// ON THE RECORD
Matrix HR
Canadian-owned staffing and workforce-solutions agency that recruits and places skilled trades and industrial labour, and provides payroll administration, payroll funding and Employer-of-Record (EOR) services. It serves construction, energy/oil & gas, manufacturing, and shipbuilding/aerospace/defence employers across Canada and the United States.
📍 Calgary, Alberta, CanadaEst. 2002✓ 100% first-party verified
// CLIPS FROM Matrix HR
“going into covet and I had a customer didn't pay us for uh 1.6 million dollars”
“when I worked in the industry I was never paid overtime I didn't I was never offered benefits”
“so I took on a big job at the uh at the hospital in Vancouver there's a lot of architectural form work”
“for many many years the wage differential is insane going from Alberta to to the east coast”
“you're seeing less people having kids so that's that's number one issue”
“he said would you be uh interested in the the Carpenters that you found would you want to invoice us”
“there was an opportunity there where I had a few buddies that were framing houses out of Surrey BC”
“a lot of people in the trades are thinking about starting their own business”
“a lot of companies weren't paying their people over time”
// LESSONS FROM Matrix HR
Stay strictly within your proven service lane after bankruptcy — don't vertically integrate until your capital and team can carry it.
A back-office partnership (payrolling platform) can unlock 500% organic growth by enabling new verticals and cross-border compliance without building internal infrastructure.
Wage parity — paying leased staff the same rate as the client's direct hires — prevents on-site crew infighting and protects project productivity.
Send paycheck stubs on Thursday so any errors can be resolved before Friday EFT payment — a simple operational habit that protects worker trust.
Labour leasing offloads WCB claims, wrongful dismissal risk, and employer health tax liability from the GC onto the staffing firm — freeing the client to focus on delivery.
Payrolling with 30-60-75 day payment terms solves cash-flow gaps that keep smaller contractors from taking on large-project work.
// KEY PEOPLE
SW
// NOTABLE
Founder & CEO Shannon Warren is originally from Rexton, New Brunswick; he left the Maritimes for Vancouver and worked framing houses for about $9/hour before founding the company.
SOURCE ▸Matrix Labour Leasing was founded in 2002 as a three-person basement start-up in Calgary and had grown to roughly $80 million in cumulative sales to date.
SOURCE ▸Matrix HR ranked No. 1 on The Globe and Mail's Canada's Top Growing Companies 2023 list, reporting three-year revenue growth of 366% and approximately $26 million in annual revenue, with about 150 employees.
SOURCE ▸Matrix runs a workforce model in which client contractors sign with Matrix rather than with the individual workers, and Matrix manages WCB, liability insurance, training and payroll; it has historically supplied skilled trades across industrial construction, oil & gas and manufacturing.
SOURCE ▸