How do I know when I'm ready to put on another tradie?

You are ready to put on another tradie when you are consistently turning away profitable work, your margins can absorb the cost of another person (wages, super at 12%, insurance, tools), and you have enough pipeline to keep them busy for at least three to six months. If you are working 60-hour weeks and still knocking back jobs, the business is telling you it has outgrown one pair of hands.

Updated 07/09/2026

What are the signs you have outgrown one person?

The clearest signal is turning away work. Not the tyre-kicker quotes that were never going to land, but genuine, profitable jobs from customers ready to book. If that is happening weekly, you are leaving real money on the table.

Other signs that the ceiling has arrived:

• Your lead time has blown out. Customers are waiting three weeks or more for a start date, and some are booking someone else before you can get there.
• You are working unsustainable hours. Sixty-hour weeks on the tools plus admin at night is a short-term sprint, not a long-term model. It burns you out and the quality of both work and quoting drops.
• Admin is eating your billable time. If you are spending two or more hours a day on quoting, invoicing and scheduling instead of doing the paid work, another pair of hands on the tools frees you to either bill more or manage better. For practical ways to cut that admin load, see our guide on planning your week to cut wasted time.
• You are turning down bigger or more complex jobs. A two-person job that you cannot quote because you are a one-person operation is a ceiling on your revenue, not just your time.

None of these alone means "hire tomorrow". All of them together, sustained over two to three months, means the constraint is labour, and more marketing or faster quoting will not fix it.

Can your margins actually support another person?

Wanting help and being able to afford it are different questions. Before you commit, run the numbers on what another person actually costs, not just their hourly rate.

The true cost of an employee sits roughly 40% to 60% above the base hourly rate (directional, varies by trade and state) once you add:

• Superannuation. The superannuation guarantee rate is 12% of ordinary time earnings, effective from 01/07/2025 (ATO). And from 01/07/2026, Payday Super requires employers to pay super each payday rather than quarterly, so the cashflow hit is more frequent.
• Workers compensation insurance. Premiums vary by trade and state but typically sit around 2% to 8% of wages for most construction trades (directional, check with your insurer).
• Leave and entitlements. Four weeks annual leave plus personal leave plus public holidays means you pay for roughly 46 to 47 productive weeks out of 52.
• Tools, PPE and vehicle. A basic tool kit, steel caps, high-vis, and a share of vehicle costs add up quickly.
• PAYG withholding and STP reporting. Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 means you report every pay run to the ATO, not just at year end.

A simple test: take the hourly rate you would pay (check the relevant award, not just what you think is fair), multiply by 1.5, and ask whether your current job margins can absorb that figure while keeping the lights on during a quiet month. If the answer is no at today's prices, check whether you are actually making money on each job before you hire.

Should you hire an employee or use a subcontractor?

This is where many trade businesses get it wrong, and the penalties are serious. The choice is not yours to make by labelling. It depends on how the person actually works.

An employee works set hours under your direction, uses your tools, wears your uniform, and is part of your business. A subcontractor runs their own business, quotes for the job, carries their own insurance and ABN, sets their own hours, and can delegate or subcontract. The Fair Work Ombudsman is clear: having an ABN does not make a worker a contractor.

Getting this classification wrong is called sham contracting. The Fair Work Act prohibits it, and since 27/02/2024 the defence has tightened: the employer must have "reasonably believed" the arrangement was genuine. The civil penalties are steep: sham contracting penalties of up to $18,780 per contravention for individuals and $93,900 for small businesses (Fair Work Ombudsman, statutory maxima as at 09/2026, indexed to penalty units, advisory only, not a prediction for any business).

As Denita Wawn, CEO of Master Builders Australia, put it: Productivity is more than an economic buzzword. Every day we drag our heels on tackling the challenges faced in the industry, the longer we drag out the housing crisis. Getting the workforce structure right, proper employment, correct classification, and genuine training, is foundational to that productivity.

If the person you need will work for you five days a week on your jobs with your tools, they are almost certainly an employee. Set up the employment properly from day one.

