What Is Fractional HR?
Fractional HR is senior HR leadership on a part-time basis. Instead of hiring a full-time HR director, you bring in an experienced practitioner who runs your people function a few days a month — covering compliance, compensation, employee relations, and hiring. It gives growing companies executive-level HR judgment without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
Most companies don't need a full-time HR leader until they're well past 100 employees. But the problems that require one — a compliance gap, a botched termination, pay decisions made without structure — show up long before that. Fractional HR fills that gap: real leadership, sized to what you actually need right now.
What does a fractional HR leader do?
A fractional HR leader owns the parts of your people function that carry real risk or need real expertise — usually compliance, compensation strategy, employee relations, and recruiting. These are the areas where getting it wrong is expensive and getting it right is hard to do informally. The point isn't to hand you a binder of policies. It's to run the function the way a full-time leader would, at the scale you need.
In my practice, the work breaks down into a few areas:
Compensation — building pay structures and leveling so raises and offers stop being one-off negotiations.
Employee relations — handling the sensitive situations (performance issues, investigations, exits) that managers shouldn't navigate alone.
Compliance — making sure your policies, classifications, and documentation hold up, and closing gaps before they become claims.
Recruiting and talent — building a hiring process that scales without slowing you down.
When should you hire a fractional HR leader?
You should consider fractional HR when your company has outgrown informal HR but doesn't yet justify a full-time hire. The clearest signal is that people problems are landing on a founder's or office manager's desk, and no one in the room has the expertise to handle them with confidence.
A few common triggers:
You've crossed roughly 25–50 employees and HR is still handled off the side of someone's desk.
A compliance issue caught you off guard — a misclassification, a leave question, a state law you didn't know applied.
Managers are handling terminations, complaints, or performance issues without guidance.
Compensation decisions are made case by case, and it's starting to create inequity.
You're hiring quickly and the process can't keep up.
You're expanding into new states and the multi-state rules are piling up.
If two or three of these sound familiar, you're past the point where informal HR is safe.
Who is fractional HR for?
Fractional HR fits growth-stage companies — roughly 25 to 500 employees — that have outgrown their informal setup but aren't ready for a full-time HR executive. These are companies with enough people, complexity, and risk to need real HR leadership, but not enough to fill a full-time senior role.
I work mostly with companies in manufacturing, biotech, healthcare, dental, and life sciences, with a focus on the Utah area. Those industries tend to carry heavier compliance loads and specialized workforces, which is exactly where experienced HR leadership earns its keep.
Manufacturing
Biotech
Healthcare
Dental
Lifescieces
How is fractional HR different from a consultant or a full-time hire?
Fractional HR sits between a project consultant and a full-time hire. A consultant solves a defined problem and leaves. A full-time HR director gives you ongoing leadership but costs a full salary plus benefits. Fractional HR gives you ongoing leadership sized to your needs — embedded in your team, but only for the time you actually require.
The difference from a consultant is continuity: I'm not dropping off a deliverable and moving on. I stay embedded in your business, so I know your team, your risks, and your context. The difference from a full-time hire is cost and fit: you get senior-level judgment without paying for a role you can't yet fill efficiently.
Not Sure if it's the right fit?
An intro call is a conversation — not a sales pitch, and not a commitment.