Fractional HR and Recruiting for Growing Businesses
IGY SIX handles the People Operations and recruiting work that comes with growth — without requiring you to build a full internal HR and recruiting team. Replacing one employee can cost 50% to 200% of their salary.
Fractional People Operations + Talent AcquisitionAbout IGY Six
IGY Six Consulting is a founder-led, veteran-owned firm helping growing businesses with 10 to 75 employees build stronger People Operations and recruiting without a full internal team. Founded by John Gaona, a U.S. Army veteran of the 82nd Airborne with 12+ years in Talent Acquisition and People Operations, we bring enterprise-level experience to small and mid-sized companies. Based in New Braunfels, Texas, we serve clients across Central Texas and nationwide.
Learn more about IGY Six →The real pressure is not just hiring.
It’s everything that comes after.
As a company grows, the People work expands quickly, payroll, onboarding, recruiting, retention, manager support, policies, and the systems behind all of it. The goal is to build enough structure that the business no longer depends on the owner for every People decision.
People Operations
Payroll support, onboarding, employee support, policies, documentation, total rewards guidance, and the systems that keep the People side of the business running.
Talent Acquisition
Recruiting, sourcing, screening, interview coordination, and hiring support to get the right people into the right seats.
Management + Retention
Support managers, create a better employee experience, and put practical retention strategies in place to keep your best people.
Owner Capacity
Get the day-to-day People work off your plate so you can spend more time leading, selling, building, and growing the business.
Ready to get the day-to-day People work off your plate?
Strategic HR for Growing Companies
Day-to-day HR keeps the business running. Strategic HR makes sure it is built to grow. IGY Six brings workforce planning, org design, and succession planning to companies with 10 to 75 employees, without the cost of an HR director.
Workforce Planning
Reactive hiring is expensive. SHRM puts the average cost per hire at $5,475, median time to fill at about a month and a half, and reports that more than two in three organizations struggled to fill roles in 2026. We help you map headcount to your growth plan, define roles before posting them, decide when to promote, hire, or use contractors, and budget realistically for each hire.
Org Design and Manager Structure
Promoting strong performers into management is one of the riskiest moments in a company’s growth. Gallup finds managers drive at least 70% of the variance in team engagement, yet only about 1 in 10 people have high natural talent to manage. We help set clear reporting lines, define what managers own, prepare first-time managers, and create consistent promotion criteria.
Succession and Key-Role Coverage
For a growing business, succession planning means no single departure can stall operations. Only 54% of small business owners have a formal succession plan (U.S. Bank, 2025), and replacing a leader can cost around 200% of their salary (Gallup). We identify critical roles, document key knowledge, build cross-training, and develop internal candidates.
Restructuring and Change Support
When roles, teams, or pay structures change, we help realign roles, document changes consistently, communicate clearly with employees, and keep your best people from leaving afterward. For legal questions such as state notice requirements, we coordinate with your employment counsel.
Strategic HR by the Numbers
| Data Point | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Engagement variance driven by managers | At least 70% | Gallup |
| People with high natural talent to manage | About 1 in 10 | Gallup |
| Small business owners with a formal succession plan | 54% | U.S. Bank, 2025 |
| Private business owners with no succession plan | 30% | Brown Brothers Harriman, 2025 |
| Cost to replace a manager or leader | About 200% of salary | Gallup |
| Organizations struggling to fill roles | More than 2 in 3 | SHRM, 2026 |
| Average cost per hire, non-executive | $5,475 | SHRM, 2025 |
Planning headcount, managers, or succession for your next stage of growth?
When the People side of the business starts taking over.
IGY SIX is built for companies in the 10–75 employee range where hiring, onboarding, payroll, manager questions, retention, and day-to-day People work are still being carried out by the founder, ops leader, managers, or a small HR team. We add structure and capacity before a full internal People function makes sense.
People work keeps rolling uphill.
Employee questions, offers, payroll issues, and People decisions keep finding their way back to the founder or ops lead because ownership is still informal.
