When Does a Company Need HR?

It's a lot like asking, "When does a company need IT?" or "When do I need to have a lawyer create our employment contracts?"

Ideally, when you have your first employee, you should have someone helping guide you through some basic employer requirements. (Check out my Starter Guide to People Resources), such as proper employment contracts, understanding your own payroll deductions as an employer, and more.

While a company is going through growth mode, a lot of the mechanisms that worked in a 10 person company just do not work in a 30+ person company. Growth then starts to change again around the 70 person mark.

When you could once just stand up in the room you were working in together (or virtually in a slack channel) and say what you needed to say, things start to creak, leak and overall don't work any longer.

You start needing structure. You start needing to have performance conversations, and your role as a leader or business owner, whether you want to or not, will change. It will require more of you. These things have a current of their own.

This is where a lot of founders (or any leader for that matter) tend to get stuck. The subject matter expert now becomes the figurehead, and things that didn't matter before (like what you said, how you said it, or the behaviours that are allowed to linger that could hurt your business), start to matter.

Having an HR Business Partner (fractional or otherwise) can be like a family doctor for your business. We don't have all the answers, but we can refer you to specialists, and help create the roadmap for what you want to see moving forward.

So if you're wondering, "When do I need to get HR?", the answer is probably sooner than later.