A solar company does not have one workforce. It has five.
There is the office: design, procurement, finance, sales. There is the project team, moving between sites for weeks at a time. There is the installation crew, a mix of permanent staff and contractors, scaling with the project pipeline. There is the O&M team on rotation across a portfolio of plants. And there is QHSE, which must prove every one of them was certified, inducted and fit to work on the day they were on site.
Standard HR software is built for the first group. It assumes a desk, a laptop and a nine-to-five. Everything that makes energy businesses difficult sits outside what it was designed to handle. The sites. The shifts. The certifications. The seasonal hiring. The approvals that cross three departments.
This guide explains how Zoho People Plus maps to the way solar and renewable energy companies actually run, from hire to retire. It covers what the platform includes and how to configure it for multi-site, multi-shift operations. It also covers where it fits, and where it does not.
Why generic HR software breaks in a solar business
Six problems come up in almost every energy client we speak to.
Attendance has no single definition. An office employee badges in. A site engineer starts at a plant 200 kilometres away. A commissioning team works a night shift. One attendance rule cannot serve all three.
The workforce is seasonal and project-driven. A 50 MW project needs installers for four months. Your HR system must hire them quickly, onboard them with full documentation, then release them cleanly.
Certifications expire, and expiry is a safety and legal event. Working at height. Electrical competency. First aid, site inductions, driving licences. If a certificate lapses and that person is on a roof, you have a serious problem. Spreadsheets warn nobody.
Approvals cross departments. A site visit needs the project manager, the QHSE lead and sometimes finance. A single-approver leave workflow does not describe this.
Allowances depend on where the work happened. Site allowance, travel, night-shift premium, remote-location uplift. These vary by site, by shift and by role.
Nobody can answer the audit question. Who was on site on 14 March? What shift did they work, which certifications were valid that day, and who approved their presence? That question arrives from a client, an insurer or a regulator. The answer usually takes days to assemble.
What is Zoho People Plus?
Zoho People Plus is Zoho’s bundled HR suite. It is not a single application. It combines several Zoho products under one per-employee licence, with the apps integrated by default.
The bundle includes:
- Zoho Recruit — requisitions, candidate pipelines and hiring workflows
- Zoho People — core HR, onboarding, attendance, leave and performance, plus learning management on the higher plan
- Zoho Expense — travel and expense claims, with multi-currency on the Enterprise plan
- Zoho Connect — internal communication and employee engagement
- Zoho Cliq — team chat
- Zoho Vault — credential management on the Enterprise plan
- Zoho Payroll — included on the plan, though availability is region-dependent
Two commercial points matter. Licensing counts unique logins, not applications. So one person using five apps is one licence. Paid accounts require a minimum of five users, and a 30-day trial is available.
One important caveat for international businesses. Zoho’s own documentation indicates People Plus Payroll is available in India. If you operate in the UK, the US or elsewhere, plan to integrate a local payroll provider. Do not assume payroll is covered. We return to this below, because it is the most common surprise in these projects.
Hire to retire, mapped to solar operations
Here is how each stage of the employee lifecycle looks when you configure People Plus for an energy business.
1. Workforce planning and requisition
Headcount in a solar business follows the project pipeline. When a project reaches financial close, you know roughly what crew you need and when.
Raise requisitions in Zoho Recruit against the project, not just the department. Tag each requisition with the site, the start date and the expected duration. Your hiring plan and your project plan now describe the same reality. Finance can also see committed headcount cost against each project.
2. Hiring at speed and at volume
Installer hiring is bulk hiring under time pressure. Recruit handles the pipeline: job postings, candidate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling and offer management.
Two configurations make the difference for energy clients. Build separate pipelines for office roles and field roles, because they move at different speeds. And capture required certifications as structured fields at application stage, so an unqualified candidate never reaches an interview.
3. Onboarding and documentation
This is where solar companies carry the most risk, and where the right configuration pays for itself.
Build an onboarding checklist in Zoho People that differs by role. An office joiner needs contracts, bank details and IT access. A site technician needs all of that, plus site induction, PPE issue, working-at-height certification, electrical competency, medical fitness and emergency contacts.
Store each certificate as a document with an expiry date. That single step lets the system warn you before a competency lapses, rather than after.
4. Attendance across onsite, offsite and multiple locations
Zoho People supports several attendance methods. Use different ones for different groups, rather than forcing one rule on everybody.
- Office staff — web or kiosk check-in at the registered location
- Site teams — mobile check-in with geo-location, so attendance is recorded against the site
- Travelling staff — mobile check-in with the location captured for the record
- Contractors — a defined process, so their presence is recorded for audit even when they are not on payroll
Configure each site as a location, with its own working hours and holiday calendar. A plant in one state and an office in another should not share a holiday list.