Growth is outrunning the way you hire and onboard.
Recruiting and onboarding happen differently every time, managers fill the gaps themselves, and new hires are left to figure too much out on their own.
The People side is getting harder to manage informally.
Payroll, employee records, classifications, multi-state requirements, and basic documentation are becoming too important to keep managing through memory and workarounds.
Employee issues depend too much on judgment in the moment.
Without consistent documentation or a clear process, manager conversations, performance issues, and employee decisions create unnecessary uncertainty for the business.
You need more capability, not a full department.
The business needs experienced People Operations and recruiting support, but building a full internal HR, People, and Talent Acquisition team is still more than the company needs.
Payroll support, onboarding and offboarding, manager support, retention, employee documentation, practical policies, total rewards guidance, and the People systems that keep the business moving.
Sound familiar? Tell us what is showing up in your business.
Growth doesn’t just create more hiring.
It creates more People work.
Hiring is often where the strain shows up first. More than two in three organizations struggled to fill open roles in 2026, and the average non-executive hire costs $5,475 and takes about a month and a half to fill. But for a growing business, hiring rarely stands alone. Payroll, onboarding, manager support, retention, policies, and employee questions all start competing for the same leadership time.
That is why small organizations need about 3.4 HR staff per 100 employees, well above the ratio for larger companies. And when that work falls through the cracks, replacing an employee can cost 50% to 200% of their annual salary. IGY SIX plugs into both sides: the People Operations work that keeps the business running and the Talent Acquisition work that keeps it growing.
What is that open role actually costing you?
Manager Training vs. Employee Development
| Topic | Manager Training | Employee Development |
|---|---|---|
| Who it’s for | Current and newly promoted managers | Individual contributors at every level |
| Goal | Lead people well and consistently | Grow skills, performance, and career paths |
| Focus areas | Feedback, performance conversations, documentation, delegation, conflict | Role skills, cross-training, career paths, readiness for promotion |
| Business impact | Lower turnover, fewer employee-relations issues, consistent decisions | Higher retention, internal promotions, stronger bench |
| When to start | Before or at the moment of promotion | From onboarding onward |
| How we deliver it | Manager playbooks, coaching, practical workshops | Development plans, skills mapping, 30/60/90-day goals |
What We Help You Build
- First-time manager readiness: what changes when you lead former peers, and what managers own versus escalate
- Performance and documentation basics: consistent feedback, reviews, and paper trails
- Individual development plans: clear growth paths tied to business needs
- Cross-training programs: so key skills are not locked in one person
- Promotion readiness: criteria that prepare your next managers before you need them
Promoting someone into management soon, or building your bench?
HR Technology and People Analytics
Many growing businesses still run HR on spreadsheets and email. Nearly 60% of businesses use spreadsheets for core HR functions like time-off tracking and onboarding checklists, and 51% of small businesses still use spreadsheets in payroll, with another 19% relying on manual or paper processes. That works at 10 employees. At 40, it creates payroll errors, lost records, and decisions made without data.
IGY Six helps you put the right systems in place for your size, without overbuying enterprise software.
| System | What It Does | When You Need It |
|---|---|---|
| HRIS | Central record for employee data, documents, time off, and policies | Once spreadsheets and email can no longer keep records accurate |
| Payroll software | Pay, taxes, deductions, and pay records | From your first employee |
| ATS | Tracks candidates and hiring pipelines | When you hire more than a few people a year |
| People analytics | Turns HR data into metrics like turnover, time-to-fill, and retention | Once you need data, not guesswork, for people decisions |
Still running HR on spreadsheets? Get help choosing systems that fit your size.
Outsourced HR and Recruiting, Working Together
You do not need a menu of HR consulting services. You need the day-to-day People work handled and the recruiting work moving. Building that capacity in-house is expensive: the median HR manager salary alone is $140,030, before benefits and payroll taxes, and recruiting agencies typically charge 15% to 25% of a new hire’s first-year salary for each placement. IGY SIX provides both People Operations and recruiting on a fractional basis, for growing companies that are not ready to build the full internal team or pay agency fees on every hire.
