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. Tradie Teams puts you with other trade owners solving the same crew problems, and Freedom Fighter 1:1 gives you a dedicated expert to build the supervisor layer that gets you off site.
How 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
The coaching goes into 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.
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
A coach who has run a trade business, in your corner, holding builders to the plan.
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.
Talk It Through First.
The Crew, daily Q&A, starter courses and your complimentary coaching session. Free with an active ABN. No card, no trial clock.
Turning over $20k a month or more? Thirty minutes, one on one with a trade business coach, on what is capping the business and what to fix first.