Most electrical shops hire in reaction: the backlog hits three weeks, a customer complains, and the owner posts a job that weekend. A hiring plan replaces that with a forecast. We look at your booked work, your service mix and your seasonal pattern, and agree what role comes next, in which month, and what has to be true before you hire.
This is planning work. We don't place workers, act as a staffing agency or give employment, wage or legal advice. Hiring decisions and employment terms stay with you and your advisers.
Who it suits
The answer: any shop that is either turning down work or carrying idle hours. Both are signs the crew size and the work don't match.
- Owner-operators deciding whether to add the first employee at all.
- Shops of three to eight electricians where the owner still quotes and dispatches.
- Companies adding a new service line, such as generators or commercial maintenance, that needs a different skill mix.
- Owners planning to step back, who need a supervisor or service manager in place first.
What's included
- Capacity baseline. Billable crew-days available per month versus crew-days booked, for the last 12 months.
- Demand forecast. Expected crew-days by job type for the next two seasons, from your mix, pipeline and marketing plan.
- Gap map. Months where demand exceeds capacity, and months where it falls short.
- Role choice. Journeyperson, apprentice, service lead, estimator, dispatcher or office coordinator, chosen by which one closes the gap at the lowest cost to margin.
- Triggers. Written conditions for posting, such as "six straight weeks above 90% booked" or "two full-time weeks of owner quoting".
- Onboarding outline. The first 30, 60 and 90 days, so the new person adds capacity quickly instead of absorbing it.
The capacity maths, with example numbers
Say you have four field electricians. After holidays, training, vehicle days and non-billable time, each one sells about 180 crew-days a year, so your shop has roughly 720 billable crew-days. Last year you booked 690, and your plan to grow charger and panel work adds about 120 crew-days of demand.
That leaves a gap of roughly 90 crew-days, about half a person. You have three choices:
- Hire one more field electrician and fill the remaining capacity with marketing.
- Hire a dispatcher or coordinator who gives each electrician an extra billable half-day a week by cutting drive time and callbacks. Across four people that can approach 100 crew-days.
- Trim low-margin work so the existing crew covers the higher-margin growth.
The right answer depends on gross profit per crew-day, which comes from service mix strategy. We put all three options side by side.
Timeline
- Weeks 1–2: capacity baseline and demand forecast.
- Week 3: gap map, role options and triggers.
- Week 4: plan agreed, onboarding outline drafted.
We revisit it each quarter, or sooner if booked work moves sharply.
How we measure it
We track booked percentage of available crew-days, weeks of backlog, gross profit per field employee and owner hours spent on quoting and dispatch. A hire is working when backlog drops to your target range and gross profit per employee holds or rises within two or three months.
Mistakes to avoid
- Hiring for the peak. If the peak lasts eight weeks, overtime or subcontracting may be cheaper than a year-round hire.
- Adding trucks before systems. Without dispatch and quoting systems, a new electrician often adds chaos as well as capacity; see office systems.
- Skipping the trigger. Without a written trigger, every busy week feels like the week to hire.
- No onboarding plan. A new hire who spends a month riding along has cost you a month of capacity.
For applicant campaigns once the plan is set, our sister site ElectricalTeam.ca runs recruiting marketing for electrical contractors. To start the plan, see pricing or contact us.
Frequently asked questions
Do you recruit electricians for us?
No. We plan the hire: role, timing, capacity maths and onboarding. If you want help with job ads and applicant campaigns afterwards, that is a marketing task we can scope separately. You interview, hire and employ your people directly.
Will you tell us what to pay?
No. We don't give wage figures or compensation advice. We show how much gross profit a role must support and you set pay using your own market knowledge, your collective agreement if you have one, and professional HR or payroll advice.
Should my next hire be in the field or the office?
Often the office. When the owner answers every call and writes every quote, a dispatcher or service coordinator can free more billable capacity than another truck. The capacity maths shows which applies to you.
What about apprentices?
Apprentices build long-term capacity, and provincial apprenticeship offices set the rules for supervision and ratios. We plan around the rules your provincial office publishes; we don't interpret them.