What compliance obligations come with your first employee?

Taking on an employee triggers a set of obligations that do not exist when you are a sole trader. None of them are optional, and all of them are auditable.

• Superannuation at 12%. Paid each payday from 01/07/2026 under Payday Super (previously quarterly).
• PAYG withholding. Deduct tax from each pay and remit to the ATO.
• Single Touch Payroll (STP Phase 2). Report every pay event digitally to the ATO. Your payroll software handles this, but you need payroll software.
• Award compliance. Construction-sector awards run a 38-hour week and carry layered allowances (tool, travel/fares, industry, leading-hand, multi-storey, first-aid). Underpaying award rates, especially apprentice rates, is a common audit finding. Intentional wage underpayment is now a criminal offence (in force from 01/01/2025, check current status with Fair Work).
• Workers compensation. Mandatory in every state. You cannot start the employee until the policy is active.
• WHS duties. You owe a duty of care to every worker on your site, including subcontractors. A second person means your WHS obligations expand.
• TPAR. If you pay subcontractors (not employees) and your business is primarily in building and construction, businesses primarily in building and construction that pay contractors must lodge a Taxable Payments Annual Report by 28 August each year (ATO). Even if your first hire is an employee, this applies to any subbies you also engage.
• Record-keeping. Time-and-wages records must be kept for seven years. Super records for five years.

This list is not meant to scare you off. It is meant to make sure you set it up properly from week one rather than discovering the gaps at BAS time or during a Fair Work audit. A good bookkeeper or accountant who knows trades is worth their fee here.

How do you keep them busy once they start?

Hiring to fill today's overflow and then having nothing for them next month is the most expensive mistake you can make. Before you commit, look at your pipeline honestly:

• Booked work. How many weeks ahead are you booked? If the answer is less than four, your pipeline may not sustain two people through a quiet patch.
• Repeat and maintenance work. Recurring customers (property managers, body corporates, builders who use you as a subbie) are more reliable pipeline than one-off residential jobs.
• Quote conversion rate. If you are converting roughly 30% to 40% of your quotes (a common range for established trade businesses, directional), you can model forward revenue with some confidence. If you do not know your conversion rate, start by understanding why quotes are not getting accepted.
• Seasonal patterns. Every trade has a quiet season. Can you carry the wage bill through it? Some tradies hire in September, ride the summer peak, and then face a painful decision in February.

The safest path: start with a subcontractor for overflow work to test whether the demand is sustained. If it lasts three months, the pipeline is probably real. Then convert to a permanent hire if the working relationship suits employment (which, for most day-to-day trade work, it does).

What is the right first hire for a trade business?

Most sole-trader tradies face the same fork: an apprentice or an experienced hand.

If you need someone to take pressure off you right now so you can manage the business, an experienced hand is the faster answer. If you have the bandwidth to teach and want to build the team your way over two to four years, an apprentice is the better long-term investment. Many tradies hire an experienced person first to stabilise, then take on an apprentice once the workflow can absorb the supervision time.

Whatever you choose, make sure the person's scope of work matches your licensing. If your trade requires a licence and the new hire is unlicensed, they must work under your supervision within the scope your licence allows. For a breakdown of how licensing works across trades and states, see the tradie marketing and licensing compliance guide.

A practical readiness checklist

Before you make the call, tick these off:

1. You have turned away at least five profitable jobs in the last month because you could not fit them in.
2. Your margins can absorb the full loaded cost (hourly rate times 1.5) for at least three quiet months without putting the business under pressure.
3. You have a pipeline of booked or near-certain work for at least four to six weeks beyond the start date.
4. You have spoken to your accountant about payroll, super, PAYG, workers comp, and whether an employee or subcontractor structure fits your situation.
5. You have the systems to manage a second person. That means a job management app that both of you can see, a quoting process that does not live in your head, and a way to schedule without phoning back and forth all day.

If you can tick all five, you are ready. If you can tick three and the other two are close, start planning. If fewer than three, the business is not there yet, and that is fine. Growing when you are ready beats growing when you are desperate.