Part-time HR director · UK
Hire a part-time HR director for growth
A part-time HR director is a senior people leader on a fixed share of the week: people strategy, policy, employee relations and the HR team, employed part-time or engaged on a day rate.
Tell us the situation on a 15-minute call and we come back with a shortlist of three to five, each with day rate or pay, availability and IR35 position.
- Shortlist of 3–5
- Day rate or pay, availability and IR35 on each
- Director-level seats only
- Set days, every week
How a brief runswhat we undertake
- 01Brief30-MINUTE SCOPING CALLDay 0
- 02Shortlist of 3–5VETTED · RATE BENCHMARK · IR35After the brief
- 03InterviewsYOU MEET THE SHORTLISTYour diary
- 04Scoped startFIRST-MONTH OUTCOMES AGREEDYou set the date
- 05Fractional, interim and permanentIR35 POSITION SET OUTOn every brief
Shortlist3–5
15 minutes · video or phone
Book 15 minutes to scope the role
Tell us the situation, the days and the start date. We come back with part-time HR director candidates, their day rates and availability.
- 0115 minutes, video or phone
- 02We scope the days and the pattern
- 03A shortlist of 3–5 after the call
- 04Fractional, interim, part-time and permanent briefs
Pick a day that suits · live availability
On the board · last 3 months
Part-time HR director and people leadership roles on the board
No Part-time HR director and people leadership roles on the board right now.
We only show real vacancies from the last three months, read from the Fractional Quest pipeline — we never pad the board. New roles appear here as the pipeline finds them.
Looking? Build your repo once on Fractional Quest and every role on the board is read against it.
Sign up now →01/ definition
What a part-time HRD does with the days
An HR director is responsible for how the business finds, pays, develops, manages and, when it has to, parts company with its people.
On part of the week the job is the same; the difference is that the director leads and decides on fixed days while an HR manager, adviser or outsourced provider handles the day-to-day casework.
PEOPLE PLAN
Writes a people plan tied to the business plan
Headcount, the roles that matter most, reward, development and retention, set against what the business is trying to do in the next two years.
Writes a people plan tied to the business plan. Headcount, the roles that matter most, reward, development and retention, set against what the business is trying to do in the next two years.
Puts the handbook and contracts right. Employment contracts, the handbook, and procedures for discipline, grievance, absence, flexible working and family leave, reviewed against current law and practice.
Takes the difficult cases. Senior disciplinaries, grievances, performance cases and settlement discussions, run fairly and documented, with employment lawyers brought in when needed.
Leads restructures and growth. Organisation design, consultation where it is required, redundancy processes, and the hiring plan when the business is growing fast.
Builds the HR function below them. Hires or develops the HR manager or adviser who runs the casework, chooses the HR system and sets the reporting the board sees.
02/ scope
Where a part-time people lead draws the line
Write the boundary down.
An HR director whose days fill with routine queries has stopped directing.
- The people plan and headcount budget
- Reward and pay structure
- Employment policies, contracts and the handbook
- Senior and complex employee-relations cases
- Organisation design and restructures
- People reporting to the board
- The HR team or outsourced HR provider
- Routine HR queries and administration
- Payroll processing (to the payroll provider)
- Recruitment administration and scheduling
- Day-to-day absence management (to line managers and HR adviser)
- Legal drafting and tribunal representation (to employment lawyers)
03/ which model
Part-time, fractional or full-time?
Set the days the people seat needs and how long.
A fixed two or three days is part-time; a senior HR leader on a flexible share of the week across several companies is fractional (see fractional CHRO jobs on our parent site); four or five days for a defined term is an interim HR director.
Fractional Quest, our parent company, covers each.
The model that fits · HR director
Part-time
A fixed slice of the week on a set pattern — the same days each week, often on a part-time contract or a day-rate arrangement.
Book a call about a part-time HR director →Our framing, not a measured rule: the lines between the four models blur, and many briefs could run two ways.
