While fractional contractors or employees are increasing in attractiveness, its still a very new concept for some industries. This cost-effective solution allows growing and mid-size businesses to hire seasoned, experienced C-Suite executives for a fraction of the cost.
What Is A Fractional Employee?
As you might have guessed, a fractional employee is one where you are only hiring an executive for a set number of hours each week. Typically a fractional hire divides their workweek among multiple employers as defined by a contract. For example, the employee will work two days at one company and three days at another. Sometimes, the time is allocated based on hours per week, with flexibility on when the work occurs. The contractor or employee can work remotely or as needed on site.
Popular methods of payment for a fractional hire are hourly rates or retainers at a fixed bi-weekly or monthly fee.
Should you hire a fractional employee? Here are some situations when a fractional hire might make sense for you:
Bridging the Gap When an Employee Leaves
Company X lost their Human Resources Executive. The CEO ask the Finance Director and Junior Staff to take on the workload of the HR Executive. However, Company X thinks the cost savings of not replacing the HR Executive is really nice, and they decide to leave it vacant while they look for their next HR Executive.
Are they saving? Not really – what happens is that the Finance Director – who already has a full workload – becomes overworked, the Junior Staff is unqualified to be managing some of the work, and things start falling through the cracks. The risk begins to outweigh the cost savings benefit. Due to Company X becoming enamored with the money savings, they end up compromising the quality of care to the people served, fail to maintain compliance, and engagement between staff become stressful and tense.
The solution to this issue should have been to bring in a fractional Human Resources Executive or Administrator on-going or in the interim as the company searches for the long term replacement.
Experienced Leaders Ready to Get To Work
Because of a C-Suite leader’s extensive experience, they have the competency to walk into a business and hit the ground running and work both collaboratively and independently on assignments. They can even guide or train new or emerging leaders within a company.
Save Costs for Business Investments
Using this staffing model is a savings that permits the investing of resources into other areas of the business, as companies do not have to provide training or incur costs of additional employee expenses such as benefits, leave pay, or holidays.
Improve Employee Loyalty and Knowledge
Employees change employers on average once every two to four years. The fractional staffing model provides work/life balance, can be on-going or as-needed. Because of this, it feeds the need for professional growth and diversity in assignments and settings. These advantages encourage longevity and loyalty, which in turn creates more robust internal business knowledge and contractor or staff engagement. That’s right, fractional employees are often loyal and have longer-term relationships than full time hires.
Fractional hires don’t just sound good; they can be a catalyst for growth and change within your business and stability within your workforce staffing. With this in mind, maybe it’s time your business considered fractional hiring at the c-suite or administrative level to reach your business goals.
Noble Hearts provides fractional human resources. Contact us today to get started on your fractional HR needs.