Do You Need a CPO - or Do You Need CPO Experience?

This follows Part 1 - The HR Business Case Worked. The HR Model Didn't. If you missed it: Read Part 1 here

I've spent 30 years working across nearly every HR discipline, designing and redesigning services, systems and operating models in the UK and internationally.

I've outsourced, insourced, implemented technology, built services and inherited plenty that weren't working as intended.

What that's taught me is that there isn't one right HR model.

The right model is the one that works for your business.

I'm a bit of a non-conformist about this. Models, benchmarks and best practice are useful, but I've never designed the same HR operation twice – because the businesses weren't the same.

And that's really the thinking behind my Fractional CPO offering.

Do you need a CPO - or CPO experience?

A growing or changing business may need experienced CPO thinking long before it needs another permanent executive.

And sometimes it already has a very good HR person.

They know the business, have credibility and understand its people and culture. They may have enormous potential.

What they may not yet have had, however, is the opportunity to:

• Design an HR operating model from the ground up to support rapid scaling.
• Scale a business internationally and navigate cross-border complexity.
• Build shared or specialist capabilities across shifting team structures.
• Select and implement technology that actually drives efficiency.
• Redesign end-to-end processes to eliminate organisational drag.
• Decide what HR should look like three or five years from now.

Why would they?

You don't acquire that experience until you've had the opportunity to do it.

My role as a Fractional CPO isn't to become your permanent CPO.

It's to work in partnership with the Board, leadership team and existing HR team – where you have one – bringing experience, challenge and practical support while developing the capability already there.

That might mean acting as a sounding board to a CEO or Board, coaching an HR leader through transformation or helping them step into a more strategic role, or coming in for a defined period to answer a fundamental question:

What People capability does this business actually need for where it is going next?

Start with the business, not the HR structure

My passion has always been making HR easy to do business with.

So I start with the work.

What needs to happen? Where does value come from, and what does it truly cost? What should be global or local, internal or outsourced, human or automated? How should information flow? And what are people doing today that simply shouldn't need doing?

Then we design the simplest model around it.

Strategic versus operational. Global versus local. Internal versus outsourced. Human versus automated.

Easy self-service. A single point of entry. Information entered once and flowing where it needs to go. Automation of predictable activity. Low-cost technology where appropriate – reducing administration, not adding another layer of it or headcount.

Technology should remove work, not just move it.

For international businesses, that also means determining what genuinely needs to differ by country and what can operate through a common global backbone.

And this is about people too

I've inherited poor business cases, system implementations and HR functions that weren't working particularly well.

That doesn't mean the people were poor.

Often they simply hadn't had the experience, opportunity or permission to challenge what was already there.

I've led transformations knowing some roles might ultimately disappear. My approach has always been to be honest about that and develop people through the change, so they come out of it with greater experience, confidence and marketability – whether they stay or move on.

That matters to me.

And it's another reason I don't arrive with my HR model.

We design yours.

If you need a permanent CPO, I can help determine what that role and capability should look like.

If you already have someone with the potential to become that person, even better – I can work alongside and develop them.

And if you don't yet need either, we shouldn't add permanent cost simply because convention says that's what an HR function should look like.

Sometimes you don't need another CPO. You need CPO experience to help you work out what comes next.

Fractional CPO support gives you access to the experience to design what's next – without assuming that experience needs to become permanent headcount.