You know that feeling: the company is growing or going through a reorganization, processes are falling apart, and there’s no one to sort it out except you. And you’re already overwhelmed with everything else that comes with running a business. Or maybe you have this situation: you do have an HR person, but they’re still junior and don’t know how to handle setting up or properly managing HR systems and processes.
In both cases, the solution doesn’t have to be a new permanent senior HR hire. The solution can be an Interim HR Manager or a Fractional HR Manager – and you’re probably not even aware of how much that temporary support can take off your plate.
What exactly do “Interim” and “Fractional” mean in HR?
These two terms are often used interchangeably, and honestly, the difference isn’t that significant.
An Interim HR Manager is an expert who comes into your company for a defined period of time, usually between three and nine months. They step in when something needs to be addressed urgently:
- When an HR manager leaves the company.
- When the company is growing faster than anticipated.
- When new roles are being created, processes are outdated, and no one knows which document is still valid or whether it even exists.
…or when something needs to be built from scratch:
- An HR function in a company that has never had anyone responsible for HR.
- Basic HR processes and documentation (from employment contracts and rulebooks to job descriptions and onboarding).
- A performance evaluation or employee career development system.
- The foundations that will allow a permanent HR person to hit the ground running rather than starting from zero (whether you already have a person in mind or are planning to hire).
In these situations, the Interim comes in, diagnoses the state of things, establishes or improves processes, and ensures everything runs smoothly until a permanent solution is found or your internal team is strengthened.
A Fractional HR Manager, on the other hand, is a model where you engage a senior HR expert on a part-time basis – for example, a few days per week or per month. You don’t need a full-time position. You need a sharp person who knows what they’re doing and who’s there when you need them. You get the experience and knowledge that would otherwise cost significantly more, but you only pay for what you actually use. They carry out all the same activities as an Interim HR Manager just on a smaller and less intense scale.
Both models work. Which one you choose depends on where your company is right now.
How do you recognize that you need an Interim HR Manager?
These are the signals that owners of small and mid-sized companies most often ignore — until it becomes too big a problem to overlook.
- You’ve hired people, but onboarding doesn’t exist. Every new employee figures things out more or less on their own, asking the same questions over and over. Their first 30, 60, 90 days are improvised rather than planned.
- The documents you use in HR are outdated or nonexistent. Contracts are the same as they were five years ago. Rulebooks don’t exist, or no one reads them. In the event of an inspection or a dispute, you have a problem.
- Managers don’t know how to have proper conversations with their teams. Performance reviews? They don’t exist. A feedback culture? Formally, it doesn’t exist. And you wonder why good employees leave.
- The company is growing, but HR isn’t keeping up. You’re opening new positions, but there’s no clear selection process. You’re hiring on gut feeling. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
If you recognized yourself in any of these points you should know that you’re not alone, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. A lot of companies with up to 100 employees live in this grey zone, without internal or external HR. Why that is the case is a topic for a separate blog. But I’ll leave you with one question: if you have several people on your marketing team, why don’t you have at least one on your HR team?
When should you hire a permanent HR professional?
This is a question business owners ask themselves over and over. The answer: it depends.
Hiring a senior HR professional for a full-time position takes time. Sourcing candidates, interviews, negotiations, onboarding – easily three to four months go by. And in the meantime, the problems that exist don’t wait. In fact, they only grow.
On top of that, small and mid-sized companies are often not in a position to afford a senior HR profile on a long-term basis – those come at a cost. And a junior HR profile won’t be able to implement an HR system or resolve the complex issues that already exist.
You don’t wait two to three months for a selection process to wrap up. You don’t go through lengthy interviews, negotiations, and an onboarding period where a new person is still learning how your company works. The engagement starts quickly, and the expert who comes in brings experience from dozens of different companies, industries, and situations and puts that experience to work in your specific context, immediately.
And here’s something equally valuable that business owners often only discover once they’ve experienced this model firsthand: you don’t have to explain the basics to anyone. You don’t have to convince, educate, or wait for someone to “find their footing.” An experienced Interim or Fractional HR professional has seen a version of your situation many times before. They can identify what isn’t working before you’ve even put it into words. And they know what needs to be done – not theoretically, but practically, with concrete next steps.
What exactly do you get – and why is this a good solution for you?
