates and rules.
Give a ladder, fair pay and a role in quality decisions.
Often yes, with induction. Confirm with a qualified professional.
Schedule short briefings and practice sessions before a new model reaches the line.
We would ask about order swings, test staff cover and installer safety records. A good first job is a workforce plan and installer safety record. After a first talk, scope and fee are put in writing.
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