Outsourced HR services
Senior HR leadership without a full-time HR hire — compensation, compliance, and the people strategy that keeps your team. Built for agencies, where talent is the product.
Schedule a ConversationWhat are outsourced HR services?
Outsourced HR services means handing the people function — or the parts of it you can’t staff well — to an external team instead of hiring internally. That typically covers compensation and leveling, compliant policies and handbooks, employee relations, performance management, manager coaching, onboarding and offboarding, and multi-state employment compliance. You get senior HR judgment on the questions that need it, without carrying a full-time HR salary before the role is full.
It comes in two shapes, and the distinction matters. A <strong>fractional HR director</strong> (or Chief People Officer) is a senior leader engaged part-time who owns people strategy — the compensation philosophy, the org design, the hard conversations. <strong>Outsourced HR administration</strong> is the execution layer: handbooks, filings, compliance, day-to-day employee questions. Most growing companies need both, and most vendors sell only one.
We do both, and we put the strategic seat first. A compliance-only provider will keep you legal while your best people quietly leave. The leadership layer is what changes retention.
The people side, led by agency veterans
In an agency, talent is the product. Yet people strategy is usually the first thing that outgrows the founder and the last thing that gets real leadership. We provide fractional HR — from a Chief People Officer down to hands-on HR business partnering — built for the pace, structure, and culture of creative and marketing businesses.
That means compensation and leveling that make sense, compliant policies and handbooks, manager coaching, performance frameworks, and employee relations handled with judgment. It is people strategy that supports the work, not bureaucracy that smothers it.
Our HR partners come from the same world as our CFOs. That includes an EVP of People & Culture with twelve years inside a creative agency and both PHR and ODCP certification; a talent executive who ran North America talent acquisition at Ogilvy and was SVP of Talent Acquisition at Wunderman Thompson; and a fractional HR executive who is also a practicing attorney, bringing employment-law depth most HR consultancies have to outsource. Meet the team →
When do you need a fractional HR director?
The usual trigger is headcount somewhere between 25 and 50 — the point where the founder or office manager who has been handling people questions is no longer the right answer, but a $180,000-plus VP of People is not yet justifiable either. Other triggers arrive earlier: hiring across state lines, a first involuntary termination, a compensation structure nobody can explain, or managers who were promoted for being good at the craft and have never been taught to manage.
A fractional HR director works a defined portion of the month and owns the strategy: what roles exist and what they are worth, how performance is evaluated, how the handbook actually reflects how you operate, and how to handle the situations where getting it wrong is expensive. Between engagements they are reachable — which matters, because people problems do not schedule themselves around your cadence.
- 25–50 employees and no dedicated HR leadership
- Hiring across multiple states, or a distributed and remote team
- Compensation drift — nobody can explain why two people at the same level are paid differently
- A handbook that was downloaded, not written
- First-time managers with no framework and no coaching
- A performance or termination situation with real legal exposure
- Rapid headcount growth that has outrun onboarding
The whitespace most CFO firms leave open
Almost no fractional CFO firm offers real HR. We do, because finance and people are inseparable — headcount is your biggest cost and, in a services business, your only asset. Pairing HR with finance under one roof means compensation strategy, hiring plans, and profitability actually talk to each other.
That only works if the numbers underneath are trustworthy. A hiring plan built on a P&L that misstates margin is a plan to over-hire — which is why HR engagements are usually paired with a fractional controller keeping the close clean and utilization visible. When you can see utilization by person and margin by client, a headcount decision stops being a debate and becomes arithmetic.
It also joins up with the other end of the people function. When a role needs filling rather than fixing, our recruiting practice runs the search, and payroll sits in the same team — so a multi-state hire does not become three vendors coordinating by email.
What outsourced HR services cost
A full-time HR director costs $110,000 to $180,000 in base salary, and a VP of People or CPO considerably more, before benefits and payroll taxes. Outsourced HR services are priced against the portion of that role you actually use — which for most companies under a hundred employees is a fraction of a full week.
We scope a monthly budget against a defined set of responsibilities rather than billing hourly, and we separate one-time project work — a compensation study, a handbook rebuild, a multi-state compliance catch-up — from the ongoing retainer, so you can see what is a fix and what is a running cost. The budget is reviewable as the business changes.
What’s included
- Fractional HR director / Chief People Officer
- Compensation strategy, leveling, and benchmarking
- Compliant policies, handbooks, and employment practices
- Multi-state employment compliance for distributed teams
- Performance management and manager coaching
- Employee relations, investigations, and difficult conversations
- Onboarding, offboarding, and organizational design
- People strategy tied to your financial plan
Who we provide this to
We work exclusively with the industries we come from:
Common questions
What are outsourced HR services?
Outsourced HR services means an external team handles the people function instead of an internal hire — compensation and leveling, compliant policies and handbooks, employee relations, performance management, manager coaching, onboarding, and multi-state compliance. It comes in two shapes: a fractional HR director who owns strategy, and outsourced HR administration that handles execution. Most growing companies need both.
What is a fractional HR director?
A senior HR leader — often at Chief People Officer level — engaged part-time on an ongoing basis. They own the people strategy: compensation philosophy, org design, performance frameworks, and the situations where getting it wrong is expensive. It is the same seniority as a full-time VP of People, for the portion of the week you actually need.
When should a company hire outsourced HR?
Usually around 25–50 employees, or sooner if you are growing fast, hiring across state lines, or feeling manager and culture strain. Earlier triggers include a first involuntary termination, compensation drift nobody can explain, or a handbook that was downloaded rather than written. Fractional HR gets you senior leadership at that stage without committing to a full-time hire before the role is full.
How much do outsourced HR services cost?
Less than the role you are replacing. A full-time HR director runs $110,000–$180,000 in base salary, more at VP or CPO level, before benefits and taxes — and most companies under a hundred employees use a fraction of that week. We scope a monthly budget against defined responsibilities rather than billing hourly, and price one-time projects such as a compensation study or handbook rebuild separately from the ongoing retainer.
Can you handle multi-state HR compliance for a remote team?
Yes. Distributed teams trigger employment-law obligations that vary by state — required policies, leave entitlements, pay transparency, final-pay timing, classification rules. We keep your handbook, classifications, and practices compliant wherever your people work, and coordinate with payroll so nothing falls between the two.
Why get HR and finance from the same firm?
Because headcount is the biggest cost and, in a services business, the entire product — compensation and profitability are the same conversation. When HR and finance sit under one roof, your hiring plan, comp strategy, and financial plan talk to each other instead of colliding at budget time. And a headcount decision made against real utilization and client margin data stops being a debate.
Do you work with agencies specifically?
Agencies are who we serve — marketing, advertising, creative, digital, PR, media, and entertainment. That shapes the HR work in concrete ways: creative career laddering that isn’t borrowed from corporate, compensation benchmarked against agency roles rather than generic titles, freelance and contractor classification handled correctly, and utilization understood as a people metric rather than only a finance one.
Let's talk about your HR Services.
Tell us where things stand today, and we'll show you what senior, agency-specific support looks like — without the full-time cost.
Schedule a Conversation