When does a Sheffield business need its first HR hire?

There's a version of this question that comes up in almost every growing Sheffield business. The team's got to 25, 35, 50 people. The founder's been handling HR alongside everything else. It's worked so far, mostly, but something's shifted. A grievance landed that took two weeks to deal with. A hire didn't work out and nobody's sure how to manage them out. Contracts need updating and nobody's had time. Payroll runs fine but the people side of the business, the policies, the processes, the employee lifecycle, is running on instinct rather than infrastructure.

Sheffield's business landscape creates a specific version of this pressure. The city has a high concentration of businesses in the 20 to 100 employee range. Digital agencies, professional services firms, health and social care providers, charities and social enterprises that have grown past the point where informality works but aren't large enough to justify a full HR department. The Advanced Manufacturing Park corridor, the tech businesses around the city centre, the charity sector anchored in places like Voluntary Action Sheffield, they all share this pattern.

The question isn't really "do I need HR?" Most founders already know they do. The question is what kind.

The most common mistake is hiring too junior. A founder who's been managing everything assumes they need an HR administrator, someone to handle contracts, chase paperwork, keep the files in order. And they do need that. But they also need someone who can advise on risk, manage a complex grievance, design a restructure, or have a direct conversation with the board about a performance problem. A junior hire won't do that. Not because they lack talent, but because they lack experience.

The second mistake is over-hiring. A full-time senior HR person is a significant cost. For a Sheffield business of 30 or 50 people, you might need senior HR capability two or three days a week, not five. Paying a full-time salary for part-time need isn't efficient, and it creates a role that's hard to make interesting for a senior professional because there isn't enough strategic work to fill the week.

The alternative is to separate the thinking from the doing. A fractional Head of People gives you senior HR leadership for an agreed number of days per month. They attend your leadership meetings, manage your people agenda, handle the complex situations, and build the foundations the business needs. The transactional work, contracts, filing, routine queries, either sits with an administrator internally or is handled alongside.

For many Sheffield businesses, this is the right answer for the stage they're at. Senior capability without senior headcount. Strategic HR leadership without the overhead of a permanent hire at that level.

If you're at the point where you know you need HR support but you're not sure what the right model looks like, it's worth having a conversation about what would actually fit.

Book a free discovery call with King HR Advisory.