How a newly founded consulting firm went from zero employees to a fully operating people function across seven states — including a corporate restructure mid-flight — and then handed the whole thing to an in-house team without dropping a payroll.
| Sector | Distribution ERP, systems integration, and supply chain consulting |
| Size | 0 → 18 employees in ten months, plus an offshore contractor team |
| Footprint | Headquartered in coastal North Carolina; payroll obligations in seven states plus international contractors |
| Engagement | Fractional People Leadership + HRIS Implementation, ~14 months |
| Outcome | Complete handoff to in-house and local support at the client's request |
The situation
Two principals founded a consulting firm and, within months, had more demand than people. The plan was to convert a handful of contractors into a real employee base effective January 1 — a first W-2 cohort with offer letters, benefits, a 401(k), and payroll in multiple states — and to keep hiring from there.
They had none of the machinery required to do that. No HRIS. No handbook. No employment agreements. No benefits broker relationship, no carrier contracts, no retirement plan. No offer letter templates, no I-9 process, no state tax registrations, no job architecture, no performance framework, and no one internally whose job any of this was.
They also had a hard deadline. The offer letters were already out.
What we did
We were engaged as fractional people leadership — not to advise on what to build, but to build it, run it, and eventually give it away.
1. Selected and implemented the HRIS against a fixed date
We ran the evaluation, negotiated the contract to roughly a 47% total discount (annual prepayment, 90% off implementation, two months free), and drove the implementation directly. The principals stayed out of it by design.
Contract start January 1. First payroll completed January 7 — about eleven weeks from implementation kickoff, with the first employee cohort onboarded and paid on time.
2. Built onboarding and offboarding as systems, not checklists
Offer letters generating automatically from role and salary band. I-9 collection with E-Verify enrollment. Equipment ordering coordinated with the firm's IT provider. Email and productivity account provisioning. Work location and state tax setup at hire.
We also built the approval architecture around it: hiring approvals, salary increase approvals requiring both manager and finance sign-off, and termination document templates with the custom fields the business actually needed.
Eight automated workflows were built out on top — leave reminders, performance review triggers, work anniversaries, and an offboarding sequence covering exit interview, access revocation, and property return.
3. Sourced and bound a benefits program that competed above their weight
Working with a national broker, we placed a UnitedHealthcare Choice Plus medical plan alongside dental, vision, life, and short- and long-term disability — and, at the principals' direction, upgraded the life benefit before the plan year even began.
4. Launched a 401(k) integrated to payroll
Provider selected, plan implemented, and integrated to the HRIS so contributions flow without manual files. We ran contribution reconciliation and remittance throughout the engagement.
5. Wrote the compliance foundation from scratch
Employee handbook drafted, reviewed by employment counsel, and built into a compliance content platform that flags changes in law. Employment agreement templates developed with counsel, including name-and-likeness provisions. International holiday schedules incorporated for the offshore team. State registrations and payroll tax reconciliation across seven states — Michigan, Colorado (including paid family and medical leave), Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
6. Built performance management and a job architecture
A three-stage cycle — 90-day, six-month, then annual — with manager review, self-review, upward review of the manager and the company, and 1:1 documentation templates. We wrote a performance guide for managers covering how to run the conversations, not just how to complete the forms.
Underneath it: roughly 25 to 30 job descriptions with defined levels from Analyst through Director, giving the firm a real ladder to hire, promote, and pay against.
7. Layered in learning, assessment, and recognition
- LMS. An enterprise learning platform contracted and stood up, with role-based learning paths tied to each job level — Analyst, Senior Analyst, Manager, Senior Manager, Director. The first path was delivered to a new hire within days of the platform going live. Tooling-specific training was added into onboarding at the principals' request.
- Behavioral assessments. A validated behavioral assessment platform implemented and, importantly, used — as a coaching tool that gave managers guidance on how to approach difficult conversations with specific people, not as a hiring filter.
- Recognition. A peer recognition platform rolled out with a monthly allowance per employee.
8. Built the hiring front end
A careers page commissioned and built with a live job board embed, a documented recruiting SOP, and a candidate scorecard and point system implemented in the HRIS so hiring decisions were comparable rather than impressionistic.
9. Carried the company through a full corporate restructure
Midway through the engagement, the principals converted the business — consolidating brands under a new holding company and a new corporate structure, with a six-week window to move everything before the original entity went inactive.
That touched almost everything we had built:
- New federal EIN, with the IRS confirmation letter filed to the payroll platform — deliberately updating the existing entity rather than creating a new one, so employees would receive a single W-2 for the year instead of two
- New state tax accounts registered and configured
- Carrier re-papering: new group applications, letters on new corporate letterhead, updated tax ID, address, and officer information for both the medical and ancillary carriers
- Updated banking and direct debit authorizations for carrier billing
- 401(k) plan renamed and re-documented
Payroll ran without interruption. Benefits ran without interruption. The entity change completed and the new structure was fully processed within weeks.
10. Deliberately made ourselves smaller
This is the part we're proudest of. As the client's internal capability grew, we restructured our own engagement down — from a full fractional retainer to a defined advisory scope of eight hours a month, with day-to-day payroll and expense processing transferred to the client's operations lead, whom we trained.
We cut our own retainer by 75% and wrote the scope document that did it. That was the plan from the start: build the function, then transfer it.
How it ended
About fourteen months in, the principals decided to bring HR support local — a firm in their own city that could sit in the room with them as they scaled, the same decision they made for accounting. They gave us two months' notice, unprompted and early, specifically so the transition could be done properly.
We ran the handoff the way we'd built everything else. A full HR assessment call with the incoming firm walking them through recruiting process and SOP, onboarding and I-9 flow, employee relations approach and the assessment tooling, the performance framework and cycle timing, compensation benchmarking, the benefits and broker position going into open enrollment, the job description library, the learning paths, leadership dynamics, and the communication tooling. Documentation, templates, job descriptions, and assets transferred. Payroll process training for the internal operations lead. Closing items completed in the first week of January.
Then we offered to have our own access revoked.
Four months later, the principal referred us into a new client.
Results
| Headcount | 0 → 18 employees in ten months, plus offshore contractors |
| States | 7 — registered, filing, and reconciled |
| Time to first payroll | 11 weeks from implementation kickoff |
| Corporate restructure | New entity, new EIN, new carrier contracts, new banking — zero payroll or benefits interruption, single W-2 preserved for employees |
| Job architecture | ~25–30 job descriptions across 5 defined levels |
| Systems stood up | HRIS, payroll, benefits, 401(k), handbook and compliance library, performance management, LMS with role-based paths, behavioral assessments, recognition, careers page and ATS workflow |
| Retainer | Reduced 75% as internal capability grew — by our own recommendation |
| Handoff | Complete transfer to a successor firm and internal owner, with training and documentation |
Why this one mattered
Most consulting relationships are designed to persist. This one was designed to end.
A company that goes from zero to twenty people in a year does not need an HR department — it needs an HR function, standing up faster than anyone internal could build it, and then handed over cleanly when the company is ready to own it. That means building for transfer from day one: documented processes, templated workflows, trained internal owners, and a retainer that shrinks as capability grows.
When this client decided they wanted someone local, there was nothing to untangle. The systems were built, the documentation existed, the internal owner was already trained, and the successor firm got a two-hour walkthrough instead of a six-month archaeology project.
That is what a good engagement looks like on the way out.
We implement HRIS. Then we run it — until you don't need us to.