You get a diagnosis. From day one, an experienced HR professional looks at your situation from the outside. Without emotional attachment, without internal politics. They see what’s wrong and tell you directly without sugarcoating, without waiting to “settle in.”
You get processes that actually work. An onboarding experience that a new person can follow without having to ask questions. Employee conversations that have structure. Documents that are current and legally sound.
You get HR that doesn’t stop when you go on holiday. Because the processes are in place and the systems run. The team knows what’s expected of them, without constant firefighting.
You get a strategic perspective. Not just short-term patching of holes, but a clear picture of where the company needs to be in six, twelve, eighteen months viewed through an HR lens. Which roles to open, how to build a culture that retains people, how to create KPIs that actually measure something meaningful.
You get a financial logic that makes sense. You pay for what you use, with no fixed costs of permanent employment, no contributions and benefits, no need to manage yet another employee. The engagement is scalable: more intensive when the situation calls for it, lighter when things stabilize.
And perhaps most importantly is you get a partner who has been in these situations before. Who has seen companies at a similar stage of growth. Who knows what works and what only sounds good on paper. And who is present enough in your company to understand the context and the people, but external enough not to fall into the trap of “that’s just how we’ve always done things.”
External HR Manager and the question of trust
One question that business owners are almost certainly asking themselves: “How can I trust someone from outside with such a sensitive function?”
This is a legitimate question. HR is a sensitive area. Employee data, confidential conversations, situations that require discretion.
That’s precisely why it’s important to choose an experienced professional. Don`t choose someone who just graduated or has one or two years of experience under their belt. An experienced Interim HR Manager comes with references. They come with experience across different sectors and situations. And they come with a professional ethic that is, for them, an existential matter because in this model, reputation is everything.
Best practice is always to start with an initial conversation. Short, no obligations. To see whether you’re a good professional and personal fit. Because you’ll be working together and working closely over the months ahead.
When the Fractional model becomes Interim – and vice versa
What’s great about these two models is the flexibility. You don’t have to decide forever.
You start with a Fractional engagement: a few days a week, while processes are being established. Then, if the company changes rapidly, the model changes too. The engagement becomes more intensive. It becomes Interim.
Or the other way around: you’re going through a period of growth or you’ve realized you need to establish an HR department, so you bring in an Interim HR Manager for five months. The situation stabilizes. You move to a Fractional model while you search for a permanent HR hire. And everything is in place – processes, documents, the team – so when the new HR employee arrives, they walk into an organized system.
This is flexibility that permanent employment simply cannot offer. And that’s precisely what makes these models so valuable for companies in a phase of change or growth.
Who are the clients that benefit most from this model?
From experience, there are three profiles that come up again and again.
A business owner who has been doing everything themselves, including HR. They hired on instinct, solved problems ad hoc. The company has grown to the point where that no longer works. They need someone to take over that part of the business, competently and immediately.
A C-level executive in transition. The company is going through change. A merger, restructuring, rapid growth, or the departure of key people. HR is a critical success factor in all of it. And the current team doesn’t have the capacity or the experience for this level of complexity.
An HR professional who is alone in the company. A junior or mid-level person covering HR, but with no senior to guide and support them. An Interim or Fractional senior HR manager here functions as a mentor, a partner, and a backup, someone who steps in when the situation becomes too complex for one person to handle.
What does an engagement look like in practice?
We start with a conversation. No presentations, no forms. A direct conversation about where the company stands and what needs to be resolved. The goal is to understand your situation. From there comes a proposal: what specifically, when, how, and at what cost. Clear and transparent.
Once the engagement begins, the diagnosis starts immediately. Conversations with the key people in the company. A review of documents and processes. Identification of what isn’t working. And concrete steps on what will be implemented.
The goal is for the company, when the engagement ends, to have an HR function that works without external support or with minimal support for a short transitional period.
And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t wait for the situation to escalate. Many business owners and C-level executives wait: until a good employee leaves, until an inspection arrives, until internal conflicts start undermining the productivity of the entire team. That’s when we remember that HR was actually important all along.
Interim HR Managers and Fractional HR Managers are not a luxury for large corporations only. They’re not something “to consider some day” either. For companies in growth, in transition, in crisis, or in a phase of stabilization this is the fastest and smartest solution available.
If you’ve recognized your company somewhere in this story, that’s a good sign. It means you know what you need.
I hope this text was useful to you, and if you have additional questions, feel free to contact me.
Andrea Čerina
HR Consultant
