When Should a Startup Hire HR? 6 Signs You've Waited Long Enough
Six practical signs that a startup needs dedicated HR support, plus guidance on whether to hire an HR manager, Head of People or fractional People leader.
Read →Who we serve
Companies that are still building.
Every shortcut is a loan. Growth calls it in.
Growing and international companies whose HR hasn't kept pace with the business. We build it, we implement it, and we hand it over. The goal is that you stop needing us.
People debt
Nobody plans for it. Everybody has it.
Offer letters written from memory
Three versions of the handbook
Pay decided deal by deal
Nobody owns onboarding
Managers promoted with no support
Compliance found out about late
The founder still approving holiday
Attrition nobody saw coming
None of this is a crisis on its own. Together it's the reason your next fifty hires will be harder than your last fifty.
Sound familiar?
You probably recognise a few of these.
- The founder, CFO or COO is still carrying HR decisions
- Growth outpaced the HR infrastructure
- First professional HR build — or the second attempt at one
- A small People team holding together far too much
- Employees in more than one country
- No CHRO, and no plan to hire one yet
- Investors asking questions the People function can't answer
- Processes that only work because one person remembers them
Headcount isn't the qualifier. Complexity is. If HR is starting to cost the business time, money or risk, that's our work.
How we work
We build it. We implement it. Then we leave.
Plenty of people will diagnose your HR problems and hand you a deck. We're not that. We design the thing, build the thing, run it long enough to prove it works, and transfer it to your team with the documentation to keep it running. Every engagement is designed to end.
- 01
Diagnose it — work out what's actually going on and what matters.
- 02
Build it — create what the business genuinely needs, implemented.
- 03
Run it — make sure it works in real life, not just on paper.
- 04
Hand it over — leave the company stronger and capable of owning it.
Where to start
Four ways in.
HR Foundation Build
We build the policies, processes, manager infrastructure, systems, and operating model your next stage requires.
U.S. Employment for International Companies
We help international companies decide how to employ U.S. workers, build the right infrastructure, and fix existing U.S. employment operations.
Fractional People Leadership & Operations
Experienced People leadership to help you make decisions, lead the function, improve how HR operates, and get the important work done.
People Advisory
Your team owns the work. You need senior expertise to help make the difficult calls.
Related reading
HR Checklist for a 50-Person Startup
A practical HR checklist for a 50-person startup covering compliance, policies, managers, compensation, performance, systems and People operations.
Read →Tell us what's actually going on.
Describe the situation and we'll tell you straight whether it's our work — and what we'd do first.