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30 answered questions across 5categories — enough for a PM new to labour hire to get comfortable, and enough for a seasoned site manager to fact-check what they're being quoted. Every answer is anchored to a real HBG operating fact or a Fair Work source; nothing is invented.
Getting started
The first-time questions from PMs and site managers new to labour hire (or new to HBG).
A labour hire provider (HBG) legally employs the worker, then supplies them on-hire to a client site under a written services agreement. The client controls the day-to-day work and directs the site, while HBG handles the employment relationship — payroll, super, workers compensation, tax withholding, entitlements, and compliance. You pay one hourly charge rate; HBG pays the worker, remits super, and manages every statutory obligation. In NSW, VIC, QLD, and SA labour hire is a licensed activity — HBG holds current licences in every state where required.
Metro Sydney: same-day or next-morning deployment for standard trades (labourers, carpenters, concreters, scaffolders, traffic controllers) when a request lands before 3pm. Licensed trades (electricians, plumbers) and specialist plant operators typically take 24–48h once tickets and inductions are verified. For a regional or complex-ticket request we'll give you a written ETA within the hour — never a guess. Call 1300 HBG 24/7 for same-day requests.
HBG will accept a single-shift booking (one worker, one day) for most trades. For specialist crews (asbestos, rope-access, licensed plant) we typically ask for a minimum 3-day commitment because of the ticket verification + supply-chain lead time. Multi-week and multi-month projects unlock volume rate discounts — we quote those separately in writing.
Six inputs get us to a fast written quote: (1) trade + skill level required; (2) site address (postcode is enough for a range); (3) start date and duration; (4) number of workers; (5) shift pattern (weekday, weekend, night, rotating); (6) any specialist tickets required (heights, confined space, EWP, HRWL classes, dogging, rigging). If the site has non-standard on-costs — mines-adjacent, rail, restricted-access — we'll ask a few follow-up questions before quoting.
Yes. This is called temp-to-perm conversion and it happens across HBG regularly. There is usually a conversion fee that steps down the longer the worker has been on-hire — the fee compensates HBG for the original recruitment + induction cost. The exact schedule is in your services agreement; typical range is 10–15% of the annual salary if the conversion happens in the first 3 months, tapering to zero after 12 months.
Every construction and civil trade, plus adjacent industries: carpenters, electricians, plumbers, concreters, steel fixers, scaffolders, riggers, dogmen, traffic controllers, crane + plant operators, welders, boilermakers, painters, tilers, glaziers, roofers, waterproofers, demolition + asbestos removal crews, HVAC + fire protection technicians, forklift + warehouse workers, drivers, landscapers, rope-access technicians, cleaners, security officers, and site management. See the labour hire index for the full trade list with per-trade ticketing requirements.
Rates + billing
What a labour hire charge rate actually covers, and how invoicing works.
The single hourly charge rate bundles the worker's casual award pay + 25% casual loading (the Fair Work legal floor effective 2026-07-01), superannuation guarantee (12% from 1 July 2025), workers compensation insurance, payroll tax, public liability + professional indemnity insurance, recruitment + screening cost, induction + compliance monitoring, and HBG margin. Weekly pay, PAYG withholding, super remittance, payslips, and every statutory obligation is managed for you — you approve the timesheet, we do the rest.
HBG uses the Fair Work Ombudsman published casual rate as the pay floor and multiplies by roughly ×1.65 to ×2.25 depending on trade, tickets, volume, and site tier. A CW3 carpenter at $39.03/hr casual lands at roughly $65–$88/hr charge; a licensed electrician (CW4 $40.19/hr) sits at $70–$95/hr; a general labourer (CW1(a) $35.55/hr) at $45–$70/hr. The range narrows the moment we know the specific project — volume commitments and dual-ticket workers pull the effective rate down.
