Home › Leadership & Talent Advisory › Fractional CHRO
A fractional CHRO gives you senior people leadership, part-time, for as long as the moment needs. When you are integrating acquisitions, scaling fast or between HR leaders, we step in to lead the people function, build the team and the systems, and hand over an organisation that runs without us.
8 airports integrated · Workforce scaled from 121 to 3,479 · Leadership teams stable within 11 months · Zero downtime across 7 operational airports
Acquisitions, new units and rapid growth create people work in weeks. Hiring a permanent CHRO takes months.
Handovers, regulatory conditions and penalties compress people decisions into a few weeks that most HR teams are not built for.
When a CHRO leaves, senior people decisions stall, and the HR team has nobody to lead it through them.
A business that has outgrown its HR set-up needs someone who has built a people function at scale, without yet needing them full-time.
A senior people leader from our team takes the CHRO seat part-time, backed by the rest of our practice.
Part-time CHRO leadership for a defined period, sometimes called an interim CHRO, leading the people side of an acquisition, integration or new business through to a stable organisation.
A senior HR leader for part of the week, on an ongoing basis, for organisations that need CHRO-level judgement without a full-time role.
Constituting leadership teams, hiring at speed and moving people from one employer or culture to another, while keeping operations running.
Designing the structure, capability plan and people processes the business will need, drawing on our competency mapping and organisational development work.
When the organisation is ready, we help find the permanent CHRO through our executive search practice and hand over a function that runs on its own.
Set out with the CEO and board what the people function must deliver, by when, and how much of our time it needs.
Understand the culture, the people risks and the relationships, with leaders, unions and regulators where relevant, in the first weeks.
Put leadership teams in place, protect continuity of operations and settle the workforce. New leaders can be supported through executive transition coaching.
Design the organisation structure, capability plan and people systems, and build the HR team that will run them.
Recruit or develop the permanent CHRO and hand over a working function.
Several businesses need to become one organisation, quickly.
A new entrant, carve-out or capability centre needs its people function built from scratch.
The CHRO has left and the permanent hire is months away.
Headcount is rising faster than the HR set-up can handle.
A portfolio company needs senior people leadership for a defined value-creation period.
One of India’s largest conglomerates acquired seven operating airports, six of them government-run, plus a greenfield project. Operations had to move from a government workforce to new employees within 90 days, with heavy penalties for delay, no downtime allowed and the pandemic at its peak. Taking the CHRO role on contract, we constituted leadership teams, hired and transitioned the workforce, worked with unions and regulators, and built a five-year organisation structure and capability plan.
Result: leadership teams hired and stabilised across all eight airports within 11 months, a workforce scaled from 121 to 3,479, and all seven operating airports transitioned with zero downtime. The business went on to become India’s largest airport operator.
Ahead of its IPO, a fashion retail brand needed a people function that could stand up to public-market scrutiny. Working part-time over nine months, we led HR across six tracks, from attracting and onboarding talent to performance, succession, culture and exits, set up weekly HR reviews, hired the HR team and handed over a working, documented function.
Result: front-end attrition fell from 54% to 32% and engagement rose from 63% to 81%; 12 people policies were rewritten and signed off.
Part-time CHRO leadership for a defined period, through an integration, a new business or a gap at the top of HR.
Part-time on an ongoing basis, with the time commitment agreed to the organisation’s needs and reviewed regularly.
Fractional leadership combined with the search for, and handover to, a permanent CHRO.
Every engagement is confidential, agreed directly with the CEO or board, and backed by the rest of our practice.
Tell us what is happening in your organisation and what the people function needs to deliver. We will help you decide whether fractional HR leadership is the right answer, for organisations across India and the UAE.
A fractional CHRO is an experienced chief human resources officer who works with an organisation part-time, on an ongoing basis. You get CHRO-level judgement and leadership without the cost or commitment of a full-time role.
Not quite. An interim CHRO covers a defined period and is often full-time. We offer the CHRO role part-time, either ongoing or for a defined transition, which gives you senior leadership without a full-time commitment.
Most often during an acquisition or integration, when building a new business or capability centre, when a CHRO leaves before a successor is found, or when growth has outpaced the HR set-up.
Transition engagements run for the length of the transition. Ongoing fractional roles continue for as long as they are useful, and are reviewed regularly.
Interim executive search places an interim executive in your organisation. Here, a senior leader from our team takes the CHRO role. See our interim leader search for the first.
Yes. Our executive search practice has placed CHROs, including rebuilding a group’s HR leadership across two businesses and corporate. See our executive search.
Yes. We work with organisations across India from Bengaluru and across the Gulf from Dubai.
Planet Ganges is a prominent player in Business Transformation, delivering tailored interventions in Organisational Culture, Climate, and Leadership Capability.