Most founders who ask about a fractional CHRO are actually picturing something else entirely—someone to handle the HR paperwork, run recruiting, maybe deal with a difficult employee situation. That's not a CHRO. Here's what the role actually involves, and how to know whether it's what your startup needs right now.

Most founders frame this question around headcount. At what number of employees does HR become necessary? Here's the problem with that framing: it misses the point entirely. The question isn't how many people do I have—it's what's actually happening with my people right now, and who is handling it?

Employment law doesn't care that you're a startup. It doesn't care that you're moving fast or that HR feels like a problem for future you. Here's the advice I'd give you over coffee as an HR practitioner.

Most founders ask this question wrong. They go looking for a policy list—something they can check off and feel like they've handled the HR thing. Here's what you actually need on day one, from someone who has built people functions from scratch with dozens of startups.

After nearly six years working exclusively with startups, I've seen the same HR mistakes made over and over again by smart, capable founders who simply didn't know what they didn't know. By the time you realize you needed it, you're usually already managing the consequences. Here's what I see most often—and what to do instead.

Fractional HR isn't right for every company. But some companies need it badly and don't know it yet—and others think they need it when what they actually need is something different entirely.

After nearly six years as a solo fractional HR practitioner working exclusively with startups and small businesses, I've had a lot of first conversations with founders who are trying to figure out exactly that. Here's the honest version of how I think about it.

Hiring a fractional HR executive isn't like hiring any other fractional leader. Here's what to consider before you bring one on—from a practitioner who has been doing this work for nearly six years.

The most common definition of fractional HR gets it wrong. Search the term and you'll find article after article calling it "part-time HR support." That's not wrong, exactly — but it flattens something that's a lot more nuanced, and it leaves out the details that matter most when you're deciding whether this model is right for your company. Here's the version from someone who's actually been doing it for six years.

Most companies hire fractional executives the wrong way. Here are the 10 questions you should actually be asking before you bring a fractional exec on board.

The fractional executive model exists because founders finally started asking an obvious question: why do I need someone 40 hours a week when I really need 10 hours of the right thinking, from someone who's already solved this problem hundreds of times?

Here are the benefits of hiring a fractional executive for your startup:

What HR actually is at the early stage: the architecture of how your company operates as a human system. Who you hire, how you onboard them, what behaviors you reward, how you handle the first hard conversation, what happens when your third employee underperforms. These decisions don't wait until you have a hundred people. They happen on day fifteen.

And when there's no framework for them, founders make them reactively—case by case, often inconsistently, sometimes in ways that create legal exposure or cultural debt that compounds over time.

A company triples its headcount in 18 months, raises a Series B, and suddenly the culture that made people want to work there is gone. Managers who were great individual contributors are drowning. Compliance gaps have been quietly compounding for two years. The founder is still making every people decision because there's no infrastructure to catch any of it.

That's not a hiring problem. That's a People operations problem.

Here's what a fractional HR leader actually does to help you scale:

If you're a 25-person Series A company, you don't need someone who's an expert at managing HR bureaucracy at scale. You need someone who knows what it looks like to build from scratch—who's written a first employee handbook, set up a first performance review cycle, and navigated a first difficult termination at a company without an established HR infrastructure.

Rather than hiring full-time executives, companies are increasingly turning to fractional HR leaders. A fractional HR leader is someone a company engages in a part-time, interim capacity and for a “fraction” of what it would cost to hire a full-time executive. Fractional leaders are experts in their fields and typically have led their respective functions in past positions.

Eventually, the time will come when someone on your team isn’t pulling their weight, and you will be faced with a choice. You can choose to ignore it, compensate for it, work around it, and accept the toll it will take on the broader team’s morale, or you can opt to have the tough conversation.

I know plenty of people who think they’re ready to be promoted. The only problem? Their bosses disagree. I know this, not because their bosses told them so, but because their bosses haven’t promoted them yet.

Actions speak louder than words, right?

Some leaders avoid the topic altogether, while others make promises that remain unfulfilled month after month as their employees stay in their stagnant seats with an ever-growing chip on their shoulders.

The employee can’t figure out why he isn’t being promoted, while his manager can’t figure out why in the world the employee thinks he’s ready for what’s next in the first place. Perhaps you can relate.

Your boss walks into your office, sits down, cocks his head to one said, and says, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” How do you feel at that moment? What kind of emotional response does this question elicit for you?

Most of us aren’t particularly looking forward to what comes next. On the contrary, most of us are probably bracing for impact. Perhaps this is because feedback is backward-looking and corrective which doesn’t leave much room for growth, or exploration, or possibility.

Your team is no different. They don’t want feedback; They want attention.