Weekly. Timesheets are submitted digitally, approved by your site supervisor by Monday morning, invoiced Tuesday, and issued via email. Standard payment terms are 14 or 30 days depending on your services agreement. Every invoice itemises the wage portion, allowances (travel, meal, LAFHA) separately from the ordinary hours, plus any overtime or penalty rates worked that week. Consolidated monthly statements available on request for larger accounts.
Yes — at the award-mandated multiplier. Under the Building and Construction General On-site Award (MA000020) — the dominant award for HBG placements — Saturday is 150% for the first 2 hours then 200% thereafter; Sunday is 200% for all hours; public holidays are 250%. Overtime (over 8h/day or 38h/week) is 150% first 2 hours then 200%. These are legal mandates for the worker's pay; the charge rate scales proportionally.
The Building and Construction award (MA000020) sets travel/fares at $22.41/day, meal at $19.74 per overtime break, and living-away-from-home at $102.92/day where applicable. These stack on TOP of the ordinary charge rate and are itemised separately on your invoice — HBG never rolls them into a headline rate without disclosing. For remote or camp-based projects we also quote the return-home fare ($45.36) + km-based travel ($1.00/km).
For scoped work with defined deliverables — a specific demolition, a fixed-scope civil works package, a permanent placement — yes, we quote fixed-price. For open-ended labour supply where the client controls the day-to-day work (the standard labour hire model), we always quote hourly because the total hours are under your control, not ours. Ask your account manager and we'll structure the commercial arrangement to match your project.
Compliance
Licensing, insurance, WHS, and the paperwork behind every placement.
Yes. HBG holds current labour hire licences in every state where one is required — Queensland (Labour Hire Licensing Act 2017), Victoria (Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018), and South Australia (Labour Hire Licensing Act 2017). NSW does not currently require a licence but HBG operates to the equivalent standard. Licence numbers and certificates are published on https://www.harrisonbarratt.com.au/compliance and can be verified against each state regulator's public register.
Public liability ($20M), professional indemnity ($10M), workers compensation (as legally required in every state — iCare in NSW, WorkCover in QLD and VIC, etc.), and management liability. Certificates of currency are shared as part of the onboarding pack and reissued annually. Every worker on your site is covered under HBG's workers compensation policy — you carry no direct WHS liability for their employment, only for the site conditions.
100-point ID verification, right-to-work check (VEVO for non-citizens), ticket + licence verification against the issuing authority's register (e.g. SafeWork NSW for HRWL, VBA for electrical), White Card verification, pre-employment medical where required, and reference checks with the previous two employers. Every ticket has a tracked expiry date in HBG's compliance system — we auto-notify the worker and pull them from the roster before a ticket lapses.
HBG is a co-duty-holder under the model WHS Act — we share the WHS responsibility with the site principal for every worker we supply. Our process: (1) worker reports the incident to their HBG account manager and the site supervisor simultaneously; (2) HBG completes an incident report within 24h; (3) we notify SafeWork (or the relevant regulator) where the incident is notifiable; (4) we support the workers compensation claim end-to-end; (5) we complete a joint root-cause review with your team and update induction content where a systemic issue is identified.
Yes — HBG is a Building Code 2016 compliant labour hire provider for federally-funded construction work. That means we operate to the additional freedom of association, right of entry, and enterprise agreement rules the Code mandates for work funded by the Commonwealth. Certificate of compliance is available on request for tender submissions.
Yes. Every worker on a construction site holds a current Construction Induction (White Card) issued by a recognised RTO. HBG verifies the card against the issuing authority's register at induction and again at each expiry cycle. Site-specific inductions (VOC, EWP, particular plant briefings) are completed on the client site under your supervision — HBG will confirm attendance in writing on the placement record.
Worker quality
How HBG sources, screens, and manages the workers who turn up.
A five-step screen: (1) online application + trade-specific skills assessment; (2) 45-minute in-person or video interview with a HBG account manager, focused on trade competency and site experience; (3) reference checks with the previous two employers; (4) 100-point ID + right-to-work + ticket verification against the issuing authority; (5) skills-matching against the roles on our active roster before we recommend the worker to a client. About 1 in 4 applicants make it through to placement.
