What is “fractional” anyways?

I thought you’d never ask. Fractional, is basically a fancy way of saying “part-time”. It’s often used in the context of leadership roles, where you only want to purchase a “fraction” of the FTE for a senior advisor to join your team.

When speaking with other communications leaders, I was seeing the same pattern over and over again. A small team decides it’s time to make their first communications hire (yay!). They want the strategic leadership lens from a seasoned communications professional, so decide to hire the most senior person they can afford to join their team. But of course, along with the strategy, someone needs to do the day-to-day work: fixing presentation decks, writing and designing social media posts, running events, and gathering stories for the newsletter and website. And at the end of the day, all of that “strategic” time actually gets eaten up by execution. The small team is paying a high salary, for a senior person to execute junior tasks. Both the communications hire, and the leader who hired them, feel frustrated. No-one wins.

The reality is that communications roles, like many others, are increasing in complexity every day. Tasks that used to be taken on by whole teams, are now falling to one person. Time is tight and budgets are tighter.

This is where fractional strategic communications comes in.

With a fractional hire, you can have a full-time junior communications staffer, and bring in a senior professional part of the time to offer guidance, strategic leadership, and mentorship to your team. You get the strategic lens that you need to make your communications go further, and your staff member working on communications execution gets the space and guidance they need to feel accomplished in their role. Everyone wins.

If you’re interested in having a conversation about what a fractional strategic communications hire could offer your team, Good Fruit is here to listen.