We use several fractional executives and part-time contractors in key operational seats. How do we assign meaningful weekly scorecard metrics to people who are only working in our business ten or twenty hours a week?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Fractional or part-time status is not an excuse to escape scorecard accountability. If a person occupies a seat on your Accountability Chart, they must own at least one weekly measurable, regardless of how many hours they work. In fact, tracking data is even more critical for part-time workers because you have less daily visibility into their activities.

To design metrics for fractional seats, focus on high-impact outputs rather than high-volume activities. A part-time employee cannot hit the same volume targets as a full-time employee, but they can still be held to strict quality, efficiency, or project-based metrics.

For example, if you have a fractional Chief Financial Officer or controller, do not track daily transaction counts. Instead, track:
- Weekly cash runway projections updated on schedule
- Number of outstanding financial anomalies resolved
- Percentage of weekly departmental budget reviews completed

For a part-time marketing contractor, focus on acquisition efficiency:
- Cost per qualified lead generated during the week
- Number of marketing campaigns launched on schedule

The key is to align the metric with the specific results you hired them to achieve. If a fractional resource resists having a weekly metric, claiming their hours are too limited, they do not GWC™ their seat. Every seat exists to produce a result. If you cannot measure that result on a weekly basis, you either have the wrong person in the seat or the seat itself is poorly defined.