HBG operates a 24-hour replacement guarantee. No-show or performance issue reported before 9am, replacement worker on-site by lunch (metro Sydney; regional pending travel). Reported later in the day, replacement first thing next morning. The no-show hour is NOT billed. HBG also debriefs the failed placement internally — coaching, re-training, or removal from the roster depending on the root cause. You never pay for a worker who didn't deliver.
Yes — worker continuity is one of the biggest efficiency wins on a labour hire engagement. HBG's allocator holds a “preferred crew” against your account and rosters the same workers back to your site week-on-week wherever their availability lines up. When the same crew returns, induction + toolbox-talk overhead evaporates, and you get steady productivity. If a preferred worker becomes unavailable, we notify you the day before and propose a matched replacement.
Yes. If you've worked with a HBG worker before and want them back, name them in the booking request and we'll roster them if they're available. HBG maintains a “client preferred” flag against each worker/account pair so the allocator sees the affinity when the request lands.
Tell your account manager on the same day. HBG will pull the worker from the roster at the end of the current shift, no charge for the swap, and slot a replacement in for the next shift. Fit is subjective and site-specific; we'd rather rotate than have you carry someone who isn't working out. If there's a pattern across multiple workers, we'll dig into whether the site brief needs to change on our end.
Every worker on-hire passes an English language + comprehension check as part of the HBG induction — sufficient to understand safety briefings, JSAs, and SWMS in English. For multi-lingual sites (common in Sydney metro fitout) we track second-language proficiency on the worker profile and can preference bilingual workers where useful.
Operations
The day-to-day mechanics — timesheets, communication, and account management.
HBG uses a digital docket system — every worker records their start, break, and finish times via a mobile-friendly link tied to their placement. The site supervisor approves the docket at the end of each shift (single tap on their phone) and again in a Monday-morning weekly consolidation. Rejected or flagged dockets are queued for review before they hit the invoice. Paper timesheets remain available as a fallback for sites without mobile coverage.
Every account has a dedicated account manager who owns the commercial relationship + escalations, plus an allocator who owns the day-to-day rostering + on-site swap requests. Contact details for both go into your services agreement. Out-of-hours support is 24/7 via 1300 HBG 24/7 — a real person answers, not a call-tree.
24-hour replacement guarantee: if a worker no-shows, doesn't meet the agreed standard, or is pulled by HBG for any reason, we supply a matched replacement within 24 hours. In metro Sydney the practical median is under 4 hours for standard trades. The no-show or under-performing hours are NOT billed to the client. This is standard on every HBG placement, not an upsell.
Yes. HBG runs 24/7 — night, weekend, and public holiday shifts are common (rail possessions, weekend concrete pours, night-shift fitout in occupied buildings). Weekend and night charge rates apply the award multiplier (Saturday 150%/200%, Sunday 200%, public holiday 250%, night-shift loading per the applicable award) but the deployment mechanics are identical to a weekday.
The written quote fixes the rate for the length of the placement, subject to the standard Fair Work award review each 1 July. When the FWO publishes the new award year (annual increase around 3–4%), HBG passes through the wage-portion increase — never more — with 14 days written notice. Margin is held flat across an award-rise pass-through. Ask your account manager to see the FWO publication that triggered any change.
Casual labour hire is week-to-week by default — you can reduce or end the placement with 24 hours notice, no penalty. For committed multi-week or multi-month engagements, the exact notice period is in your services agreement (typically 5 business days). HBG handles the end-of-placement paperwork with the worker — you don't carry any employment-termination obligations because HBG is the legal employer.
Every real placement is quoted in writing against your specific project. Talk to an account manager — no obligation.
Or call 1300 HBG 24/7 — 24/7, real person.
Related: Labour hire rates · Client reviews · Compliance