Case Study: How a Fractional CPO Built an HR Function From Scratch and Earned a Seat at the Leadership Table

Taylor Crane is the founder of Fractional Jobs, a matching service for fractional executive talent. In this case study, Taylor sat down with David Shuldiner, COO at O’Donnell Metal Deck, a nationwide metal decking distributor, to learn how working with a fractional CPO changed the way his growing company operates.

O’Donnell Metal Deck was founded in 1997 in Baltimore as a small, owner-operated business. For two decades, it was essentially the founder and a handful of employees, until the founder brought on a new leader as part of a succession plan in 2017. Then, in 2020, the company first partnered with private equity. Since then, O’Donnell Metal Deck has grown from five people in a single location to a team of 50+ across 20 locations nationwide, generating over $100 million in annual revenue.

David sits on the company’s leadership team alongside the CEO, CFO, heads of sales, and heads of project management. As the company scaled rapidly under PE ownership, the leadership team found itself stretched thin, handling responsibilities that none of them had the bandwidth or expertise to manage well.

Growing Pains Without an HR Function

For most of O’Donnell Metal Deck’s history, formal HR simply wasn’t necessary. With five people, you don’t need a dedicated function. But somewhere on the growth curve from 5 to 50 employees, the lack of one became a real problem.

“The various responsibilities were sort of spread out among other members of the senior leadership, which meant that we were disorganized and things were barely getting done,” David said.

If the company had chosen to do nothing, David said, “we would have been where we were, which was disorganized and handling too many important processes informally.” And while there might not have been an immediate catastrophe, there was real risk of that disorganization catching up to them and reaching a breaking point.

“It’s fine until it’s not,” David said.

Why a Fractional Hire?

Based on his experience, David understood the importance of finding the right person for O’Donnel Metal Deck’s HR function. He knew that there was a big difference between the value an exceptional executive could bring to the company compared to a mediocre one. But the role also wasn’t big enough to justify a full-time executive hire.

“Fractional made sense because I wanted to access top-tier HR talent, but the role’s scope wasn’t large enough for a full work week, and I couldn't pay them enough to full-time employ them, either,” David said.

The fractional model solved both problems at once: access to senior-level talent at a scope and cost that matched the actual needs of the business.

Finding Nikki Through Fractional Jobs

David came to Fractional Jobs and was presented with a curated shortlist of candidates. He didn’t pursue any other avenues to fill the role, in part because the fractional model was such a natural fit for the specific problem he was trying to solve.

“This is a very perfect use case for fractional,” David said, “because we were either going to get someone cheap and less experienced, or we were going to pay someone great to have a half-time job.”

The Fractional Jobs service handled what David valued most: putting together the job description, leveraging the Fractional Jobs network to source quality candidates, and curating the applicant pool so the leadership team only had to evaluate a manageable group.

“The initial reactions were like, oh yeah, these are the people that I’m looking for,” David said of his first look at the candidates.

Nikki Carter stood out for her functional experience. She had operated as a senior HR leader at companies of similar size going through similar growing pains. She was also highly fluent in Paylocity, the HR and payroll platform O’Donnell Metal Deck was already using, which meant she could hit the ground running with the tools already in place.

“She operated successfully at some companies that were like ours, that faced similar problems to the ones we faced, and she knew the tools we were using,” David said. “And also just her personality in the interviews matched what we were looking for.”

In this case, industry experience was less important than functional fit. What mattered was that Nikki understood companies at this size and stage, not that she knew the metal decking business specifically.

Easing In and Building Trust

O’Donnell Metal Deck didn’t have a structured onboarding process (part of the reason they needed an HR leader in the first place), so the team eased Nikki in. She started with low-hanging fruit, getting quick wins under her belt while learning the business.

For the first several months, David and Nikki had a weekly to-do list check-in where they’d review priorities for the upcoming week and talk through how the prior week went. That structure gave both sides a rhythm to work from while Nikki was still absorbing the company’s context and culture.

Over time, that formalized cadence relaxed into a weekly one-on-one plus ad-hoc conversations as needed.

“Originally, I would have to remain involved because she just didn’t have all the pieces yet,” David said. “And now that’s very much not the case. It’s like, no, no, no, just go work this out with Nikki.”

Building the HR Infrastructure

Nikki now works about 20 hours a week for O’Donnell Metal Deck and owns the full scope of HR and people operations. Her impact has been broad, but a few areas stand out.

