TradesBuildersHiring and team

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.

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A painted scene of a timber framed house on its slab with the roof trusses up, builders working along the top plate against an open sky

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.

A trade business owner working alone at the kitchen table late at night, laptop open and paperwork spread across the table, work boots and tool bag by the door

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.

An AI Coaching Call

Thirty minutes on what is capping the business, and what to fix first.

Learning Hub

The full lesson library inside the Tradies App, self paced, $199/month.

Freedom Fighter 1:1

One to one with your own dedicated expert, built around getting the owner free.

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 cost

How it works

Three Steps, Starting Tonight.

Step 1

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.

Step 2

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.

Step 3

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.

A small group of trade business owners in a coaching session, one of them explaining a plan at the head of the table

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

A trade business owner watching his child play sport on a Saturday morning, coffee in hand and phone face down
Nights and weekends back
A trade business owner and his partner in the kitchen looking at a tablet showing the numbers going up
Work that actually pays
A trade business owner shaking hands with a new apprentice in the work yard
A good hire who stays
A trade business owner standing calmly in the yard while his crew load two utes behind him
Out of the middle of everything
9,000+tradies trained4.9★Google rating4.9★App Store rating

Questions

Builder Business Hiring, Answered.

What award covers builders and carpenters in Australia?
The Building and Construction General On-site Award, MA000020, administered by the Fair Work Commission. It sets base rates plus tool, travel, meal and industry allowances. Fair Work's pay guide listed a Level 1 base of $25.46 an hour from 1 July 2025. New Zealand has no award system: you use employment agreements and the statutory minimum wage.
What does it actually cost to put on an apprentice in 2026?
Less than the award rate suggests once incentives are counted. From 1 January 2026 the Key Apprenticeship Program offers up to $5,000 to employers and up to $10,000 to apprentices in housing construction, per Australian Apprenticeships. Note that adult apprentices must be paid at least the national minimum wage under Fair Work rules.
How do I get a supervisor I can trust to run a site?
You build one, usually from a leading hand who already knows your standard. That needs a written sequence, a defined claim and variation process, and a clear standard for what finished looks like, so you are handing over a system rather than your instincts. Our hiring and leadership training and coaching walk you through both halves.

Builders

The Other Ways We Help Builders.

Training

Builder Business Training

Structured training that turns what builders know on the tools into a business that runs properly.

Coaching

Builder Business Coaching

A coach who has run a trade business, in your corner, holding builders to the plan.

Systems

Builder Business Systems

The documented process that lets the work happen properly when builders are not standing there.

The free app

Builder Business App

Lessons, tools and a room full of other owners, free for builders with an active ABN.

Marketing and leads

Builder Business Marketing

How builders get the phone ringing with the jobs worth having, not just the cheap ones.

Pricing and profit

Builder Business Pricing

The number builders should actually be charging, worked out properly rather than guessed.

Everything for builders
A painted scene of a trade business owner home before dark, sitting on the tray of his ute while his son runs to meet him

Talk It Through First.

Get started freeBook your AI Coaching Call

The Crew, daily Q&A, starter courses and your AI Coaching Call. Free with an active ABN. No card, no trial clock.

Turning over $10k a month or more? Thirty minutes, one on one, on what AI would actually do in your business, which part to build first, and how fast the Pathway gets you there.