Fractional teams: senior skills without a full-time salary

Key takeaways

A fractional team gives a small business senior skills for a day or two a week, paid by the day or month, without a full-time salary. It suits roles where the business needs direction more than hours: finance, marketing, operations, technology. Fractional leaders set the plan. A managed team or junior staff carry out the volume.

• Fractional: a senior specialist for a fixed part of the week.
• Best for direction and decisions, not routine volume.
• Pair a fractional lead with a managed delivery team.
• Check employment status rules before engaging individuals.

What is a fractional team?

A fractional team is a group of senior specialists who each work for a business part-time on an ongoing basis, typically one to three days a week, alongside other clients. Unlike a consultant on a project, a fractional leader holds a continuing role, such as finance director or head of marketing, at a fraction of full-time cost.

• How outsourcing helps small businesses scale without hiring
• The lean team model: a bigger business, the same headcount

Which roles work well as fractional?

Roles work well as fractional when the value lies in judgement and a few hours of it go a long way. A 15-person firm rarely needs a full-time finance director, but benefits greatly from one for two days a month. The same applies to marketing leadership, HR, operations design and technical oversight.

• Finance director or controller.
• Head of marketing.
• Operations or process lead.
• HR adviser.
• Technical lead or chief technology officer.

• Generalist vs specialist: who should do the work?

How does a fractional team differ from outsourcing?

A fractional specialist supplies senior thinking for a few days. Outsourcing supplies a managed team to run a process every day. They solve different problems and work best together: the fractional marketing lead sets the plan and the outsourced team produces and publishes the content.

• Staff augmentation vs outsourcing: which fits?
• Virtual assistant versus managed BPO team

What does a fractional role cost?

A fractional role is usually priced by the day or as a monthly retainer. Rates vary widely with seniority and field. As an illustration only, two days a month at £500 a day is £12,000 a year, against a full-time senior salary several times that once employer costs are added. Ask what is included between the paid days.

• The true cost of an employee in the UK

What should you check before engaging one?

Check three things. First, employment status: HM Revenue & Customs publishes guidance on off-payroll working, and the right treatment depends on how the person actually works with you. Second, availability on the days you need. Third, who does the work between visits, because a plan with no one to carry it out changes nothing.

• Contractors vs outsourcing: cost and IR35 risk

When is a fractional role the wrong fit?

A fractional role is the wrong fit when the business needs daily presence, when the function is central to what customers buy, or when the workload already fills a week. It also disappoints when the owner wanted an extra pair of hands, not advice. In those cases hire, or use a managed team.

• When to outsource and when to hire

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see in UK firms of 10 to 25 people: the owner acts as finance director, marketing director and operations director, and none of the three gets proper attention. Two fractional leads for a few days a month, with bookkeeping, content production and admin run by managed teams, give each function an owner without adding a single employee.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Fractional team checklist

Settle these before the first day.

• The outcomes the role is responsible for.
• Days per month and how to reach them in between.
• Who carries out the work they specify.
• Employment status assessed and documented.
• Access to systems and data, with a contract.
• A review after three months.

• Workforce planning for growth: roles to hire, roles to buy
• Scaling the finance function without a bigger finance team

Next step

Tell us which functions the owner is currently covering. We will suggest where senior part-time direction would help and what a delivery team behind it would do.