Field notes › Running the business
When a client contract ends: the crew, the records and the goodbye
Sooner or later every labour hire firm finishes a site. The project wraps up, the client brings the work in-house, or the contract goes to tender and someone else wins it. However it happens, the last few weeks count for more than their length suggests. Your crew are working out whether to stay with you, and the client is forming the impression they'll carry into the next tender.
Tell the crew before the site does
Crew usually hear about a contract ending from someone on site, and the version they hear is rarely accurate. Get in first. Tell them what you know, including the end date if you have one, and be straight about what you don't know yet. People can plan around uncertainty. What sours them is finding out from a supervisor that the office knew for weeks.
Then start redeploying while they're still working. Look at each person's competencies against the other clients who need people, and remember that site inductions rarely carry over. A worker moving to another client needs that site's induction done before they can start, and leaving it until after their last shift means days without work while it gets arranged. Book inductions for the next site during the final swing where you can.
Mustr helps with the matching. The crew panel in the shift editor shows each person's role, verified competencies and the exact dates they're free, including partial fits, and the booking check won't let you assign someone to the new site until its induction is current. For people you can't place straight away, keep their availability current and tell them plainly when you expect to have something.
Keep standards up until the gate closes
The final weeks are when things slip. Good workers leave early for secured work and the replacements get sent with less care than usual. The client notices, and so does the incoming contractor if there is one.
Run the last shift to the same requirements as the first. If people are leaving early, plan cover for the gap instead of stretching whoever is left. Close out incidents and outstanding paperwork while the people who know the details are still around, because nobody will remember them clearly later on.
Records outlive the contract
When a site finishes, it's tempting to archive the folder and move on. Don't delete anything in a hurry. Questions about a site can arrive long after the work, whether that's a workers compensation claim, a dispute over an invoice or an auditor asking who was inducted and when.
What you have to keep, and for how long, depends on the kind of record. Employee and pay records, tax records, safety records and personal information each come under different rules, and some of them vary by state. Check your situation with your accountant, the Fair Work Ombudsman, your state WHS regulator and the OAIC. Privacy law cuts both ways here. Keep what you're required to keep, and don't hang on to personal information once you no longer need it and those obligations have run out.
Workers who leave with the contract shouldn't vanish from your records either. In Mustr, marking someone inactive keeps every certificate, shift and note, drops them out of roster pickers, stops reminders and suspends their login, and they aren't counted for billing. Mustr also keeps an audit trail of who changed what, and when, which is the record you'll want if someone later questions a booking.
Access needs closing too. Once the handover is done and the final invoices are settled, remove the client's logins to anything of yours. Client sites in Mustr can invite their own site users, so look for accounts the client added themselves as well as the ones you set up.
Leave on terms that get you back on the list
Contracts come back to tender, and the people choosing suppliers remember how the last one ended. Offer the client a proper handover: site notes, a clear account of any open issues, and whatever compliance records the contract says they're entitled to. Don't hand over workers' personal details beyond that.
If you lost the tender, ask for a debrief. Plenty of clients will give one if asked, and it's the cheapest advice on your next bid you'll get. Don't criticise the incoming firm to the client, and don't poach the client's staff on the way out. Stay in touch with the site supervisors you worked well with. They move between companies, and they remember who made their nights easier.
For the records side of subcontractors and supplied workers, see keeping compliance records for people you don't employ, or book a demo to see how inactive workers and the audit trail look in Mustr.