You don’t need a full-time HR Director. You need the right one, some of the time.
A full-time HR Director costs somewhere between £60,000 and £80,000 a year before you factor in employer’s NI, pension, and benefits. For most founder-led businesses with 20, 30, or 50 employees, that’s not a sensible hire. So people wing it. They ask google employment law at 10pm, get AI to write policies, and cross their fingers nothing goes wrong.
Something goes wrong, maybe not straight away, but it will.
That’s the gap fractional HR fills. Not a helpline. Not a template library. Not a hallucinating AI agent. An experienced HR Director working inside your business on a pre-agreed basis — present enough to actually know your people, your culture, and your risks.
What fractional HR actually means
Fractional means you’re not paying for a full-time salary. You’re paying for a set number of days or hours each month, and within that time you get the same strategic and operational support you’d expect from a senior in-house hire.
In practice that means someone who attends your leadership meetings, handles your employee relations issues, keeps you compliant with employment law, coaches your managers, and tells you what to do before a problem becomes a tribunal. Not someone who sends you a templated policy document and invoices you for it.
I work with founder-led businesses across the UK on this basis. One day a month with some companies. Two days with others. The model flexes to what the business actually needs.
Why it works for growing businesses
The businesses that benefit most are usually somewhere between 25 and 75 employees. Big enough that people management is taking up real time and causing real problems. Not yet big enough to justify a full-time HR hire.
At that size, the risks are also significant. A badly handled grievance can cost £15,000 before you get anywhere near a tribunal. That’s not even including the amount of time you spend on it. A poorly managed redundancy process can cost more. One employment tribunal claim, even one you’d win, can run to £50,000 in legal fees and management time.
Fractional HR isn’t an overhead. It’s what makes those costs avoidable.
What’s included
Working with me as your fractional HR Director covers the full range — strategy and operational detail both. That means:
Employee relations issues handled properly, from grievances and disciplinaries to performance management and dismissal. Compliance with UK employment law, including keeping your documentation and processes up to date as legislation changes. Recruitment and onboarding support. Manager coaching built into the working relationship, not charged as an extra. And the strategic HR planning that helps your business grow without the people function becoming the thing that slows it down.
Is it right for your business?
If you’re a founder-led business that’s growing, has outgrown winging it with people management, and wants senior HR expertise without the full-time cost — yes, probably.
The best way to find out is a conversation. No obligation, no sales pitch. Just an honest discussion about what’s happening with your people and whether I can help.
Unashamedly human. Very much in your corner.
