Why construction and real estate employees leave and how to understand why
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 articleA waterproofing contractor treats terraces, basements, bathrooms and tanks with chemicals and membranes, then stands behind the result for years. This is how to run people when skill, fumes and callbacks decide the reputation.

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 waterproofing contractor surveys leaks, then treats roofs, terraces, bathrooms, basements, water tanks and external walls. The team has surveyors who diagnose, estimators, supervisors, trained applicators, helpers who prepare surfaces and a service crew for callbacks. Work involves chemicals, bitumen torches, cement slurries and injection grouts, often in closed spaces and heat. Success depends on surface preparation, correct layers, curing time and a flood test, all of which are easy to skip when the customer is impatient. Guarantees run for years, so poor work returns as unpaid callbacks. Applicators learn from older hands, and variation in method shows up months later after the first monsoon. 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 waterproofing contractors. 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.
Solvents, bitumen fumes and open flames in closed basements or tanks cause headaches, burns and collapse.
Cleaning, repair of cracks and priming are slow and unseen, so crews cut them to finish the day.
A customer wants the terrace back in use, so the flood test is shortened and failure appears at the first rains.
Repeat visits for old jobs pull good applicators off new work, and nobody knows which crew caused the failure.
Layers, overlaps and thickness depend on the applicator, and there is no record of what was done.
Complaints cluster in a few weeks, and crews are stretched and tempted to patch rather than diagnose.
Young helpers handle chemicals and torches without proper protection or briefing.
A surveyor's diagnosis is changed on site by a crew leader, and the customer is told something different.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Learning and Development; Performance 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.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
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 waterproofing contractors business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Respirators for solvent work, ventilation and a gas check for closed spaces, fire extinguishers near torches and no lone work in tanks.
Respirators for solvent work, ventilation and a gas check for closed spaces, fire extinguishers near torches and no lone work in tanks. See safety steps.
A sheet covering surface preparation, primer, layers, thickness, curing time and flood test, signed by the applicator and supervisor with photos.
A sheet covering surface preparation, primer, layers, thickness, curing time and flood test, signed by the applicator and supervisor with photos.
A portion of crew pay released after a passed test or a clear first monsoon.
A portion of crew pay released after a passed test or a clear first monsoon. Match to your pay steps.
A job register naming crew, materials and dates, so callbacks can be traced and trained.
A job register naming crew, materials and dates, so callbacks can be traced and trained. Hold it with your employee records.
A surge team, a triage list for complaints and a rule that diagnosis comes before treatment.
A surge team, a triage list for complaints and a rule that diagnosis comes before treatment.
A short practical assessment on preparation and application, with a refresher yearly.
A short practical assessment on preparation and application, with a refresher yearly. Use a learning plan.
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.
Chemical, fume, flame and confined space rules with an injury log.
A common method and assessment so crews apply the same layers every time.
Pay tied partly to passed tests to reward lasting work.
Job and crew records that make callbacks traceable.
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 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 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 articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Provide respirators, ventilation and gas checks in closed spaces, never work alone in tanks, and brief helpers before chemicals are opened.
Use a checklist with photos before and after preparation, signed by the applicator and the supervisor.
Record who did each job, review failures with the crew, and hold part of pay until a test or first monsoon passes.
Write curing and test times into the quotation and explain that early use voids the guarantee.
Use a practical assessment, a standard method sheet and refreshers, with a mentor for new joiners.
Share the survey report with the crew before work, and require the surveyor's approval for any change on site.
All 109 business types in construction and real estate · Find another business type
See all HR topics for construction and real estate, or another industry.
Tell us what is slowing your team down. We’ll help you find a practical way forward, starting with a conversation.