Fractional HR
Fractional HR for Founders Who Are Also, Somehow, the HR Department
A senior HR thinking partner, sized to what your company actually needs right now — not a fixed headcount to justify every quarter.
You’re the founder. You’re also, somehow, the HR department.
You didn’t build a company to spend Friday afternoons untangling a leave dispute, drafting a warning letter you’re not sure is compliant, or wondering if that “quick chat” with an underperforming hire needs to be documented.
You’re not just running a business. You’re carrying the dreams of your team, the expectations of your board, and the friction of a thousand unsolved problems — most of them people problems, and most of them landing on your desk because there’s no one else for them to land on. Founders in Singapore lose roughly eight hours a week to this: a full working day that isn’t going into product, sales, or the thing you actually started the company to do.
The instinct is to fix it by hiring an HR Manager. Then you see the real cost of that hire — and the calculus gets complicated fast. (If this sounds familiar, read Stop Being the Most Expensive Administrator in Your Company.)
Who this is for
This is built for Singapore founders and SME leaders roughly sub-30 to 150 headcount, at the point where HR has outgrown “we’ll figure it out” but hasn’t justified a full-time senior hire. A part-time admin assistant can’t hold the line anymore, but a S$150k+ HR Director salary doesn’t pencil out against your current headcount or runway. You need senior judgment — on hiring, structure, compliance, and the hard conversations — without carrying it as a full fixed cost.
If you’re hiring for a title rather than a function, see hiring for the foundation, not the role you think you need — fractional is usually the better starting point than a headcount req.
What you get
Fractional HR from With Kinna gives you a senior HR thinking partner, sized to what your company actually needs right now — not a fixed headcount to justify every quarter:
- Someone senior enough to lay your HR foundations from the ground up — hiring decisions, your first org structure and core policies, and Employment Act compliance — without a director-level salary attached.
- Capacity that flexes up when you’re scaling and down when you’re not — you’re not locked into one person’s full-time cost regardless of what the quarter needs.
- A partner who thinks about the business, not just the paperwork. This is the line between fractional and outsourced HR: outsourced processes transactions; fractional sits in on the decisions that shape the company.
How it works: The Kinna Review → The Kinna Retainer
Every engagement starts with The Kinna Review — a focused, two-hour diagnostic (US$800–1,500) covering what’s working, what’s exposed, and what’s quietly costing you. No generic checklist. Tell us the story no one else hears. We’re listening.
Most founders then move into The Kinna Retainer — an ongoing fractional engagement scoped to your headcount and stage, covering the recurring senior work: hiring decisions, structure, policy, and the people problems that don’t wait for a quarterly review.
Proof: the math founders are actually up against
The real comparison isn’t fractional HR versus doing nothing — doing nothing has a price, it’s just hidden. A full in-house HR Manager in Singapore runs S$140k–185k all-in in Year 1 (base S$84k–130k, CPF at roughly 17% or ~S$13.6k, AWS and bonus S$15k–25k, benefits and tools S$5k–10k). A full HR Director runs S$180k–250k. Full breakdown: The True Cost of HR Teams.
Against that: founders already spend roughly eight hours a week on HR admin themselves. A bad hire or unplanned exit compounds it — industry rule of thumb puts turnover replacement cost at 50–200% of annual salary, illustratively S$40k–160k on an S$80k hire. And compliance gaps carry direct exposure: Employment Act fines up to S$5,000 per offence, S$10,000 for repeats.
With Kinna’s fractional practice is led by a Fractional HR Practice Lead with a decade across luxury houses including Cartier, Estée Lauder, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Charles & Keith — where the mandate ran through a period of rapid growth and organizational change — most recently as Interim Head of HR, Travel Retail APAC. The practice is supported by a senior talent-acquisition lead with full-lifecycle, SEA-regional hiring experience from frontline through Senior Director.
Both With Kinna founders have built businesses of their own, so the pressure you’re under — every dollar of headcount scrutinized, every people call made without a playbook — isn’t theory to us. And we don’t stop at our own desk: we work with a network of fractional HR talent, so if your situation calls for a different specialist, we’ll match you with the right partner. With Kinna operates under EA Licence No. 26C3338.
More questions? See our full FAQ.
Frequently Asked
Common Questions
What does a fractional HR consultant actually do?
A fractional HR consultant gives you a senior HR professional — someone who has led HR functions before — for the fraction of their time your business actually needs. They own outcomes the way an in-house HR lead would: employment frameworks, hiring, compensation, compliance, performance, and the difficult conversations. The difference is the engagement model, not the seniority.
How much does fractional HR cost in Singapore?
Every With Kinna engagement starts with the Kinna Review, a two-hour diagnostic priced at $800–$1,500 USD. From there, project and retainer pricing is scoped to the work involved. As a benchmark: a senior in-house HR hire in Singapore typically costs $100,000–$250,000 USD a year before benefits and overhead — fractional support delivers the same seniority at a fraction of that.
How many hours a week do we get?
It depends on the scope we agree after the Kinna Review. Some clients need a few hours a week of standing counsel; others need a dedicated project block (a restructure, an HRIS implementation, a compliance remediation) or interim HR leadership through a transition. The involvement flexes with the business — that is the point of the model.
How is fractional HR different from HR outsourcing?
Outsourcing firms run transactional processes — payroll, admin, volume recruitment — at arm's length. A fractional HR lead embeds in your business, builds relationships with your team, and thinks strategically about your people. If you need processes managed, outsource them. If you need a thinking partner who owns outcomes, that is fractional.
When should we switch from fractional to a full-time HR hire?
Usually when the operational volume — onboarding, employee relations, day-to-day queries — justifies a full-time seat, often somewhere past 60–80 headcount. A good fractional partner tells you when you have reached that point, helps you hire the right person, and hands over cleanly. We consider that a successful engagement, not a lost one.
We Listen.
Every engagement starts with The Kinna Review — a focused two-hour diagnostic that maps what's working, what's exposed, and what's quietly costing you.
Book a Kinna Review →