Fractional HR for California businesses
Get senior HR expertise without the six-figure salary.
Somewhere past ten employees, HR stops being something the owner can absorb between everything else, and a full-time hire is still years away. Maven Works HR is the senior HR expertise that belongs in that gap.
$135,934
average base salary, a year
Salary.com, employer-reported market data. Base pay, before payroll taxes and benefits.
Most businesses call after something has already happened.
Nobody goes looking for HR consulting on a quiet week. The call comes when something has landed and the answer needs to be right the first time.
- Someone needs to be fired and you’re not sure how to do it without creating a bigger problem
- An employee asked for a leave, and nobody there knows the rules or the deadlines
- The office manager who quietly “handled HR” on the side just gave notice
- A threat or an act of violence at work, with no plan in place for how to respond
- An employee disclosed a medical diagnosis, and you are not sure what you can ask or what you have to do
- A wage claim, a discrimination complaint, or a lawyer’s demand letter just landed on your desk
If one of those is why you’re here, the useful thing is a conversation, not a brochure.
Request a callReply within one business day
Why a growing business usually has no HR person
Because the role doesn’t divide. A twenty-person company has nowhere near enough HR work to justify a full-time salary, and far too much to leave to whoever has a spare afternoon. Meanwhile the compliance load doesn’t scale down to match its headcount.
The obligations start at the first hire. Usually the owner is carrying them without the time or the training to be sure they are right.
Advisory
Too much to absorb between other work. Not enough to justify a salary, benefits, and cover.
Fractional HR lives here
Enough work to hire an HR person of your own, who still leans on Maven to carry the full compliance load.
Staffed
What makes this different
California only
Not nationwide with California experience
One state, and one of the most demanding employment law regimes in the country. Depth here is the entire point. A national firm that also works in California is not the same thing as a California practice, and small businesses statewide get the same depth as the largest client on the books.
A named principal
Lindsey Duenat, PHR
Not an agency abstraction and not a rotating account team. Your HR consultant is the credentialed person whose name is on the door, and she is the one who answers.
Advisory, not administrative
Not a PEO, not payroll
You keep your payroll provider, your broker, and your carrier. This is the person you call before you make the decision, not the system that processes it afterwards.
How much does fractional HR cost in California?
Between $1,895 and $3,795 a month, set by team size and nothing else. The prices are published because you shouldn’t have to sit through a sales call to find out whether this is affordable.
Common questions
Questions people ask first
- What is fractional HR?
- Fractional HR is a senior HR practitioner working with your business on an ongoing monthly retainer instead of as a full-time employee. You get the seniority and the judgement of an experienced HR leader for the share of their time your business actually needs, which for a company under about forty people is well short of a full week. It is ongoing rather than project-based, so the person already knows your business when something goes wrong.
- Who will I actually be working with?
- Lindsey Duenat, PHR, every time. Maven Works HR is a single-practitioner California practice, not an agency with an account team, so there is no handoff after the sales call and no junior associate doing the work. The number of retainer clients is capped deliberately to keep it that way.
- Is fractional HR instead of an employment lawyer?
- No, and it is not legal advice. Maven Works HR is not a law firm. What it does is handle the day-to-day judgement calls before they become legal questions, and recognise the ones that genuinely need counsel early enough that you have options. Most employers who get this wrong do so by making a decision on instinct and only calling a lawyer once it has already cost them.
- What does the fractional HR retainer include?
- Ongoing advisory access for the decisions that carry risk, California employment law monitoring with policy updates as things change, an annual employee handbook review, real-time guidance on employee relations, monthly HR office hours, leave of absence administration support, and performance management coaching. It is one monthly fee set by team size, with no hourly billing, so nobody has to work out whether a question was worth asking before asking it.
- What happens if I get in touch?
- Lindsey replies within one business day, and it is her rather than an autoresponder. The first conversation is about twenty minutes: your headcount, what has been landing on your desk, and whether this is a fit. If it is not, you will get pointed at what actually helps instead.
Fractional HR compared with a full-time HR manager answers the cost question in full.
Tell someone what’s actually going on.
Bring your headcount and the thing that’s worrying you. In the first few minutes you’ll know whether this is a fit, and if it isn’t, you’ll get pointed at what actually helps.
Lindsey Duenat, PHR
Founder, Maven Works HR
Or reach Lindsey directly
Every enquiry gets a reply within one business day, from Lindsey rather than an autoresponder.