When does a growing business actually need an HR hire?

There's no magic number. No headcount threshold where an HR hire suddenly becomes essential. But there is usually a moment, and most founders recognise it in retrospect rather than at the time.

It tends to arrive as a feeling rather than a data point. You're spending more time on people problems than on the business. A grievance lands and you're not sure how to handle it. Someone's performance has been poor for months and nobody's had the conversation. You're hiring but you haven't thought about contracts, or probation, or what happens if it doesn't work out. Payroll is fine but everything around it, the policies, the processes, the employee lifecycle, is held together with good intentions and not much else.

That's the moment. Not when you reach 50 people. Not when you win a big contract. When the people stuff starts creating drag on everything else.

What most businesses get wrong about the first HR hire

The most common mistake is hiring too junior. A founder who's been handling everything themselves often thinks they need an HR administrator: someone to sort contracts, manage the filing, handle the transactional stuff. And they do need that. But they also need someone who can advise on risk, manage difficult situations, and build the foundations that stop problems before they start.

Hiring a junior HR person into a business with no HR infrastructure is asking them to build something they've never built. They'll be good at process but won't have the experience to navigate the complex situations that actually keep founders up at night. The grievance that's really a discrimination claim. The restructure that needs careful handling. The long-term absence that's gone on too long without a plan.

The second mistake is over-hiring. A full-time senior HR professional is expensive. For a business of 40 or 60 people, you might not need someone five days a week. You need senior capability, but not necessarily senior headcount.

The alternatives

This is where it's worth being honest about the options. You don't have to choose between doing it yourself and hiring a full-time Head of People. There's a middle ground.

Retained HR advisory gives you access to senior HR support on an ongoing basis without the overhead of a permanent hire. Someone who knows your business, understands your culture, and is available when you need them. Not a call centre. Not a generic helpline. A named person who picks up the phone and already has context.

A fractional Head of People goes further. They work inside your business for an agreed number of days, attend your leadership meetings, manage your people agenda, and provide the strategic HR leadership that a growing business needs. For many organisations between 30 and 150 people, this is the right answer. Senior expertise at a fraction of the cost.

The transactional work, the contracts, the payroll admin, the routine queries, can sit with an administrator or an outsourced provider. But the thinking, the judgment calls, the risk management, that needs someone with experience. Whether that person is employed or retained is a commercial question, not a capability one.

What to think about before you decide

Before you write a job description or brief a recruiter, it's worth asking a few questions. What are the people problems that are actually costing you time, money, or sleep? Are they transactional problems that need process, or strategic problems that need judgment? How much of your week are you currently spending on HR issues, and what would you do with that time if you got it back? Is the need consistent enough to justify a permanent hire, or does it come in waves?

If the answers point towards needing senior capability but not full-time headcount, the fractional or retained model is worth exploring. If they point towards a genuine full-time role, then the question is what seniority and what brief, and getting that right matters more than getting someone in quickly.

Either way, the worst thing you can do is nothing. The people stuff doesn't get simpler as you grow. It compounds. And the cost of getting it wrong, whether that's a tribunal claim, a good person leaving, or a toxic culture taking hold, is always higher than the cost of getting proper support in place.

Book a free discovery call with King HR Advisory to talk it through.