PRISM
00Cover
PRISM
Fractional HR practice
Issue 01
Placeholder
Placeholder City
& remote

For people who never planned to lead, hire, or manage.

Erin H. Robertson, duotone portrait cut into an angular panel Fig. 00 — The practice lead

At PRISM the people function gets built once and built properly — by one senior operator who has done it before, for founders holding a company together and partners holding a firm together.

Someone you trust sent you here.
This page is written to confirm, not to sell. Seven spreads below
01 — Two editionsFounders' edition

Two rooms.
One unsolved problem.

At PRISM the two rooms look nothing alike and need almost exactly the same thing: someone senior who can say what happens next, and then go and build it. This issue prints in two editions — read the one you are living in.

Switching re-sets four spreads below.

Room A — For founders

Hiring faster than the handbook

Headcount doubled, the first managers were promoted on a Friday, and three states now have opinions about how the company pays people.

  • iPlaceholder — onboarding that keeps up with the offer letters going out.
  • iiPlaceholder — pay bands and equity that survive the next diligence.
  • iiiPlaceholder — multi-state exposure nobody has looked at yet.
  • ivPlaceholder — engineers who became managers with no training at all.
Collage figure of a founder over a lilac-to-orange panel Fig. 01a — Room A

Room B — For firm partners

A talent model older than the growth

The firm grew, the partnership track did not change, and the best third-years keep leaving in the same quarter every year.

  • iPlaceholder — associate attrition that reviews never quite explain.
  • iiPlaceholder — laterals who never really landed inside the firm.
  • iiiPlaceholder — staff structure carrying more than it was designed for.
  • ivPlaceholder — a partnership track people describe in whispers.
Collage figure of a firm partner over a lilac-to-orange panel Fig. 01b — Room B
02 — The workRetained · Project · Advisory

Six ways to bring in a people function

Six plates, scoped and priced before anything begins. Drag the sheet sideways, swipe it, or use the arrows.

01 / 06

Plate 01

Fractional HR leadership

An embedded, part-time people lead sitting inside the leadership team: in the meetings, on the hard calls, accountable for the same numbers everyone else is.

Retained2–4 days a month

Plate 02

Compliance & policy

The handbook, classification and jurisdiction work nobody wants to own — written so a regulator and a new hire can both read it.

Project4–6 weeks

Plate 03

Compensation design

Bands, levels and an equity philosophy that hold up in a board meeting and in a one-to-one with a disappointed senior engineer.

Project6–8 weeks

Plate 04

Hiring systems

Structured interviews, scorecards and an onboarding week that still works when four people start on the same Monday.

ProjectOngoing option

Plate 05

Performance & review

Review cycles and calibration managers can run without a consultant in the room, and feedback that lands before it becomes an exit.

RetainedCycle by cycle

Plate 06

Sensitive matters

Investigations, exits and restructures handled quietly, in step with counsel, with the written record kept properly from day one.

AdvisoryAs needed

At PRISM, scope is written down before the first invoice. Nothing here is sold by the hour, and nothing here is sold twice.

03 — The methodEvery engagement ends

Diagnose. Build.
Then hand it over.

Read the room

01

Read the room

Placeholder — interviews with the people who actually run things, a look at every document that governs employment, and one honest written picture of where the risk and the friction really sit. No survey platform, no forty-slide deck.

Weeks 1–2Written diagnosticRisk register
02

Build the spine

Placeholder — the smallest set of policies, systems and rituals that will hold the organisation together at twice its size. Built with the team, in the tools they already have, in the order that removes the most pain first.

Weeks 3–8HandbookBands & levelsManager kit
03

Hand it over

Placeholder — managers trained on the thing that was built, decisions documented so the reasoning survives the people, and a clear line for the quarter after PRISM steps back. The measure of the work is what runs without it.

OngoingManager trainingDecision log
04 — In their wordsPlaceholder attributions
Placeholder quote — the first week PRISM was here, three arguments we had been having for a year simply stopped.

Placeholder Name — Co-founder, Placeholder Labs

Placeholder quote — our partners disagree about almost everything, and all of them signed the same compensation model.

Placeholder Name — Managing Partner, Placeholder & Co.

Placeholder quote — the handover was the point. Six months on, our own managers are running it without calling anyone.

Placeholder Name — Chief of Staff, Placeholder Group

01 / 03
Erin H. Robertson, duotone portrait, seated and laughing
05 — The practiceOne senior person, no bench
Erin H. Robertson, duotone portrait The practice lead

Erin H.
Robertson
on her own

Placeholder — two decades inside fast companies and professional-services firms, mostly in the years when they stopped being small. The through-line: the people problems of a Series B and the people problems of a growing partnership are the same problem wearing different clothes.

At PRISM the work is deliberately small in scope and senior in seniority. One person takes the brief, does the work, and is in the room when it is explained. There is no bench, no account manager, and nothing built that the organisation will not genuinely maintain.

  • Placeholder senior people role, growth-stage technology2011–2018
  • Placeholder people lead, professional services2018–2023
  • Placeholder certification in employment practiceSince 20XX
  • Placeholder guest lecture on managing first-time managersAnnual
Erin H. Robertson, duotone, wide interior

Fig. 05b — Placeholder, between engagements

Placeholder — PRISM takes two engagements at a time. That number is a decision, not a constraint: it is what keeps one person able to answer the phone on the day it matters, and what makes the handover date real rather than aspirational.

06 — QuestionsAsk anything not here

Before you get in touch

How does a fractional engagement actually work?

Placeholder — a fixed number of days a month, the same days each month, anchored to the leadership team's calendar. Between them, PRISM is reachable the way an internal head of people would be.

Placeholder — a fixed number of days a month, scheduled around the partners' meeting and the review calendar. Between them, PRISM is reachable the way an internal director of talent would be.

What does it cost?

Placeholder — a monthly retainer with the scope written down, or a fixed price per project. No hourly billing, no surprises, and the number is said out loud on the first call.

Does PRISM replace our employment counsel?

Placeholder — no. PRISM builds the practice; counsel gives the legal advice. Most engagements involve working alongside the firm you already use, and PRISM will say clearly when a question belongs to them.

How quickly can the work start?

Placeholder — usually within a few weeks, occasionally sooner for a sensitive matter. What is needed before day one is small: access to documents, and thirty minutes with each of four or five people.

What happens when it ends?

Placeholder — the handover is planned from the start: documentation, manager training, and a short advisory tail if it helps. Ending well is part of the brief, not an afterthought.

07 — Start hereThirty minutes

No deck.
No pitch. Just the call.

Placeholder — thirty minutes, one conversation, and a straight answer about whether PRISM is the right thing for the company right now. If it is not, you will leave with the name of who is. Placeholder — thirty minutes, one conversation, and a straight answer about whether PRISM is the right thing for the firm right now. If it is not, you will leave with the name of who is.

hello@prismplaceholder.com
Book the consult Back to the cover
CoveragePlaceholder City · remote across placeholder regions
ResponsePlaceholder turnaround, usually the same day
AvailabilityPlaceholder — two engagements at a time, no more
ColophonBodoni Moda & Space Grotesk. The cover type is set deliberately too large for the page.