Fractional HR Leadership · Headhunting & Recruiting
Dirty Work HR gives growing businesses with up to 500 employees a former Chief Human Resources Officer — on a fraction-of-the-cost retainer — to handle compliance, recruiting, and people strategy so you can get back to running the business.
Sound familiar?
Most growing businesses don't have an HR problem until they suddenly do — and by then it's expensive. If any of these hit close to home, it's time to talk.
Multi-state hiring, contractor classification, wage-and-hour rules, required policies — a single employment claim can run $75K–$200K in defense and settlement. Most owners don't know their exposure until the letter arrives.
Replacing an employee costs 50–200% of their salary in recruiting, ramp-up, and lost momentum. Without real onboarding, comp structure, and management practices, you keep paying that bill over and over.
Offer letters improvised in email. A handbook from 2019 — or none. Payroll, benefits, and reviews held together by spreadsheets. It works until you hire employee #15, cross a state line, or get acquired.
You started a business to build something — not to answer benefits questions at midnight, referee disputes, and Google employment law. Every hour you spend on HR is an hour off growth.
How I help
An experienced HR executive embedded in your business on an ongoing retainer — handling compliance, advising on people decisions, building infrastructure, and coaching your managers. You get CHRO judgment for a fraction of a $250K+ hire, with AI-accelerated delivery that gets more done in every engagement hour.
Full-cycle search from an executive who has personally hired at every level — 300+ workers a year in high-volume operations, professional and corporate staff through rapid growth, and leadership placements as a CHRO. You get a headhunter who understands the whole employment picture — comp, culture, and compliance — not just a resume pipeline, and without the big-agency fee structure.
Need a defined outcome instead of ongoing leadership? Fixed-fee projects solve one problem completely — and many clients start here.
A full review of your compliance exposure, HR practices, and people risks — with a prioritized fix-it roadmap.
A compliance review that doesn't stop at findings — policies, postings, classifications, and filings brought fully up to date.
A compliant, plain-English handbook covering every state you employ in — written for how you actually operate.
Pick the right payroll/HR platform (ADP, UKG, and more), implement it cleanly, and automate the busywork.
Payroll done right — platform setup, multi-state tax registrations, and ongoing processing handled for you: accurate, compliant, on time.
Registrations, policies, payroll tax, and required notices for every new state you hire in.
Payroll transition, benefits harmonization, and cultural integration that keeps key people through the deal.
A repeatable first-90-days experience that gets new hires productive faster and reduces early turnover.
Market-based pay structures, incentive design, and benefits strategy you can defend and afford.
Independent, documented, legally-sound investigations when something serious lands on your desk.
Track record
30 → 100
Employee growth managed as CHRO — while expanding into 6 new states
5
Acquisitions HR-integrated at a national advisory firm, driving 300% regional staffing growth
~2,000
Staff supported across 20 states — on-site, hybrid, and remote
300+
Workers hired annually at a global logistics leader, lifting staffing levels 30%
Eric has spent 10+ years building people infrastructure inside high-growth, acquisition-driven companies — as CHRO of a company that tripled headcount, as the HR integration lead across five acquisitions at a national advisory firm, and as co-founder of a healthcare startup where he stood up payroll, benefits, HIPAA and multi-state compliance from day one. He's seen what breaks when companies scale — because he's the one who fixed it.
How it works
A free 30-minute conversation about your business, your team, and where HR is holding you back. No pitch deck, no pressure — you'll leave with at least one thing to fix either way.
A fixed-fee deep-dive into your compliance exposure, people practices, and infrastructure gaps. You get a written risk assessment and a prioritized roadmap — yours to keep, whoever executes it. It's the smartest starting point, but not a requirement — some clients go straight to a retainer or project.
Most clients move into a fractional retainer sized to their headcount. Others start with a single fixed-fee project. Either way, you know the price before we start.