5. Multi-shift and roster management
Commissioning runs nights. O&M runs rotations. Security and monitoring may run around the clock.
Set up shift definitions for each pattern you actually use. Assign people to shifts for defined periods, and let the system apply the rules for overtime, night premium and weekly rest. The gain is not the roster itself. It is that attendance, leave and payroll read the same shift data. Nobody reconciles three spreadsheets at month end.
6. Leave and multi-level approval
Leave in an energy business is an operational decision, not just an HR one. A technician on leave during a commissioning window is a project problem.
Configure multi-level approval so the request routes to the reporting manager, then the project or site lead. Add QHSE or finance where your policy requires it. Zoho People supports approval chains of this kind. Mirror the authority that already exists in your organisation, rather than inventing a new one.
Set leave types that match your reality. Annual leave, sick leave, compensatory off for shift work, site rotation leave and unpaid leave. Give each its own accrual and approval rules.
7. Travel, site allowance and expense
Zoho Expense is part of the bundle, and it matters more in energy than in most sectors. Field staff incur travel, accommodation, fuel and subsistence constantly.
Configure expense policies by role and site category, so a remote-site visit carries a different allowance from a city office visit. Multi-currency support on the Enterprise plan matters if you operate across borders. Route approvals through the project manager who owns the budget, not only through HR.
8. Certification and compliance tracking
If you take one thing from this article, take this one.
Every safety-critical certification should sit in Zoho People as a dated record with an automated reminder before expiry. Thirty days out, the employee and their manager get notified. Seven days out, QHSE is notified too.
Then build a report that answers the audit question directly. Which employees hold valid certification for each competency, and which expire in the next 60 days. That report is the difference between a scramble and a routine check.
9. Performance across very different departments
A design engineer, a site supervisor and a sales manager cannot share an appraisal form.
Configure separate performance templates per department, with the competencies and KRAs that genuinely apply. Site roles should score safety behaviour, because what gets appraised gets attention.
10. Learning, inductions and toolbox training
The learning management capability in Zoho People on the higher plan covers mandatory training as well as development.
Use it for training you must evidence. Safety inductions, equipment-specific training, refreshers before certifications expire, and technology briefings. Completion is recorded against the employee, which is what an auditor wants to see.
11. Payroll handoff
Attendance, shift, leave and expense data all feed payroll. Inside India, Zoho Payroll is part of the bundle and the data flows between People and Payroll directly.
Outside India, plan an integration to your local payroll provider. This is a solved problem. The data exists in structured form and can be exported or integrated on a schedule. But design it at the start of the project, rather than discovering it at the end.
12. Exit, knowledge transfer and re-hire
Project-based workforces mean frequent, planned exits. Build an offboarding checklist covering asset return, PPE, system access, site pass deactivation and knowledge handover.
Keep good exit records, because seasonal workforces re-hire. A technician who worked your last three projects should not be treated as a stranger. Their certifications, performance history and site experience are already in the system.
Configuring for multi-location, multi-shift and multi-approval
Three configuration decisions shape everything else. Get these right at the start.
Define your organisation structure honestly. Most energy businesses are matrix organisations. A technician reports to a line manager and works under a project manager. Model both relationships, because approvals and appraisals use different ones.
Make location a first-class attribute. Every site should exist as a location with its own calendar, working hours and allowance category. Attendance, holidays and allowances then follow automatically.
Map approval chains to real authority. Write down who actually approves what today, including the informal steps. Then configure that. Workflows that do not match how decisions really get made push people to work around the system.
Events, engagement and a distributed workforce
Energy businesses have a real engagement problem. Half the workforce never visits head office.
Zoho Connect and Cliq are in the bundle for this reason. Use Connect for announcements, safety alerts, policy updates and project milestones field teams should see. Use Cliq for day-to-day team communication, including site groups.
For events, Zoho People handles the HR calendar. Induction batches, training sessions, safety weeks, appraisal cycles and company events, with attendance recorded. Where a site team cannot attend in person, recording completion still matters for anything mandatory.
Which departments does this cover?
A typical solar or energy business runs these functions, and each needs a different configuration rather than a different system.
| Department | What they need from HR |
|---|---|
| Design and engineering | Office attendance, project allocation, skills and competency records |
| Projects and EPC | Site attendance, shift rosters, travel and allowances, multi-level approvals |
| Operations and maintenance | Rotation shifts, multi-site deployment, certification validity, on-call records |
| QHSE | Certification dashboards, induction completion, incident-related training records |
| Procurement and stores | Standard attendance, approval authority limits |
| Sales and business development | Field attendance, travel expense, target-linked appraisal |
| Finance and admin | Payroll inputs, expense approval, headcount cost by project |
Where People Plus needs extending
Honest limits matter more than a feature list, and we would rather tell you now than during implementation.
