Fractional People Operations
A senior people operations leader, without the full-time hire.
Embedded with your team a few days a month — building the systems that set people up to do their best work, then handing them over so you own them.
Who this is for
You're past twenty people and it has started to creak.
You don't need a full-time Head of People yet — or you have one, and they're drowning. Either way the symptoms look the same. Onboarding that amounts to a laptop and a calendar invite. Managers promoted on Friday with no support on Monday. Three systems that don't talk to each other and one person who understands all of them. Policies written the week after the incident that needed them.
None of it is anyone's fault. It's what happens when headcount grows faster than the structure underneath it — and it compounds quietly until your best people start leaving for reasons they struggle to name in the exit interview.
What fractional actually means
Embedded, not parachuted in.
I'm not a consultant who interviews your team, delivers a slide deck, and leaves you to implement it. I work inside your company on a set rhythm — typically a few days a month over three to six months — in your Slack, in your meetings, building the actual thing.
You get the judgment of someone who has done this through hypergrowth and an IPO, at a fraction of the cost and commitment of the hire you're not ready to make. And the explicit goal is that you stop needing me.
What we build
Six pieces, in whatever order hurts most.
Onboarding & enablement
The first ninety days designed rather than improvised. What someone reads, who they meet, what they're expected to have shipped by day thirty — and who owns it when you're busy.
Manager enablement
The leverage point most companies skip. Great individual contributors get promoted into management and handed nothing. This is where culture is really made or lost.
Systems implementation
Choosing your HRIS and ATS, setting them up, and getting them to actually talk to each other. Then documenting it so the knowledge doesn't live in one person's head.
Policy & documentation
Written before you need it, in plain language, somewhere people can find it. Leave, performance, compensation bands, the awkward ones. Especially the awkward ones.
Employer brand
What people say about working with you when you're not in the room — and making sure your careers page, your interview loop, and your rejections all tell the same true story.
Reporting that means something
A small number of measures you'll actually look at — time to productivity, regretted attrition, manager load — instead of a dashboard nobody opens.
How it works
Four phases. You own it at the end.
- ListenTwo weeks of conversations across every level, not just leadership. The people doing the work already know what's broken.
- MapWhat exists, what's missing, and what's quietly not working. You get the honest version, in writing.
- BuildIn priority order, alongside your team rather than in a vacuum. Highest pain first.
- Hand offDocumented and owned by someone internal, so it outlasts the engagement.
- Rhythm
- A few days a month
- Typical length
- Three to six months
- Best fit
- Twenty to a hundred and fifty people
- Ends with
- You owning it
Let's connect
Where is it creaking?
Thirty minutes on what's breaking and what it would take to fix. No obligation.