TradesElectriciansHiring and team

Electrician Business HiringThe right apprentice pays for himself. The wrong one costs you a year and a customer.

Hiring for electrical businesses: when to put on your first sparkie, what an apprentice really costs under the Electrical Award, how to run supervision so quality holds, and how to keep good people once the market comes for them.

A painted scene of a young electrician testing a circuit at an open switchboard, tester hanging on the rack beside him

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Electrical Business?

You cannot tell if you can afford the next hire

The work is there, but so is the wage, the super, the workers compensation, the allowances and a second van. You have run the numbers on the back of a docket three times and got a different answer each time, so you keep working Saturdays.

Every hire so far has come back on you

One did not turn up on Mondays, one could not be left on a board unsupervised, and one took your best domestic clients when he got his own licence. So now you do the hard jobs yourself and the business stays exactly the size of you.

Nobody knows what good looks like but you

There is no induction, no standard for how a job gets left, no review beyond a comment in the ute. So quality depends on which sparkie got the job, and you are the one going back to fix the callback on a Saturday morning.

Stay a business the size of one person and you carry every job, every callback and every quiet week yourself, until the body or the family runs out of patience.

Hiring and team

Here Is What We Do About It.

Hiring, team and leadership training in the Learning Hub covers what to pay under the Electrical Award, how to induct and supervise, and how to hold a standard. Tradie Teams puts you with owners who have already made these hires, and Freedom Fighter 1:1 gives you a dedicated expert for the big calls.

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.

What changes

What Electrical Business Hiring Actually Changes.

Three things electrical business owners walk away able to do.

Work out the true hourly cost of a sparkie or apprentice before you hire

Run an induction and a job standard so quality does not depend on you

Build a pay and progression plan that keeps your best sparkie from leaving

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Questions

Electrician Business Hiring, Answered.

When should I hire my first employee?
When the work is consistent enough to cover the hire for a full quarter, not just a busy month, and when you have a job standard written down for them to work to. Hiring into chaos makes the chaos more expensive. Price the hire properly first, including supervision time, then commit to it.
What do I have to pay under the Electrical Award?
The Electrical Award MA000025 sets grade based rates, apprentice percentages by year, a casual loading and industry, tool and licence allowances that fold into all purpose rates. Rates lifted 4.75% from 1 July 2026. Check the current Fair Work pay guide for the figures, then use the training to work out what that hire really costs you per billable hour.
How do I stop training sparkies who then leave and compete?
Some will go, and that is the trade. What keeps the good ones is a clear progression path, pay that moves with capability, work they are proud of and an owner who is not permanently stressed. Tradie Teams is full of owners who have solved this, and coaching helps you build the plan before the resignation, not after.

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.