Companies with 20 to 150 people are too big to wing it and too small to carry a full-time HR leader. Working Theory gives you experienced HR judgment on a flat monthly retainer — the person you call before you make the decision, not after it goes wrong.
That's how experienced people actually operate: not with a rulebook, but with good judgment about what a situation calls for. Most HR failures aren't policy failures. The handbook existed. Nobody applied it well in the moment that mattered. Working Theory is that judgment, on call — for a fraction of what carrying it full-time would cost.
Retained HR leadership you can actually reach. The escalation point for anything people-related — a messy termination, a new-manager gut check, the email you're not sure how to send.
Handbooks, policies, and postings built for Colorado employers — FAMLI, the Equal Pay Act, and the wage and leave rules generic templates quietly get wrong.
Complaints handled the way they should be — documented, neutral, defensible. The part of the job you really don't want to improvise your way through.
Pay bands, job levels, and offer logic that keep you competitive and consistent, and keep you clear of pay-equity trouble before it starts.
Ready-to-run handbooks, onboarding packets, and manager templates — shaped to how your team actually operates, not a generic download with your logo on it.
Manager coaching, hiring-loop design, and one-on-one interview prep for your people — or for you, before the conversation that matters most.
Thirty minutes. What's working, what's on fire, and what's been keeping you up at night.
A quick, honest read on your compliance gaps, your real risks, and the fastest wins.
A prioritized scope and a flat monthly rate. You know the number before anything starts.
Ongoing support on retainer. Scale up in the busy stretches, dial back in the quiet ones.
Working Theory is led by a senior HR leader with close to a decade inside one of the world's largest hospitality companies — running people operations for full-service properties in the Denver market. The kind of background usually locked behind an enterprise org chart, brought to companies that could never hire it full-time.
Flat monthly retainers based on scope — not an hourly meter you have to watch. You'll know your number before anything starts. One-off projects, like a handbook build or a single investigation, can be quoted on their own.
Retainers are sized to your team. Most companies in the 20 to 150 range need the equivalent of a few hours a week, and the busy stretches and quiet ones tend to even out over a month.
Best fit is roughly 15 to 200 employees — big enough to carry real HR risk, small enough that a full-time HR leader doesn't pencil out yet.
Colorado is where I go deep on compliance — FAMLI, the Equal Pay Act, wage and leave rules. The rest of the work — investigations, comp, handbooks, coaching — travels fine, and everything runs remotely. If you've got people in other states, I'll be straight about what I can cover directly and where you'd want specialist or legal support.
Often that's exactly the point. Fractional support can sit above a junior HR or ops generalist as the senior escalation layer — the judgment call above the day-to-day.
A thirty-minute call, no pitch deck. Bring the messiest people problem you've got and we'll talk it through.
Book an intro call hello@workingtheoryhr.com