Builder Business HiringFinding a chippy who turns up is hard. Keeping one who could run a site is harder.
Hiring for building companies: what you legally have to pay under the Building and Construction General On-site Award, what an apprentice really costs after incentives, how to find a supervisor who can run a site, and how to keep the good ones when the next builder offers more.
The week this is about
Sound Like Your Building Business?
You are still the only real supervisor
Three sites running and every sequencing call, every subcontractor no-show and every client question comes back to you. You cannot take a job further away because there is nobody who can run one without you standing on it.
Award rates and allowances are a guessing game
MA000020 sets the rates, and on top sit tool, travel, meal and industry allowances that most builders apply by feel. Get the adult apprentice rate or an allowance wrong across a crew and the back-pay bill is real.
You train them and the next builder takes them
Four years teaching an apprentice to set out, frame and finish properly, and he leaves not long after getting his ticket for a bit more an hour. There is no plan for what he was working towards, so there was nothing holding him.
While you are the only person who can run a site, the company cannot grow, cannot be sold and cannot survive a fortnight without you.
Hiring and team
Here Is What We Do About It.
Hiring, team and leadership training in the Learning Hub covers what to pay, how to recruit and how to build a crew that stays. Greg works through the big hiring calls with you directly. And the hires have changed: agents can now do the quoting, invoicing and chasing your way, so the people you add are the ones facing your customers and leading your crew.
Free tool, no sign-up
Apprentice cost calculator
Wages and on-costs are the easy part. This adds the weeks they are at trade school, the on-site hours that never reach an invoice, and the supervision time that pulls a qualified tradesperson off their own work, then gives you what one billable apprentice hour actually costs. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Work out the real costHow it works
Three Steps, Starting Tonight.
Hire before you are desperate
Every bad hire in this industry happens in the same week: the week you were already too busy. The training covers hiring on a plan instead of on a panic.
Give them a system to follow
People do not fail because they are lazy. They fail because nobody wrote down what good looks like. That is why systems and hiring are the same problem.
Lead them, then get off the tools
Greg works the bit that is genuinely hard: running a team when you were trained as a tradesperson, and letting go of work you can do faster yourself.
Why you get me
I built the coaching company everyone else runs. Then I took it apart.
Most coaching companies work the same way. You enquire, you get a salesperson. You sign up, you get a coach who has never run a trade business.
I know, because I built one. I grew the Academy to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches. It ran without me.
And I hated it. The bigger it got, the further I was from the owners I started it for.
What gets me up in the morning is getting under the hood of a trade business and helping the owner hit their goals in the least time possible.
So I restructured the whole thing.
When you enquire, you speak to me. If you are accepted into the Academy, you work with me. Directly.
And with agentic AI, the results come sooner than most owners can imagine.
Places are limited. I only take on owners who are committed and ready to do the work.
Who you will be talking to
I built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with more than 1,950+ five-star reviews.
A general manager runs it day to day. I live in Byron Bay.
I have trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.
What AI actually changes
The old way. The new way.
More customers meant more people doing your computer work, and you paying for all of it.
You stay with your customers and your team. Agents run the office your way.
The old way
Grow, then hire people to do the computer work.
Every new customer brought more quoting, invoicing, chasing, scheduling and reporting.
So you hired people to do it. Office staff, bookkeepers, admin.
None of it is billable, and every hire costs wages, sick leave and another person to manage.
Profit and time only grew as fast as you could add people.
The new way
Keep the human work. Give everything else to agents.
Your people do what only people can do: looking after customers and leading the team.
Everything else goes to agents that do it your way, instantly, any time it is needed.
No sick leave. No capacity problems. They scale as far as the business does.
So the only people you add are the ones facing your customers and your team.
A human-centred business that runs on systems you build in minutes. Nobody still running the old way can compete with it.
What changes
What Building Business Hiring Actually Changes.
Three things building business owners walk away able to do.
Pay your carpenters, labourers and apprentices correctly under MA000020
Hire an apprentice knowing the wage, the incentives and the true cost to you
Build a supervisor who can run a site without you on it every day
Questions
Builder Business Hiring, Answered.
What award covers builders and carpenters in Australia?
What does it actually cost to put on an apprentice in 2026?
How do I get a supervisor I can trust to run a site?
Builders
The Other Ways We Help Builders.
Builder Business Training
Structured training that turns what builders know on the tools into a business that runs properly.
CoachingBuilder Business Coaching
Greg Allan in your corner, holding builders to the plan. By application.
SystemsBuilder Business Systems
The documented process that lets the work happen properly when builders are not standing there.
The free appBuilder Business App
Lessons, tools and a room full of other owners, free for builders with an active ABN.
Marketing and leadsBuilder Business Marketing
How builders get the phone ringing with the jobs worth having, not just the cheap ones.
Pricing and profitBuilder Business Pricing
The number builders should actually be charging, worked out properly rather than guessed.
Have a Chat With Greg About Your Business.
An hour with Greg, one on one, about anything in your trade business. By application: if his diary is full, you join his waitlist and he invites you. He only takes owners who are committed.