Why the practice exists
By the time an employment dispute reaches a solicitor or a tribunal,
the decisions that will settle it have already been made. Whether the
allegations were put in writing. Whether a meeting was offered
properly. Whether somebody was in the room before the decision was
announced rather than after it.
Almost all of that happens in the first week, usually under pressure,
usually by a manager who has never done it before. That week is what
we are for. Everything after it is paperwork, and by then the
paperwork is evidence.
What fractional actually means
You get a CIPD qualified HR lead who has run the situation before,
engaged by the month or by the piece. You do not get a permanent
salary, employer's National Insurance, pension contributions, holiday
cover, or the recruitment exercise needed to find the person in the
first place.
It suits employers anywhere from three people to five hundred. Some
have no HR function at all, and we become it. Others have an
established HR team already and need additional capacity, an outside
view, or a specialism that team does not carry day to day. There we
partner with the people in place rather than over them: they keep the
relationships and the final say.
Technology, and what it is not for
We use modern tools, including AI, for drafting, research and
administration. They make us faster at the parts of the work that are
slow rather than difficult.
They do not decide anything about a person. Dismissals, grievance
outcomes, disciplinary sanctions and selection for redundancy are
judgments made by people who can be asked to justify them, and the
decision always rests with you. No document reaches a client that a
consultant has not read in full. We set that out properly in our
Privacy & AI notice, including
what we will not put into an AI tool.