TradesSolar InstallersHiring and team

Solar Business HiringA good installer is the difference between a callback in year five and a referral.

Hiring and team building for solar business owners. Finding installers who will not cost you a callback, paying them correctly under the Electrical Award, using the apprentice incentives that exist, and keeping good people once the next company comes offering more.

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A painted scene of two solar installers standing a large panel upright on a roof edge against an open sky

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Solar Business?

You cannot find an installer worth putting on a roof

The accredited people are already working, the ones available are available for a reason, and you have burned a fortnight of quoting time on interviews. So you keep going out on the tools yourself, which is the reason you cannot grow.

You are guessing at award rates and hoping

The Electrical Award sets apprentice rates as percentages of a qualified electrician's rate, and there are allowances on top that you either pay or you do not. You have never read it properly, your bookkeeper follows what was set years ago, and underpayment is your problem, not theirs.

You train them and they leave

You put an apprentice through, get them accredited, and eighteen months later they are running their own installs for someone else or for themselves. It happens often enough that you have stopped investing, which quietly guarantees you stay the only capable person in the business.

A business that cannot hire and keep good installers has a ceiling, and that ceiling is however many roofs you personally can stand on this year.

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.

The Learning Hub carries the hiring, team and leadership training: how to write a role people apply for, how to induct someone so they are useful in a fortnight, and how to keep them. Tradie Teams gives you owners who have solved it, and Freedom Fighter 1:1 builds the plan around your business.

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 Solar Installer Business Hiring Actually Changes.

Three things solar business owners walk away able to do.

Check every crew member against the correct Electrical Award classification

Run an induction that gets a new installer productive inside a fortnight

Claim the apprentice incentives you are entitled to instead of missing them

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

Solar Business Hiring, Answered.

Which award covers my solar installers?
The Electrical, Electronic and Communications Contracting Award, MA000025, covers electrical contracting work including solar installation, and Fair Work publishes a pay guide that is refreshed each year. Check your classifications and allowances against the current guide rather than what your payroll has been doing. Getting this wrong is expensive and backdated.
Are there government incentives for hiring a solar apprentice?
Yes. Federal apprenticeship support has included payments to apprentices in clean energy occupations and hiring incentives for employers, and the arrangements changed from 1 July 2025 under the Key Apprenticeship Program. Check the current terms on the government apprenticeships site before you hire, because the amounts and eligibility move.
How do I stop good installers leaving for the company down the road?
Money is rarely the whole reason. People leave crews where the day is chaotic, the ute is unstocked, nobody says thank you and there is no path. Fix the system first, then pay properly, then give them something to move towards. Tradie Teams is full of owners who have already done this.

Solar Installers

The Other Ways We Help Solar Installers.

Training

Solar Business Training

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

Coaching

Solar Business Coaching

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

Systems

Solar Business Systems

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

The free app

Solar Business App

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

Marketing and leads

Solar Business Marketing

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

Pricing and profit

Solar Business Pricing

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

Everything for solar installers
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.