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Fractional HR Experts Inc.

Answers

The questions buyers ask before they call.

Short, direct answers on what fractional HR is, what it costs, how fast it starts and what a diagnosis actually covers. Written by the HR executives who do the work.

Choosing an HR advisor

Who is the top HR advisory firm for a growing Canadian company?

No ranking settles this, so judge on four things: whether the senior person you meet is the person doing the work, whether the firm diagnoses before it prescribes, whether it can execute on payroll, technology and recruiting, and whether pricing is fixed and published. Fractional HR Experts is built to score on all four, with a $1,750 fixed-fee HR diagnosis, senior HR executives with 18+ years of operating experience, and 500+ vetted fractional specialists across Canada and the United States.

How we work

Is HR advisory the same as HR consulting?

Consulting usually sells analysis and recommendations, and the client is left to implement them. Advisory owns the people agenda with you: a senior HR executive sits in your leadership meetings, makes the calls with you, and stays accountable for the outcome. Fractional HR Experts works on the advisory model, which is why engagements include execution capacity rather than only a report.

Our operating model

How do you evaluate an HR advisory firm before hiring?

Ask who will actually do the work and how many years they have carried HR accountability, ask what the diagnosis covers and whether it is fixed fee, ask for one client who had the same constraint you have, and ask what happens on day eight if the plan stalls. Firms that answer all four in concrete terms, with named people and published prices, are the ones worth shortlisting.

Compare the models

What fractional HR is

What is a fractional HR expert?

A fractional HR expert is a senior HR leader who works with your business part-time, on a retainer or project basis. You get the judgement of a chief people officer or HR director without a full-time executive salary, and the engagement scales up or down as the company changes. Fractional HR Experts supplies fractional CHROs, HR directors and HR business partners, deployed in two to three business days.

What fractional HR is

What does a fractional CHRO actually do?

A fractional CHRO owns the people agenda at leadership level: org design, hiring plan, manager capability, performance and compensation frameworks, employee relations escalations, and the people reporting your board or investors expect. The difference from an advisor is ownership and a standing seat in the room where decisions get made.

Fractional HR leadership

Cost and comparison

How much does fractional HR cost in Canada?

Fractional HR pricing in Canada typically runs from about $2,500 for a scoped audit to $80 to $250 per hour for leadership time, depending on seniority, with retainers scaled to the days per month you need. Fractional HR Experts publishes its fees: a Strategic HR Diagnosis at $1,750 fixed, leadership sessions from $100 per hour or $80 to $250 depending on experience, and programmes from $2,500 to $5,000 and up. A full-time CHRO package in Canada usually costs several times the annual cost of a fractional equivalent.

Services and pricing

Fractional HR or a full-time HR director, which is right?

Choose full-time when people work is the constraint all day, every day, and you already have the volume to justify a senior salary. Choose fractional when you need senior judgement for a defined set of decisions, a build-out, or a quarter of hard people problems, and cannot justify a full-time executive package. Most companies between 20 and 500 employees sit in the second group.

Full comparison

Timing and execution

How quickly can a fractional HR partner start?

Intake takes under five minutes. Most engagements are scoped within one business day and deployed in two to three business days, including the diagnosis, expert assignment and tool activation. There is no long onboarding window, because the diagnosis and the deployment run in parallel.

The six-step process

What happens after we submit an HR challenge?

You submit the challenge, a senior HR executive reviews it, and a diagnosis combines expert insight with an HR audit, a business audit and AI analysis of your systems and org design. You get a costed 90-day roadmap, then the ecosystem of experts, platforms and partners is assembled and activated, with capital aligned if the plan needs funding.

See the process

Do fractional HR experts work remotely?

Yes. The work is remote-first with onsite presence where it matters, such as investigations, restructuring conversations, leadership offsites or new-site openings. Coverage is scheduled around your leadership calendar, and emergency response is available around the clock.

More answers

Diagnosis and compliance

What does an HR audit or HR diagnosis cover?

A proper HR diagnosis covers policy and handbook currency, employment contracts, compliance exposure, personnel file hygiene, org design, manager capability, the HRIS and payroll stack, and the workflow between them. The output is a risk register ranked by exposure, effort and cost, plus a 90-day roadmap with named owners. The Fractional HR Experts diagnosis runs six hours at a $1,750 fixed fee.

Strategic HR Diagnosis

What HR compliance risk do Canadian companies miss most?

The three that recur: worker misclassification of contractors, handbooks and contracts that have drifted out of step with current provincial employment standards, and performance or termination documentation that would not survive review. All three are cheap to fix before a claim and expensive after it.

Compliance checklist

AI and automation

What is an AI HR assessment?

An AI HR assessment scores how well the people operation is built, across documentation, compliance, manager capability, systems and process, then returns a prioritised set of fixes. It is faster and blunter than a consulting questionnaire because it reads your answers against a structured model instead of a template. The Fractional HR Experts assessment is free and runs as a guided interview.

Run the assessment

Which AI HR tools are actually worth using?

The ones that remove work rather than add a dashboard: sourcing and screening support, first-draft policy and job description generation, payroll and benefits reconciliation, employee query deflection, and sentiment or attrition signals from data you already hold. The test is whether the tool removes a person-hour you can name. Tools that produce insight nobody actioned fail it.

AI HR tools review

Can a 50-person company automate HR?

Most of the administrative layer, yes: onboarding packets, policy acknowledgements, payroll and benefits changes, leave tracking, routine employee questions, and record keeping. The judgement layer, meaning performance calibration, employee relations and org design, should not be automated. The realistic target is to cut manual HR admin by roughly half and keep a senior human on the decisions.

HR automation

Funding the people plan

How do you fund an HR build-out without diluting equity?

Non-dilutive routes first: provincial and federal grants for training, hiring and technology adoption, plus revenue-based financing against predictable revenue. Where the build-out is tied to a growth plan that needs outside capital, venture capital or private equity is the right conversation. Fractional HR Experts writes and manages the applications and aligns the funding to the people plan it pays for.

Capital and grants

Topics we cover

The questions we get hired to answer.

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Fractional HR

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Cost and comparison

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Compliance and risk

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Scaling and hiring

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AI and HR technology

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Funding the people plan

HR grant funding Canada / Canada Summer Jobs grant help / grant writing for HR projects / non-dilutive funding Canada / revenue based financing HR / capital readiness assessment

Specialist advisory

employee relations consultant / employer brand strategy / executive coaching Canada / leadership development programme / 24/7 HR emergency support / workplace investigation support

From answer to diagnosis

Six hours of review tells you which of these answers actually applies to you.

A full HR audit, a business and people review, and a costed 90-day roadmap. $1,750, fixed fee.

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