Payroll outside India. As above, plan a local payroll integration.
Deeply operational site processes. Daily progress reports, inspection checklists, equipment registers, permit-to-work and incident reporting are operations processes, not HR ones. They belong in a purpose-built application rather than an HR module. This is what Zoho Creator is for, and Creator apps connect to People so the same workforce data serves both.
Contractor workforce management. Is a large share of your site workforce contracted through agencies? Decide deliberately how much of that population sits in People Plus. You need their certifications and site presence recorded. You do not need them consuming employee licences.
Project resource planning. People Plus manages people. It does not plan project schedules. Pair it with Zoho Projects, or your existing project system, and connect them.
A realistic implementation sequence
Rolling out everything at once is the most common way these projects fail. Phase it.
Phase 1, weeks 1 to 4. Core HR. Employee records, organisation structure, locations, departments, roles and permissions. Get this foundation right, because everything else depends on it.
Phase 2, weeks 5 to 8. Attendance, shifts and leave. Start with one site and one shift pattern, prove it, then extend to the rest.
Phase 3, weeks 9 to 12. Documentation and certification tracking with expiry alerts, plus onboarding and offboarding checklists.
Phase 4, weeks 13 to 16. Recruitment, expense and travel, performance templates per department.
Phase 5, ongoing. Learning management, engagement through Connect, analytics, and payroll integration.
Field adoption is the real challenge, not configuration. Site teams will use a mobile app that takes ten seconds. They will not use one that takes five minutes. Design for the technician standing on a roof, not the HR manager at a desk.
How ClubCode Technology implements People Plus for energy businesses
ClubCode Technology is a Zoho Premium Partner. We implement Zoho People Plus and HRMS alongside Zoho One, Zoho CRM, Zoho Creator and ERP systems, and we build the operational applications that sit around HR.
For energy clients, our work starts with structure rather than software. Your sites, your shift patterns, your approval authority and your certification requirements. We configure People Plus around those, and build the compliance reporting that answers audit questions. We develop Creator applications for the site processes HR software should not hold, and connect payroll and project systems so data flows once.
We also tell you which parts to leave out. A smaller, well-adopted system beats a complete one your field teams avoid.
If you are working out which skills your project needs, our guide to hiring a Zoho expert sets out the options. To discuss HR for your solar or energy business, email info@clubcodetechnology.com or use the contact form on this site.
Frequently asked questions
What is included in Zoho People Plus?
Zoho People Plus bundles Zoho Recruit, Zoho People, Zoho Expense, Zoho Connect, Zoho Cliq and Zoho Vault. Zoho Payroll is included subject to regional availability. The applications are integrated by default, and licensing counts unique logins rather than applications.
Can Zoho People Plus handle multiple sites and locations?
Yes. Each site can be configured as a location with its own working hours, holiday calendar and allowance rules. Attendance, leave and expense policies then follow the location automatically, with no manual adjustment.
Does it support multi-shift and rotating rosters?
Yes. You define the shift patterns you actually use and assign employees to shifts for defined periods. The system then applies the rules for overtime, night premium and rest days. Attendance, leave and payroll all read the same shift data.
Can we set multi-level approvals for leave and expenses?
Yes. Approval chains can route through the reporting manager, project or site lead, QHSE and finance, as your policy requires. Configure the chain to match the authority that already exists in your organisation.
How does it track safety certifications and expiry?
Store each certification as a dated document record against the employee, with automated reminders before expiry. Then build a report showing who holds valid certification for each competency, and which expire in the next 60 days. This is usually the highest-value configuration for an energy business.
Is Zoho Payroll available outside India?
Zoho’s documentation indicates People Plus Payroll is available in India. If you operate elsewhere, plan an integration with your local payroll provider as part of the implementation. Do not assume payroll is covered.
Can it manage contractors as well as employees?
Partly, and the decision needs care. You need contractor certifications and site presence recorded for audit. But you may not want them consuming employee licences. Agree the approach during design, because it affects both cost and compliance.
How long does a Zoho People Plus implementation take?
For an energy business with multiple sites and shift patterns, allow three to four months in phases. Core HR first, then attendance and shifts, then certification tracking, then recruitment, expense and performance. Field adoption takes longer than configuration.
What about site inspections and daily progress reports?
Those are operations processes, not HR. Build them in Zoho Creator and connect the application to Zoho People. The same workforce data then serves both, without duplicating records.