Here's the truth: in trades, the top rung of the ladder for most employees looks like self-employment. That's what the industry has always taught. Get qualified, get good, go out on your own.
It's almost a rite of passage, and it’s most likely to be your best people - who care, perform, and make your life easier – that consider that step.
Your job as a business owner is to build a world inside your business that's more appealing than the one outside. Not just financially but in every dimension that matters to someone who's good at what they do.
Let's look at some practical steps you can take.
The appeal of going out on your own often comes down to autonomy: making decisions, owning your patch, and feeling valued.
[Reward, freedom in choosing work and people, freedom from bills and ATO]
You can offer true autonomy without them having to leave. By providing meaningful decision-making power and responsibility within your business, you give them the satisfaction, creative input, and sense of ownership they seek from self-employment, but with the support and stability of your company.
Think about whether your business [can create/]has divisions, service lines, or geographic areas that could be led by someone. Not just supervised. Led. Give them hiring input for their team. Give them some say in how their jobs are quoted and scheduled. Let them own the client relationships in their area.
If they feel like they're running a micro-business inside yours, they're already living the thing they thought they had to leave to find.
This approach also builds your business in a structured way. Future leaders are being developed in real time, with real accountability. And the business becomes less dependent on you personally, which is one of the most important shifts any founder can make.
Before you try to compete with the fantasy, disrupt it.
Most tradespeople who want to go out on their own are reacting to an idea of what it looks like, not the reality. They see the invoice number, not the tax, the insurance, the chasing, the cash gaps, the compliance burden, or the loneliness of being the person who must figure everything out.
Don't discourage them outright. That rarely works, and it damages trust. Instead, sit down with them and work through it. What would it cost to set up? What are the registration requirements? What does the first 12 months look like before the work is consistent? What happens when a big client doesn't pay?
Walk them through a basic cost model. Talk through what running payroll, BAS lodgements, and insurance involves. Talk about what happens when the economy turns.
Most people, once they see the real picture, either decide it's not for them right now, or they're even more motivated, and you've helped them make a good decision. Either way, you've built trust by being straight with them instead of defensive.
This sounds obvious. Most owners don't do it.
They assume they know what keeps people, usually money. Sometimes they're right. Often, they're not.
One practical approach: pull your key people aside individually and have a forward-planning conversation. Not a formal review. Just a conversation. Something like: "I want you around for the next couple of years. What would make that easy for you to say yes to?"
You'll be surprised what comes up. Some people want more flexibility. Some want a clearer path to a senior role. Some want to be involved in decisions. Some want to know their family is thought of when things get hard.
You can't offer everything. But asking the question creates trust, and trust is what keeps people. It also means that when someone does leave, it's not a surprise. You've had the conversation, and you know the picture.
People stay in places where they feel like they belong to something.
That doesn't mean forced team bonding or awkward corporate exercises. It means building a culture where people feel seen, valued, and connected to what the business is doing.
Some practical ways to build this:
One reason people start thinking about leaving is that they can see the ceiling. They've done the work, they're good at it, and they can't see where it goes from here.
Build the runway.
This might mean formalising a progression path from apprentice to qualified, to leading hand, to supervisor, to site lead. Make it clear what each step looks like, what skills are needed, and how you support people to move through it.
It might also mean involving high performers in activities that expand their scope: training new team members, representing the business in client conversations, and participating in process improvement.
People who are growing are investing. And people who are investing in something don't tend to walk away from it.
Self-employment can't easily offer stability: consistent work, superannuation, leave, holidays without worry, and regular pay regardless of client payments.
This is a real competitive advantage, and most business owners forget to use it.
Particularly when the economy is uncertain, when interest rates are high, when the building market slows, when leads dry up, the security of reliable income and a strong employer look very different from the exposure of running your own show.
Be deliberate about communicating this. Let your team see that you've built something stable, that you're planning, and that their place in it is secure if they perform and commit.
This is the one that gets missed most often.
People want to know that their contributions count. Not just that they did the job, but that the job mattered to the business, to the client, to the team.
Share client feedback when it's good. Connect your team's work to the outcomes the business is achieving. Let people know when a project they were part of went particularly well.
When someone doesn't know their contribution to the whole, motivation drops. When they do know, when they can point to something and say, "I was part of that," it builds a kind of ownership that's very hard to replicate on a job board.
Retaining your best people isn't just a people challenge. It's a business strategy challenge.
At Business Benchmark Group, we work with founder-led businesses across four areas: people, operations, finance, and growth. Staff retention sits squarely in the people pillar, but it connects to all of them. A business that keeps its best people runs more efficiently, delivers more consistently, and grows without the owner having to carry everything on their own.
There's no single answer to keeping your best people. Different things matter to different people, and what works for one team member won't work for another.
Successful businesses retain talent by making it genuinely hard to leave.
Businesses that lose their best people usually wait too long to act.
Start building the right workplace before it's too late.
Reducing founder dependency means building a team that wants to stay.
Business Benchmark Group works with founder-led businesses in trades and construction to reduce founder dependency, build high-performing teams, and create businesses that are ready to scale and exit on their terms. If staff retention is a challenge in your business, we can help you build a structure that addresses it at the root.