04/ alternatives
A part-time people director against the alternatives
The choice turns on whether you need senior judgement, casework capacity or both.
→ Part-time when the leadership is needed but not every day; full-time when the workforce fills the week.
05/ decision
When to bring in a part-time HR director
Four situations account for most part-time people director roles.
Which sounds like you?
Headcount has grown, managers are making it up as they go, and the policies are a downloaded template. A part-time HR director puts proper foundations in without the cost of a full-time director.
- → Founder handling every people issue
- → Out-of-date contracts and handbook
- → Inconsistent pay decisions
Redundancies, a merger of teams, a move to new working patterns. The process has to be fair and properly consulted, and the business has to keep running while it happens.
- → Planned redundancies
- → Two teams to combine
- → Change to terms and conditions
Grievances, long-term absence and performance cases that line managers are not equipped to run. A senior people lead takes the complex cases and trains managers on the rest.
- → Several open cases at once
- → Managers avoiding difficult conversations
- → Legal costs rising
Investment or a new board brings questions on reward, retention, succession and culture that need a senior answer.
- → New investors or non-executives
- → Key-person risk on the board agenda
- → Reward and equity questions
06/ tax and IR35
How a part-time HR director is engaged
General position under UK rules, with the HMRC source for each point. Not tax advice — check your own case with your accountant.
01 · DEDUCTIBLE
Fees are a business expense
Fees, like a salary, are deductible against profits when incurred wholly and exclusively for the trade (HMRC BIM37000), with corporation tax at the 25% main rate.
02 · WHO DECIDES
Status turns on how the work runs
Medium and large clients make the off-payroll status determination themselves; for a small private-sector client, the executive’s own company does (HMRC off-payroll guidance).
03 · WHAT HMRC LOOKS AT
Substitution, control, mutuality
Whether a substitute could genuinely be sent, who decides how the work is done, and whether either side must offer or accept further work. HMRC’s CEST tool walks through the same questions.
04 · ON THE PAYROLL
A part-time employee is an employee
Hired on a part-time contract, the executive has the same rights as a comparable full-time worker, pro rata (gov.uk part-time worker rights), and you pay employer NI on their salary.
07/ guide
Hiring HR leadership on part of the week: a practical guide
A part-time HR director is a leadership hire.
If what the business needs is someone to answer routine questions and keep records, an HR administrator or an outsourced HR service is the cheaper and better answer.
A director earns their place by setting the people plan, getting the policies right, taking the hard cases and building the managers who handle the rest.
Decide employed or day-rate first.
A part-time employee must not be treated less favourably than a comparable full-time colleague because they work fewer hours, with pay and benefits pro rata (see Acas on part-time workers).
An HR director engaged on a day rate through their own company is also common; if your company is medium or large, you make the IR35 status determination, and it turns on how the work runs (HMRC: off-payroll working).
A people director should be credible on the law and on process.
Discipline and grievance cases are expected to follow a fair procedure in line with the Acas Code of Practice, and tribunals can take it into account (Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures).
Every employee also has the right to request flexible working from their first day, and requests have to be handled in a reasonable manner (GOV.UK: flexible working).
Ask candidates how they have applied both.
Professional standing matters too.
Many senior HR leaders in the UK work to the CIPD’s Profession Map, the professional standard for the people profession (CIPD Profession Map).
Membership level is a useful signal, though not a substitute for evidence of what a candidate has actually done.
Write the brief around outcomes.
“Two days of HR” tells a candidate nothing.
“New contracts and handbook in place, a fair restructure of the operations team completed, and an HR manager hired and trained by the end of the year” tells them whether they are the right director and whether the days are enough.
There is no published UK day-rate band for a part-time or fractional HR director that we can cite, so this page shows no rate table or calculator.
The part-time day rates page shows the published bands for the seats that have them, the part-time recruitment agency page explains how we run a search, and on a call we can set out what the candidates on your shortlist are asking.
