How to hire a HR Director in the UK, fractional or full time
Hiring a fractional People Lead in the UK takes seven steps: write the gap down, set the budget from the published day-rate band, check fractional is the right shape, shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage, interview with the six questions below, agree the day-ninety markers in writing, and contract the days and the IR35 position. Most companies go from brief to signed contract in about two weeks. To skip the reading and meet people, hire a fractional People Lead from the seat page.
UK day rates for the seat run £600 to £1,100. All eleven seats compared →
Fractional or full time: which People Lead hire you need
A fractional People Lead costs £600 to £1,100 a day, usually two days a week, which is £4,600 to £8,433 a month with no employer costs. A full-time People Lead is a salary plus employer National Insurance and pension, and a retained search adds 25 to 33 per cent of first-year earnings. Fractional fits two or three days of judgement; full time fits five days of leadership.
| Route | Cost basis | Time to start | Commitment | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional | £600 to £1,100 a day; £4,600 to £8,433 a month at two days | Met within days, starting in one to three weeks | One to three days a week, usually a month's notice | Owning the People Lead decisions two or three days a week |
| Interim | £11,500 to £21,083 a month at 5 days | Weeks rather than months | Full time for a fixed term, typically 3 to 9 months | Cover for a departure, a transaction or a turnaround with an end date |
| Full-time search | A salary plus employer costs, and 25 to 33 per cent of year one as the search fee | eight to twelve weeks of search, then three to six months of notice | Permanent and employed, five days a week | A five-day seat that is certain to be permanent |
The difference between the three routes is set out in full on fractional versus interim versus full-time, and hiring a full-time executive covers the permanent route.
Hiring a fractional People Lead in seven steps
- Write the gap down. Name the two or three things a fractional People Lead must own in the first quarter, and how many days a week that is. List what is live right now: headcount, open roles, and any active grievance, disciplinary or exit. Operators in this seat price on what is already burning, and surprises in week one sour the engagement. Below ↓
- Set the budget from the published band. UK fractional People Lead day rates run £600 to £1,100 in 2026. Two days a week is £4,600 to £8,433 a month, with no employer costs on top. Fractional People Lead cost →
- Check fractional is the right shape. A fractional People Lead is two or three days a week for a year or more. If the need is five days for six months, or the seat is a full-time job already, interim or permanent fits better. Below ↓
- Shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage. Read track records, not titles. The right operator has been the People Lead at a company of your size and stage before, and says what happened there in numbers. Browse the bench →
- Interview with the six questions. Every question asks for something that happened. An operator who has held the seat answers from memory; one who has advised from the sidelines answers in the abstract. Below ↓
- Agree the day-ninety markers in writing. Put the day-ninety outcomes in the brief before they start. Hiring is rebuilt and used: scorecards exist for every live role, interviews are structured, and at least one full hiring cycle has run through the new process end to end. Below ↓
- Contract the days, the notice period and the IR35 position. Fix the days a week, a notice period of a month, who owns the output, and the IR35 determination. Then set the start date and the first ninety-day review. IR35 for fractional executives →
What the seat covers is on the fractional People Lead page. The rest of this page is the part that usually goes unwritten: the interview, day ninety, and when this hire is the wrong answer entirely.
Where to find a fractional People Lead in the UK
Four routes work, and most companies use two of them at once. Whichever finds the person, the shortlist test is the same: they have held the seat at a company of your size and stage before.
- A platform or bench with the rate on the profile. The day rate is visible before the first call, which settles the budget conversation early. The UK fractional platforms, compared.
- A search against a written brief. Somebody else runs the longlist and the first interviews and puts a shortlist in front of you. How Operator Search works.
- Your investors, accountant or lawyer. They have seen fractional people leaders work at other companies and know which ones they would have back.
- Other founders. A People Lead who has done it at a company like yours is usually two introductions away. Ask what they would hire them for again, not whether they were good.
Six questions to ask, and what a strong answer sounds like
Every question here asks for something that happened, not something they believe. An operator who has genuinely held the seat answers from memory; one who has advised from the sidelines answers in the abstract, and the difference is audible within a minute.
1. Walk me through a redundancy or restructure you ran in the UK. What was the timeline, and what went wrong?
Listen for: Strong answers include consultation periods, selection criteria, the settlement conversations, and at least one thing they would do differently. If they have only watched a solicitor do it, or the whole story is frictionless, they have not carried one themselves.
2. A founder tells you they want someone with three years of service gone by Friday. What do you say in that meeting?
Listen for: You want someone who slows the founder down without blocking them: names the unfair dismissal exposure past two years of service, lays out a route that works, and puts a realistic timeline on it. Weak answers either just comply or bury the founder in process with no end date.
3. At the last company where hires kept not working out, what exactly did you change?
Listen for: Concrete mechanics: scorecards written before the role opened, structured debriefs, interviewers taken off the rota, and some evidence the hit rate improved. If the answer is about employer brand and job advert wording, they fixed the top of the funnel and not the decision.
4. What is in your first two weeks of onboarding, specifically, and how do you know it works?
Listen for: Strong answers have a measure, such as time to first real output, plus 30, 60 and 90 day checkpoints and named owners. A culture deck and a welcome lunch is the weak version.
5. Tell me about a time you had to raise a founder's own behaviour with them. How did it land?
Listen for: A real example with real discomfort, and an outcome either way, is what a senior operator sounds like. Someone who says it has never come up has either never been close enough to the founder or chose not to say anything, and both are problems in this seat.
6. Where is the line between what you handle yourself and what goes to an employment solicitor?
Listen for: Strong candidates have a clear split with examples on both sides: settlement agreements, TUPE and anything with tribunal risk go out; standard performance processes stay in. Someone who never escalates is a liability, and someone who escalates everything is an expensive middleman.