- Payroll administration and support
- Onboarding and offboarding
- Benefits and total rewards support
- Employee records and People systems
- Policies, SOPs, and practical workflows
- Manager and employee support
- Retention and early-turnover analysis
Recruiting capacity
without the full recruiting team.
Fractional Talent Acquisition, fractional recruiting, recruiting support, and outsourced recruiting all describe the same practical need: somebody has to own the work of finding and moving the right people through the hiring process.
- Job descriptions and role definition
- Candidate sourcing and outreach
- Screening and vetting
- Interview coordination
- Hiring-manager support
- Offer support
- ATS and recruiting workflows as needed
People + Recruiting work that
has lived inside the business.
Why Choose IGY Six as Your Fractional HR Partner
Founder-led.
Veteran-owned.
Operator-minded.
I built IGY SIX for companies that have outgrown informal hiring and People practices but are not ready to build the full internal function.
IGY SIX is intentionally founder-led. The person learning your business and shaping the approach is the same person accountable for the work — no handoff from salesperson to account manager to recruiter.
My background spans U.S. Army recruiting and leadership, enterprise talent acquisition, People Operations, manufacturing, BPO, healthcare, SaaS, and global technology. I have built recruiting teams, systems, sourcing strategies, hiring workflows, and practical People infrastructure inside complex operating environments.
The goal is not simply to complete People tasks or fill openings. It is to add the capability the business needs now, take meaningful People + recruiting work off leadership’s plate, and give owners and operators capacity back.
Build the team.
Get capacity back.
Tell me what your business is trying to hire, where People responsibilities are landing today, and what is taking too much leadership time. We’ll figure out the right level of support.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does IGY Six Consulting do?
IGY Six provides fractional People Operations and Talent Acquisition for growing businesses. We handle payroll support, onboarding, policies, manager support, retention, and recruiting, so founders and operators can step back from day-to-day People work without building a full internal HR and recruiting team.
What is fractional People Operations?
Fractional People Operations means experienced HR support on a part-time, ongoing basis. Instead of hiring a full-time HR manager, you get the systems, processes, and guidance your business needs today, scaled to your headcount and adjusted as your company grows.
What size businesses do you work with?
We work best with companies that have 10 to 75 employees. At this stage, People work is too big to stay informal but usually not big enough to justify a full internal HR department. We add structure and capacity until a full team makes sense.
Why choose fractional HR instead of hiring a full-time HR manager?
A full-time HR manager earns a median salary of $140,030 before benefits and payroll taxes, which is a large commitment for a growing company. Fractional HR gives you the same core expertise for the hours you actually need, with the flexibility to scale support up or down.
How is IGY Six different from a staffing agency or PEO?
Staffing agencies focus on filling roles, and PEOs bundle payroll and benefits through co-employment. IGY Six combines People Operations and recruiting in one founder-led engagement. You stay the employer, keep control of your business, and get hands-on support from someone who learns how your company works.
Can you help with just one hire?
Yes. Our Direct Placement service is built for difficult and important permanent searches. We source passive talent, vet candidates against your real business need, and present a curated shortlist, without the complexity of a traditional staffing agency.
Who will I work with?
You work directly with John Gaona, founder of IGY Six, a U.S. Army veteran of the 82nd Airborne with 12+ years in Talent Acquisition and People Operations. The person who learns your business is the same person accountable for the work, with no handoffs.
Do you work with businesses outside Texas?
Yes. IGY Six is based in New Braunfels, Texas, and serves growing businesses across Central Texas and nationwide. We also help clients manage multi-state employee requirements as their teams expand into new locations.
How do we get started?
It starts with a conversation. Tell us what you are trying to hire, where People responsibilities are landing today, and what is taking too much leadership time. From there, we recommend the right level of support, whether that is ongoing help, a project, or a single hire.
Have a question that is not answered here?