Client Context
A Canadian fintech company had raised a $40M Series B and grown from 70 to 150 employees in under a year. The rapid scaling had outpaced the organization's people infrastructure. There was no HR leader — payroll was managed by the finance team, hiring was ad-hoc through department leads, and there were no compensation bands, no performance review process, and no formal onboarding beyond a laptop setup.
The consequences were showing: 28% annualized attrition (mostly in the first 6 months), a Glassdoor rating that had dropped from 4.2 to 3.1, compensation inequities across similar roles, and two potential discrimination complaints from employees who believed their pay was unfair relative to peers. The board was demanding a professional HR function before approving the next phase of hiring to reach 300 employees. The CEO needed a seasoned HR leader immediately — but didn't want to rush a permanent CHRO hire.
What We Did
— Stepped in as fractional Chief Human Resources Officer with a 10-month mandate to build the HR function, stabilize attrition, and hire a permanent CHRO successor
— Conducted a rapid organizational diagnostic: analyzed compensation data across all 150 employees, mapped reporting structures, surveyed employee engagement, and interviewed 30 employees across all levels to understand the cultural pain points
— Designed and implemented a market-benchmarked compensation framework with defined bands for all roles, eliminating the 15-20% pay gaps that had emerged from unstructured negotiation-based hiring
— Built a performance management system appropriate for a high-growth startup: quarterly check-ins, OKR alignment, and a lightweight calibration process that gave managers the tools to have honest conversations without enterprise-level bureaucracy
— Created a structured onboarding program covering the first 90 days: pre-boarding, week-one immersion, 30/60/90 day milestones, and manager accountability checkpoints — directly targeting the first-6-month attrition spike
— Established a talent acquisition function: hired two in-house recruiters, implemented an ATS, built structured interview guides with scorecards for every role family, and created an employer brand presence on LinkedIn
— Addressed the compensation complaints through a transparent remediation process: conducted a pay equity audit, adjusted 23 salaries, and communicated the new framework company-wide to rebuild trust
— Recruited, evaluated, and onboarded a permanent VP of People, completing a 4-week transition with documented playbooks for every HR process
Outcomes
- Attrition dropped from 28% to 11% annualized within 8 months, saving an estimated $2.1M in replacement costs based on average fully-loaded cost per hire
- Time-to-hire reduced 45% through structured recruiting process, enabling the company to fill 40 roles during the engagement without sacrificing quality
- Employee NPS improved from 23 to 62 as compensation transparency, onboarding structure, and performance management restored confidence
- Zero discrimination complaints filed after the pay equity audit and remediation — the two pending concerns were resolved through the transparent framework
- Permanent VP of People hired and transitioned with full documentation, enabling the function to operate independently post-engagement
- Board approval secured for the next hiring phase, with the HR infrastructure now rated "investment-grade" by the lead investor
"We were hemorrhaging talent and had no idea why until someone with real HR expertise looked under the hood. In ten months, we went from chaos to a function that our board — and our employees — actually trust. The fractional model gave us exactly what we needed: senior leadership without the risk of a bad permanent hire." — CEO, Fintech Company