Trades Solar 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.

Have a chat with Greg

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. 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.

A chat with Greg

Talk to Greg about anything in your trade business. Places are limited, and it is by application.

Learning Hub

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

Business Foundations

Weekly live sessions hosted by Greg Allan, where you bring your own numbers.

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

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.

Greg Allan mid-explanation with his hands open, talking to a trade business owner across a desk

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.

Illustration: a trade business owner standing over three office staff buried in paperwork at night. — The old way
More customers meant more people doing your computer work, and you paying for all of it.

Illustration: a tradesman shaking hands with a homeowner in her driveway, his phone showing jobs quoted and invoiced. — The new way
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 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.

Solar Installers

The Other Ways We Help Solar Installers.

Training

Have a Chat With Greg About Your Business.