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.

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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. 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.

The Academy waitlist

The Academy is at full capacity. Join the waitlist and when a place opens, Greg interviews the owners who look like the right fit.

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.

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

Why Greg

You speak to the owner who has already done it.

Greg built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with 1,950+ five-star reviews. A general manager runs it.

He has trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.

He grew a coaching company to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches, then cut it back so every owner deals with him directly.

Most coaching companies hand you to a salesperson, then to a coach who has never run a trade business. Here you get the owner.

Read how Greg built a trade business that runs without him

What changes for you

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 the computer work, and more wages nobody invoices.

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. The office stops landing on you.

The old way

More jobs. More paperwork. Less of the owner left.

Most trade businesses grow the same way.

More jobs means more quoting, invoicing, chasing and scheduling.

None of it gets paid for.

So the owner does it at night, after a full day on site.

Or hires an office person to do it.

The office grows. The wages grow. The margin does not.

And the owner is still the one everything waits on.

Where we take you

More work. More profit. More of you left.

The phone rings with the jobs you want, at the price you set.

You grow when you're ready, never faster than the business can carry.

Every job is priced to make money, so the busy months show up in the bank.

The best tradies in your area want to work for you, and they stay.

The chasing, the paperwork and the 9pm admin stop landing on you.

The business runs the day. You pick which parts of it you're in.

Bigger, without the headaches. Getting bigger stops meaning getting busier.

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

Join the Waitlist to Work With Greg.