Pricing
A full-time CHRO runs $250K+ a year before benefits and equity. Every tier below delivers executive-level HR leadership for a fraction of that — sized to where your business is right now.
100–500 employees · needs an executive
from $12,000 /month
30–100 employees · scaling fast
$6,500 /month
5–30 employees · first real HR help
$2,500 /month
All projects are quoted flat before work begins. Ranges reflect company size and complexity; prices shown are starting points.
Eric Panfalone
Founder & Principal Consultant · Former CHRO
About Eric
Eric Panfalone has spent his career inside growing companies at the exact moment HR gets hard — building a first formal HR function from scratch as a Chief Human Resources Officer while headcount grew from 30 to 100 across 6 new states; leading HR integration through 5 acquisitions at a national advisory firm while supporting ~2,000 staff in 20 states; hiring 300+ workers a year inside one of the world's largest logistics operations; and co-founding a concierge-healthcare startup, where he stood up payroll, benefits, HIPAA and multi-state compliance from day one. He's a hands-on operator as much as a strategist — comfortable working inside whatever payroll, HR, and recruiting systems your business already runs on, from implementation through the day-to-day.
He holds an MBA with a concentration in Human Resources from Wayne State University, a B.S. in Psychology, and an active SHRM-SCP — the senior certification in the HR profession. He's a member of Detroit SHRM and works with clients nationwide from Metro Detroit.
Eric was an early, practical adopter of AI in HR operations. That's not a buzzword on this site — it's why his engagements move fast: AI-assisted compliance monitoring, policy drafting, and process automation mean you get more finished work per engagement hour, and your budget goes toward judgment, not paperwork.
Common questions
A capable HR manager costs $90–130K and still won't have executive-level experience with multi-state compliance, M&A, or comp design. A full-time CHRO runs $250K+. Fractional gives you the senior judgment at 10–30% of the cost — and most businesses under 500 employees simply don't need a full-time executive's hours, they need an executive's decisions.
You get a named HR executive — Eric, not a call center — working your business on a set cadence: scheduled sessions, on-call advisory for urgent issues, and a running list of infrastructure being built in the background. Your team knows who to contact. It feels like having a CHRO; it costs like a vendor.
Both. Dirty Work HR is based in Metro Detroit and serves clients nationwide. Most work runs remotely; on-site days can be built into Michigan-area retainers or scheduled for key moments — leadership offsites, investigations, integrations.
That's a core specialty. Eric has built multi-state compliance from scratch as a CHRO expanding into 6 new states and as a founder registering a healthcare startup across state lines — registrations, payroll tax, required policies, notices, and the handbook to match.
Starter is month-to-month. Growth carries a 3-month minimum and Fractional CHRO a 6-month minimum — because real infrastructure takes time to build and prove. Projects are fixed-fee with a defined end. No evergreen auto-renewals, no surprise fees.
Yes. Engagements run under NDA, data lives in your systems (your HRIS, your drive) rather than copies on a consultant's laptop, and Eric's background includes HIPAA-regulated environments — the strictest privacy bar in employment. AI tools are used on de-identified or contractual-safe data only.
Yes — it's a core service, not an add-on. Eric has personally recruited at every level: 300+ hires a year in high-volume operations, professional and corporate roles through rapid growth, and executive placements as a CHRO. Searches run direct-hire at 15–20% of first-year salary — below typical agency rates — and retainer clients get recruiting support built into their plan.
Start with a project. Handbook, compliance audit, HRIS implementation, an investigation — each is scoped flat-fee with a defined deliverable. Around half of project clients later add a retainer, but there's zero obligation to.
Thirty minutes: you talk about the business and what's breaking; Eric tells you honestly whether he can help, what he'd do first, and what it would cost. If it's not a fit, you'll still leave with a next step. No slides, no pressure.
Get started
Book a free 30-minute discovery call. Tell me what's breaking — I'll tell you what it takes to fix it, and what it costs. Straight answers either way.