*Updated May 2023*
Company founders are entrepreneurs who apply passion, resilience, and persistence to bring their vision to life and grow it into a successful company. They play jack-of-all-trades while bootstrapping their business: developing their product/services, acquiring customers, and beginning to build their team.
For those who are successful, growth comes. The company begins to expand, and founders may seek investment from venture capitalists or other sources. Marketing and targeting new sales channels becomes a focus, along with remaining aware of what competitors are doing in the market and keeping one step ahead. This is an exciting phase and requires careful planning, strategic thinking, and an ability to take some calculated risks in order to achieve long-term success.
That's why having a focus on a company's people, and people practices, at this juncture is critical.
What Is Fractional HR?
Fractional HR is booming, just like other fractional services - anytime a full time employee is not needed, or can't be afforded, fractional is the way to go. Many companies are leveraging the experience of fractional COO's, CFOs, Marketers, and more to help them get where they need to go without the need to commit to hundreds of thousands in salary dollars.
Fractional services allow companies to take advantage of skilled, experienced individuals on a retainer-type basis, and usually there is flexibility that allows companies to scale up, or down, their services depending on a company's needs at any given time.
Fractional services replace the need for a full time employee in a particular role and can be very cost effective and provide a company with great ROI. When it comes to fractional Human Resources consider these aspects:
Hiring the right talent: skilled HR pros know how to recruit. They know how to define what a position needs in terms of experience, skills, and competencies, and then how to evaluate candidates. Hiring is one of the most expensive things companies do, and doing it right is critical. Founders also need to consider the amount of time it takes to hire, and if their time is best spent elsewhere in the business.
Employee engagement: having an outsourced HR partner kind of provides a neutral connection for employees to meet with. HR can reach out regularly for check-ins to evaluate how the team is doing, and make recommendations to help increase engagement if it's faltering.
Compliance: very few business owners are experts in HR compliance issues. This can pose serious organizational risk and is a priority for any company hiring employees.
Performance: experienced HR practitioners are adept at helping companies elevate the performance of their teams by identifying gaps and determining how to fill them. For example, it could be that managers are new and not experienced in properly coaching their team members, or it may be that a more formal review process needs to be put in place, or better incentives. High performing and engaged teams will drive the growth of a company. Low performing and unengaged teams can cause a company's demise.
What Does Fractional HR Cover?
There are several areas of business that fall under the HR umbrella. These can include:
Talent Acquisition & Onboarding
Compensation & Benefits
Training & Development
Performance Management
Organizational Development
Labor & Employee Relations
Engagement & Culture
Compliance with Employment Regulations
It's really about looking after the full employee life-cycle and implementing HR best practices so that a company can thrive.
There are both strategic and tactical aspects of human resources, so depending on an organization's particular needs, the activities and priorities will vary however it is critical that companies focus on hiring, onboarding, and retaining key staff. Turnover is costly and can kill a business if not managed well.
When Do I Need to Consider Fractional HR?
When a business has employees, it needs some form of HR.
Chances are, the founder(s) has been acting as the de-facto HR department. This is very common, and in some cases it works out really well up until the team hits about 15 - 20 people. For all companies, there comes a point whereby the organization is better served by an HR practitioner with the experience and knowledge to help guide the company to the next phase of its growth through strategic planning, enhancing its people practices, and automation.
If you're a business owner that has just hit that tipping point, we'd love to talk. No obligation, really!