What Should a Trade Business Fix Before Hiring More People?

The short answer

Before any trade business hiring, fix the things that make every decision run through you. That means a repeatable way of running a job, a phone number and systems that belong to the business, numbers that prove you can afford the person, and a proper hiring process. If the new person would just end up ringing you all day, sort that out first.

Why doesn’t hiring automatically make a trade business easier?

Most trade business hiring happens when the owner is flat out. The phone’s going, quotes are piling up and you’re doing paperwork at night. Another tradie or an office person looks like the fastest way out.

Sometimes it is. But a new person needs work, tools, information, training and someone to answer their questions. If all of that lives in your head, you’ve added a wage and another person who needs you, and your week gets longer.

I learned this at scale. At the peak, Smartfix had 130+ staff across four offices, managers managing managers, and it lost money. Now we’re about 30 staff in one office, it’s profitable and the stress is way down. More people doesn’t mean a better team.

When Anthony Lawlor from Nimbus Tech came on the podcast, he put it really simply. Anthony runs an IT business that looks after support and security for other businesses, and Smartfix has been a customer since he started. Before going out on his own, he spent over 10 years in IT, about five of them in managed services. He walked away from those bigger businesses with two things he wanted to get right in his own:

What processes should be in place before you hire?

A 100-page operations manual can wait. Before your first tradie starts, the important parts of a job should happen the same way every time, whoever’s doing them.

Anthony described process as having one agreed way of doing the work, so it can be replicated and everyone is held to the same bar. His word for it was consistency.

Walk through a job from first call to payment and ask who handles each step:

• How an enquiry gets answered and where the customer’s details go
• Who books the job and what information the tradie gets before they arrive
• How extra work on site gets quoted and approved
• What happens when the job’s finished: photos, certificates, invoice, warranty paperwork
• What happens when the customer calls back six months later

At Smartfix every stage has a checklist. The person quoting has one, the office checks it, the installer has a work order with his own checklist, and the next person checks that. Jobs run through ServiceM8 and the installers talk on Microsoft Teams. When we miss a step, it’s the customer who suffers, because they don’t get their electrical safety certificate or their invoice. If you’re starting from scratch, have a read of what systems a residential trade business actually needs.

Is your business set up around you or around the business?

Small decisions you make early get hard to undo later. The phone number is the classic one.

I had calls with some new coaching clients recently who were still using their personal mobile as the main business number. I did that at the very beginning too, then changed it quickly. Back then I used my home landline and diverted it to my mobile. Every customer saves whatever number you give them. When you hire admin or go on holiday, you want to divert one office number to someone else, and these days a soft phone on a computer makes that easy.

Anthony set Nimbus Tech up this way from day one. In his job system he used generic addresses like support, accounts and sales, because he planned to grow and didn’t want everything sitting under his name. His suppliers told him it was a good start, because they’d seen companies try to unpick it later. He admitted he’d still fallen into the mobile number trap himself and was moving people onto the office line.

Your number, email, quoting, scheduling and customer notes should belong to the business. If admin is the next hire you’re weighing up, read when to hire your first admin or operations manager.

Can the business actually afford another person?

Being busy for a month is a bad reason to hire. Before any trade business hiring decision, check you’ve got enough steady work and money to carry the person when it goes quiet.

Wages are only part of it. Depending on the role there’s super, a vehicle, fuel, tools, insurance, uniforms, software, training and your own time getting them up to speed.

Anthony told me the moment he knew he’d made the right call was putting on his second employee. All of a sudden there were two mouths to feed, and they had families relying on him. Before he made the decision he went through all the numbers he had to make sure the business could cover it. Now, every time a new customer means he can afford another staff member, he reinvests it straight back in.

There’s another trap here. Anthony already has a couple of people in mind he’d love to bring on, and they’re keen. They might take another job before he’s ready, and he’s fine with that. I said to him on the day that you don’t want to take someone too early if you’re not ready, because it’s risky for you and for them. If your numbers feel shaky, read why so many trade businesses feel busy but not profitable.

What trade business hiring mistakes should you fix first?

My biggest trade business hiring mistakes all came from rushing. Early on I hired off what looked good on a resume and hired out of pain. The first reasonable person got the job.

The worst was a guy I offered a job on the spot because we were desperate. He was late every day, disappeared off jobs for hours, and it sent a bad message to the rest of the team. One bad hire like that costs you more than the empty role ever did.

Now we do a short phone interview first, which rules out about half the candidates. Then an in-person interview with a set list of questions, a probation period and structured reviews, and we’ve got a HR and operations manager looking after it. Check the Fair Work Ombudsman website for the basics on awards, probation and your obligations before you advertise.

The framework I teach in my hiring workshop has five steps:

1. Know the role. Write down the outcomes you need, beyond a list of tasks.
2. Attract the right people with a proper job ad.
3. Interview with confidence and a set list of questions.
4. Onboard properly: before day one, day one, week one, day 30 and day 90.
5. Keep and grow them, and fix problems early.

Look past the technical skills too. Anthony reckons customer service and communication is “probably the most valuable skill”, and it carries across any industry. I see it with young tradies who come from big new-build companies. They might have spent two years chipping out wall boxes and never had to talk to a homeowner. We can train that, but you need to know it’s coming.

Where do the best people come from?

Some of our best staff have come through referrals. When we need another electrician, we ask our good tradies first and pay them if they find someone good enough. They won’t put their name to someone who isn’t any good.

We’ve also grown people from inside. Fin started as an apprentice and now runs installations. Josh was on the road and now he’s in the office running sales. Our HR and operations manager started on the phones. People respect being trained and given somewhere to go.

Anthony knew his first two hires before he took them on, which already put him ahead of someone scrolling through Seek. If you’ve got good people around you, look there first.

How do you know your systems and team are ready?

The best test I know is what happens when the owner goes away for a while.

Anthony recently took three weeks off, after never really having a holiday that long in his life. For the first couple of days he kept an eye on things. Then he switched off and barely thought about it for the rest of the trip.

His team works partly from home, and he doesn’t watch whether they’re sitting at their desks. If the work’s getting done and customers aren’t coming back unhappy, he’s happy. That only works when the right people have a clear process to follow. In a trade business you can’t follow every van around Perth either, so your team needs to know what they can decide on site and when they ring the office. I wrote more on that in how to step off the tools without losing control.

What would I fix first before hiring?

Before you put the ad up, I’d go through this list:

• Can you write down what this person will be responsible for, as outcomes?
• Is there enough steady work and money to carry them through a quiet patch?
• Are your main job steps written down or at least done the same way every time?
• Do customers ring the business, or do they ring you?
• Do you have a phone screen, set interview questions and an onboarding plan ready?

If you answered no to two or more, start there before any trade business hiring. If you’re weighing up who that first person should be, read who to hire first in a plumbing business.

I talk about this stuff with other owners at my Perth networking nights and inside Hypotential membership. Come along to one, or listen to the full episode with Anthony first.