The 28-person remote agency that finally hired an HR generalist - and what stopped breaking
A 28-person creative agency ran without dedicated HR for four years. Every new hire onboarding was 'ask the founder', every policy question ping-ponged in Slack, and cross-border compliance was 'we'll figure it out later'. Later arrived when three key people quit citing 'no support' inside six months.
No documented policies, no onboarding process, no employee handbook, and no single person accountable for people ops. Founder was answering the same HR questions three times a week. Turnover hit 32% annualised - well above the industry average for creative agencies.
The team hired an HR generalist at £48K, hybrid remote. What made it work: giving them 90 days to build systems before expecting them to solve people issues.
First 90 days
- Week 1–3
Audit: what policies exist, what onboarding actually looks like, where compliance gaps sit across the 9 countries.
- Week 4–6
Employee handbook v1 drafted. Onboarding checklist standardised. First cross-border compliance review completed for U.S., U.K., and India contractors.
- Week 7–10
Performance-review framework built. Manager training on 1:1s launched. Exit-interview process documented.
- Week 11–13
Quarterly people-ops cadence live: monthly pulse survey, quarterly reviews, half-yearly comp benchmarking.
Outcomes (benchmark-based)
Before vs after
| Metric | Before | After | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founder time on HR questions | 6 hrs/week | 45 min/week | 5 hrs/week back |
| Time to onboard a new hire | 1–2 weeks ad-hoc | 3 days documented | 60% faster |
| Annual turnover | 32% | 14% | -56% |
Employee turnover before vs after HR generalist
% annualised turnover
Stack used in this story
Honest trade-offs
How I'd run this for you
For teams under 50 people, a part-time HR operations partner often beats a full-time hire - especially before you've documented the fundamentals. This is what I do for remote-first teams across the U.S., U.K., UAE, and EU.
- I build the handbook, onboarding checklists, and policy docs - the same scaffolding a dedicated HR hire would spend their first 90 days on.
- I run the cross-border admin (contracts, payments, compliance basics) alongside an EOR - one accountable person, not five vendors.
- When you're ready to hire full-time HR, everything I've documented becomes their day-one playbook - nothing gets lost in handoff.
FAQs
Is this a real agency?
No - this is a composite story reflecting patterns I've seen across remote-first teams at this size. Turnover and cost figures use published industry benchmarks (SHRM, Gallup, Bridge Group).
Do you replace an HR generalist?
For teams under ~40 people without dedicated HR, often yes. For larger teams, I'm the ops layer that supports an existing HR lead - onboarding, documentation, cross-border admin.
What if we already have an EOR like Deel?
Great - I work with EORs, not around them. The EOR handles contracts and compliance infrastructure; I handle the human side (onboarding, engagement, documentation, day-to-day queries).
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Your situation isn't this exact story - let's map yours
30-minute diagnostic call. I'll tell you whether the fix is a hire, a fractional operator, or a small workflow change - and give you the honest math either way.