10.1/ how to hire
How to hire a part-time HR director step by step
Hiring a part-time HR director runs in five steps.
Write a one-page brief with the situation, the outcomes for the first year and the HR support already in place.
Decide the days and whether the role is employed or on a day rate.
Brief one search partner.
Interview a shortlist of three to five, asking each to walk you through a difficult case or restructure they led from start to finish.
Then agree terms, including the days, the reporting line and confidentiality.
Our parent company is a fractional recruitment agency that runs part-time, fractional, interim and permanent people searches.
When the seat needs full-time cover for a fixed term, its interim HR director jobs and interim CHRO pages cover the interim side.
What to put in the brief
Headcount and locations, the HR team or provider in place, the HR and payroll systems, open employee-relations cases, any planned change, the days and whether they are fixed, the reporting line and the outcomes for year one.
10.2/ the titles
Head of people, HR director or chief people officer?
Senior people roles carry several titles, and the difference is mostly about level and where the role sits.
An HR director or head of people usually leads the HR function and reports to the CEO or managing director.
A chief people officer or chief HR officer (CHRO) sits on the executive team and owns people strategy across a larger or more complex organisation.
Part-time roles under all three titles appear on the board above.
The CHRO seat has published bands, though not for part-time work: Exec Capital’s figures put a mid-market CHRO base salary at £120,000–£200,000, and Robert Walters’ 2026 figures put London contract chief people officer and CHRO day rates at £900–£1,500.
Those are executive-team and contract figures, not an HR director band, and we do not apply them to this seat.
For fractional CHRO roles, see fractional CHRO jobs on the parent site.
10.3/ the level
Part-time HR manager jobs and why this page is director-level
Far more people search for part-time HR manager jobs than for part-time HR director jobs, and it is worth being clear about the difference.
An HR manager runs the people process day to day: absence, casework support, recruitment administration, onboarding and advice to line managers.
An HR director sets the direction those processes follow, owns reward and the people plan, and takes the cases that carry the most risk.
This page, and the board on it, covers director-level and executive-level people roles only: HR director, head of people, chief people officer and CHRO.
We do not list HR manager roles.
If you are an HR manager looking to move up, the director roles here show what employers ask for at the next level; if you are hiring, many businesses find the right shape is a part-time HR director above an HR manager.
The same employment law applies at every level: a part-time HR manager or director has the same protection against less favourable treatment as any part-time worker (GOV.UK: part-time worker rights).
10.4/ for people leaders
Part-time HR director jobs on the board
Part-time HR director jobs appear on the board above, read daily from the Fractional Quest pipeline.
If no part-time people roles are open, the board widens to fractional HR roles and labels them as such; it never presents a fractional role as part-time.
The parent site’s fractional CHRO jobs board covers the portfolio side of the market.
Employers read the same few things first: the days you can offer, your rate or salary expectation, the size of workforce you have led, and the change and casework you have handled.
Keep those current.
08/ process
How we run the search
What we undertake on every brief, run by Fractional Quest, our parent company.
- 01
Brief
A scoping call on the role, the days a week, the start date and what the part-time HR director must have delivered.
DAY 0 - 02
Search
We search and screen against that brief: track record at your stage, in your situation, and references we take ourselves.
SCREENING - 03
Shortlist
Three to five candidates, each with day rate or salary, availability and IR35 position set out.
SHORTLIST OF 3–5 - 04
Start
You interview and choose. The executive you choose contracts with you.
YOU CHOOSE
09/ the family
People leadership across Fractional Quest
Part-Time Quest is part of Fractional Quest.
When the people seat is fractional, interim or permanent, these pages cover it.
An HR director full-time for a fixed term: a restructure, a gap or a merger.
Part-time, fractional, interim and permanent executive search in one firm.
10/ questions
Questions, answered
For hiring managers, and for executives looking for the role.
Book 15 minutes · shortlist of 3–5
Start with the brief.
Fifteen minutes to scope the seat, the days and the start date.