Red flags
- Opens with engagement surveys and values workshops when your stated problem is hiring and exits. It usually means they are more comfortable with the soft end of the job than the hard end you are actually paying for.
- Vague on current UK employment law basics: the two-year unfair dismissal threshold, statutory consultation rules, or what recent reforms change for day-one rights. Working knowledge is the entry price for this seat.
- Every story comes from a 500-person company with an HR team underneath them. Running the function alone at a 30-person company, with no coordinator and no HRIS budget, is a different job, and some cannot do it.
- Never mentions managers. If someone diagnoses your people problems entirely in terms of process and policy, they have missed that most retention problems are one specific manager, and no framework fixes that.
What day ninety should look like
Agree these before they start, in writing, in the brief. A fractional engagement without a ninety-day marker drifts into a retainer nobody remembers the point of.
- Hiring is rebuilt and used: scorecards exist for every live role, interviews are structured, and at least one full hiring cycle has run through the new process end to end.
- A contracts and policy audit is done, with the gaps written down and the dangerous ones, such as missing contracts or misclassified contractors, either fixed or scheduled with dates.
- Every open performance issue has a named plan with dates on it, and the hardest conversation on the list has actually happened rather than being scheduled for next month.
When a fractional People Lead is the wrong answer
- You are under about fifteen people with no big hiring push coming. A payroll provider plus an employment solicitor on call covers the risk, and a fractional people lead will not have enough to do.
- What you actually need is payroll run, contracts issued and holiday tracked. That is HR administration, and an outsourced HR service does it well at a fraction of £600 to £1,100 a day.
- Everyone already knows the problem is one specific manager, possibly a co-founder. That is a decision only the founder can make, and hiring a people lead to avoid making it just adds a witness.
If one of those is you, say so in a brief anyway and we will tell you straight. Sometimes the honest answer is interim or full-time.
What to put in a fractional People Lead brief
- List what is live right now: headcount, open roles, and any active grievance, disciplinary or exit. Operators in this seat price on what is already burning, and surprises in week one sour the engagement.
- Be explicit about who decides. On exits especially, say whether they make the call or advise the founder who makes it, because that determines who is carrying the legal risk.
- The thing founders forget: say whether a manager layer exists. Building managers from scratch and plugging into an existing set are different engagements, and a good operator quotes them differently.
What the contract should cover
General guidance rather than legal advice: have the engagement letter read by somebody who acts for you. These are the clauses that cause the arguments when they are missing.
- The days. How many a week or a month, whether they roll over, and the day rate or monthly figure that pays for them.
- Notice. A month either way is the usual term, long enough to hand over and short enough that neither side is trapped.
- Intellectual property. Who owns the models, documents and code the People Lead produces. It should be the company, said in writing, because without a clause it may not be.
- IR35. Whether the engagement is inside or outside, who made the determination, and the reasons. IR35 for fractional executives explains who carries the decision.
The rest, from confidentiality to conversion terms, is in what a fractional executive contract should say.
Common questions about hiring a fractional People Lead
How quickly can a company hire a fractional People Lead?
Faster than any other way of filling the seat. A request to a fractional People Lead on the bench is accepted or declined within three days, and a brief to Operator Search returns a shortlist in five business days. A permanent People Lead search runs eight to twelve weeks to an accepted offer and then a notice period of three to six months, which is why fractional cover is the normal bridge.
How many days a week should a fractional People Lead be hired for?
Two is the most common arrangement and one to three is the working range. Below a day a week nobody can own a function; above three the seat has usually become a full-time one and the honest conversation is about converting. Start at the lower end and add a day when decisions begin queueing for the People Lead's days.
What is the monthly cost of a fractional People Lead two days a week?
At the 2026 UK band of £600 to £1,100 a day, two days a week over 46 working weeks comes to £4,600 to £8,433 a month, invoiced by the operator's own company with no employer National Insurance, pension or recruitment fee on top. Higher end for scale-ups hiring at pace and for TUPE, restructures or redundancy work.
Can a fractional People Lead later become the full-time People Lead?
Yes, and it is one of the better routes to a permanent hire because both sides have had months of working interview. Raise the possibility early so the operator can plan their other clients, agree a start date around their notice to those clients, and check the engagement letter for any conversion terms before the conversation.
What should a brief for a fractional People Lead say?
The three outcomes the seat owns in the first ninety days, the days a week and whether on site matters, who the People Lead reports to and who reports to them, the systems and data they will inherit, and the budget as a day rate or a monthly figure. A brief that lists tasks rather than outcomes attracts people who want a to-do list, and the fractional people leaders worth hiring decline it.
When should a company hire a full-time People Lead?
When the work fills five days and stays there: decisions queue for the People Lead's days every week, there is a team of leaders to manage, and the role is certain to be permanent. A retained search for the seat runs 25 to 33 per cent of first-year earnings. Until all three are true, a fractional People Lead at two days a week is the cheaper way to find out.
How long does it take to hire a People Lead, fractional or full time?
A fractional People Lead is usually met within days and starts in one to three weeks: Operator Search returns a shortlist in 5 business days, and a request on the bench is answered within three. A permanent People Lead takes eight to twelve weeks of search to an accepted offer, then a notice period of three to six months, so a first day is usually six months or more away.
How do I find a part-time People Lead?
Four routes work in the UK: a fractional platform or bench where the day rate is published before you speak to anybody, a search run against a written brief, a referral from an investor, accountant or another founder, and the People Lead's own network of former colleagues. Whichever route, shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage, and agree the days, the notice period and the IR35 position in writing.
Two ways in
Browse verified fractional people leaders on the bench and book direct, or brief Operator Search and we run the interviews above for you.