The single biggest project was getting their HR and payroll platform working as a true system of record. Before Nikki, compensation history, job titles, and employee records lived in scattered Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. There was no centralized source of truth for compensation and promotion history.

“That was a major lift and very material,” David said. “It’s really problematic when compensation and promotion history isn’t centralized and easy to track.”

This year was the first time O’Donnell Metal Deck ran its entire compensation review through Paylocity, complete with automatically generated comp letters. The company can now pull reports on compensation changes and current pay across the entire organization, something that simply wasn’t possible before.

Beyond the Paylocity overhaul, Nikki has taken over payroll management, created and standardized job descriptions and titles across the company, set up automated job postings through Paylocity’s integration with Indeed (saving the company the cost of a separate Indeed subscription), built out formal hiring and offboarding processes, and run employee NPS surveys to gauge how the team is feeling.

She’s also become a key thought partner on performance and compensation conversations, giving the leadership team a competent, trusted voice on people decisions they used to handle ad hoc.

David also noted that he’s now far more confident in the consistency and rigor of the company’s HR compliance processes.

“Part of what’s been great is I don’t have to focus on this stuff as much, and it just seems to be working,” David said. “That’s what I wanted. That’s what I paid for.”

From Quick Fix to Leadership Team

Nikki’s impact has been so positive that she has become a full member of the company’s leadership team.

“Originally it wasn’t clear whether the fractional executive we hired was going to be on that level or not,” David said. “Then she showed that she was a great asset, and so now she is.”

What Surprised David Most

David’s biggest concern going in was whether a remote, part-time hire could learn the business deeply enough to make the right calls without constant oversight.

“Can you have someone remote and part-time who can learn your business well enough to make the right context-dependent decisions?” David said. “I was worried about it, but it’s clearly not an issue.”

What started as a hire to solve acute HR and scaling problems has become a trusted leadership partnership. Nikki is able to drive decisions independently, and the team trusts her judgment.

David’s Advice for Other Leaders

When asked what he’d say to another business owner or executive considering a fractional hire, David pointed back to the core value proposition.

“If you want top-tier talent but don’t want to, or can’t, offer top-tier compensation and a role with a large enough scope to take 40 hours, then this is the way,” he said.

He would also use Fractional Jobs again without hesitation.

“What’s important to me is to go through a smooth, quick process with a reliable outcome.” David said. “I just care that I get the right person.”

If this case study resonates with you, and you want to bring in a Fractional CPO like Nikki, or any other kind of fractional leader, learn more about how Fractional Jobs can help connect you to the right person for the job. You’ll be working with Taylor directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is O’Donnell Metal Deck?

A: O’Donnell Metal Deck is a nationwide metal decking distributor founded in 1997 in Baltimore. The company first partnered with private equity in 2020 and has since grown from 5 employees in a single location to about 50 across 20 locations, generating over $100 million in annual revenue.

Q: How did O’Donnell Metal Deck find the right Fractional CPO for their needs?

A: O’Donnell Metal Deck worked with Fractional Jobs, a white-glove search service for fractional hiring. Fractional Jobs presented the leadership team with high-quality candidates, one of whom was hired as a fractional CPO.

Q: What does a fractional CPO do for a growing company?

A: In this case, Nikki Carter owns the full HR and people operations function at about 20 hours a week. She manages payroll, runs compensation reviews through Paylocity, standardizes job titles and descriptions, handles hiring and offboarding, conducts employee surveys, and serves as a strategic partner to the leadership team.

Q: What was the biggest result?

A: Nikki transformed Paylocity from an unused system into the company’s single source of truth for compensation, job titles, and employee records. She also ran the company’s first fully systematized compensation review, replacing a patchwork of Word documents and spreadsheets with centralized, reliable records of employee pay and promotion history.

Q: Was the leadership team skeptical about fractional hiring?

A: David had concerns about whether a remote, part-time hire could learn the business deeply enough to make context-dependent decisions on her own. Those concerns were quickly resolved, and Nikki is now a full member of the leadership team.

Q: Can a fractional CPO work for a company with no existing HR function?

A: Yes. O’Donnell Metal Deck had no formal HR function before Nikki. She built it from the ground up, including payroll, compliance, hiring processes, and compensation management, all while working 20 hours a week.

Q: How can I hire a fractional CPO?

A: If you want to bring someone like Nikki in to build or manage your people function, learn more here about how the Fractional Jobs network can help.