Solar firms grow in project waves and work on roofs and live systems. Here is how to staff crews, keep people safe and hold on to experienced technicians.
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Share your requirementsA solar installer or EPC company sells, designs, installs and maintains rooftop and ground-mounted systems for homes, businesses and institutions. Work comes in project waves, with sales and design staff winning orders, engineers planning, and installation crews carrying out the work on roofs and at height, with electrical connections at the end. After installation, service teams handle maintenance and performance. The industry is young and growing, and experienced people are scarce. Crews are formed per project, often with casual labour for the heavy parts, and the company's reputation rests on safe, well-finished systems. See also HR for energy and utilities. What makes HR different here is the combination of a young industry and old hazards. Roofs, ladders and live electrical work have been dangerous for as long as buildings have existed, while the businesses doing them are new, growing quickly and short of experienced supervisors. Routines for safety, authorisation and crew planning, written early, matter more than they do in an older, steadier trade.
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.
Roofs, ladders and edges are part of every job, and fall protection is followed unevenly.
A large order requires many people at once, and a quiet month follows.
Heavy and repetitive work is done by people engaged by the day, and nobody can list them.
Final connections and commissioning are done by people whose authorisation has not been checked.
Competitors and utilities attract the people who understand the systems well.
Promises made at sale are not known to the crews who must deliver them.
Maintenance is staffed from whoever is free, and customers notice.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for energy and utilities, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
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.
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.
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 installers and epc companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Equipment issued, checked and recorded, anchor points confirmed and a supervisor who stops the job if it is missing.
What this coversHideEquipment issued, checked and recorded, anchor points confirmed and a supervisor who stops the job if it is missing. The health, safety and wellbeing work builds the routine.
People needed by month from confirmed orders and likely ones, with a core team and a pool of registered casuals.
What this coversHidePeople needed by month from confirmed orders and likely ones, with a core team and a pool of registered casuals. The workforce plan holds it.
Name, identity, contact, dates, pay and a short briefing on the site's hazards before the first day.
What this coversHideName, identity, contact, dates, pay and a short briefing on the site's hazards before the first day.
Only people with the right competence record connect and commission, and it is recorded.
What this coversHideOnly people with the right competence record connect and commission, and it is recorded. The employee information management holds it.
A one-page hand-over from sales to installation, with what was promised and what the customer expects.
What this coversHideA one-page hand-over from sales to installation, with what was promised and what the customer expects.
A named service team and schedule, not whoever is free.
What this coversHideA named service team and schedule, not whoever is free.
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.
A fall-protection and electrical safety routine that holds under schedule pressure.
Crew plans from your order book, with a core and a registered casual pool.
A competence and authorisation record, so only cleared people commission systems.
A look at how to keep scarce, experienced technicians.
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 energy and utilities, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Engineers, technicians and operators leave energy and utilities firms for reasons that differ by project and plant. How to listen, ask better questions and act.
6 min readRead article
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 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
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.
Make fall protection a start-of-job rule, check equipment, confirm anchor points and let a supervisor stop the job if anything is missing. Confirm the obligations that apply with a qualified professional.
From the order book, with a core team and a registered pool of casuals who are briefed in advance. Do not wait for the peak to start looking.
Only people whose competence and authorisation are recorded and current. What applies to you depends on your work, so confirm it with a qualified professional.
Pay fairly, give them a visible path and responsibility, and make sure they are not constantly overloaded. Scarce people leave when they are overworked.
Through a one-page hand-over with what was promised and what the customer expects, signed by both sides.
If you maintain systems, yes, named and scheduled. A service that depends on whoever is free damages the reputation you built installing.
We would talk through how a roof job actually starts, who the casual roof labour are and whether they are on any record, and who connects and commissions systems at the end. A sensible first piece of work is a simple crew briefing and registration routine, built around your order book. Scope and what you get are agreed in writing afterwards, before any work begins.
Pair them with an experienced leader on live jobs, teach the safety routine first and give them a short programme on briefing a crew and handling the customer. Promote on reliability, then teach the rest.
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