Why more CFOs are choosing flexibility over full time roles

There are thousands of CFOs globally who are disillusioned with corporate life. This was the case before Covid, yet the pandemic has turbo-charged these feelings, resulting in high calibre finance executives considering leaving their full-time corporate roles and looking for alternatives.

We can learn a lot from exploring some of the top reasons CFOs are moving to portfolio work.

Work/life balance

After many years in the corporate world, Paula Amesbury finally found time to reassess her work/life balance. While still working in a full-time CFO role, she found herself merging three businesses simultaneously, moving premises, and a SAP implementation. In dire need of a hip replacement, she didn’t have the time to put her health and well-being first:

“To be honest this was nothing new.  I didn’t take maternity leave with my kids and we always joked that I’d take my maternity leave when they went to Uni. When I couldn’t put the operation off any longer, I had my hip done, and then the role I was going back to changed due to Covid. I asked the team to make me redundant and I walked away to become a fractional CFO.”

 This is where fractional working comes into its own as those opting for this new way of living and working are in control of their schedules. The benefits are agency, control, and choice in their lives to design better work/life balance.

Flexibility

For many, the constraints of a full-time employed role mean that it’s impossible to fulfil other aspects of their life – be it spending time with their young family, pursuing a sport, or taking care of elderly relatives. For Roger Castle, who is an early adopter of fractional working and left his last corporate role many years ago, it was about having the flexibility to travel. He felt that he couldn’t do that within his current position:

“When I was a full-time, employed CFO, I used to hate being restricted by holiday allowances of 25 days. We love to travel: now I can travel 3 weeks and work a little as I go, e-mails each day and a few calls to keep things moving with clients. I’m able to generally book my workdays around things that are important to me, so if there is a golf day, tennis match, or cycle ride that friends are organising I can almost always make it as I just avoid working those days.  I’ve become a master in not missing out on the fun stuff, I can still fit in an 8-hour day, and I’m energised and enthused.”

Fractional CFOs often have control over their working hours, and how many days they are committing to – often being able to fluctuate it depending on the needs of their clients but also to fit around their personal plans to allow flexibility in their lives.

Variety

 CFOs are often attracted to developing a portfolio career because of the variety it gives them to work with many different clients. Chris Weeks, a seasoned fractional CFO, shared “It’s the buzz of working with new teams and new challenges that excited me. Before I left, I got to the point where I felt like I was dealing with the same emails, the same problems, and having the same meetings. After a while it became stale and I’m sure I wasn’t delivering my best work either. I’ve now got a breadth of clients across various industries and I’m regularly drawing on skills I haven’t used for many years which keeps every day fresh and exciting.”

Typically, fractional CFOs might work with anywhere between three and seven businesses at any one time, giving them a variety hard to find in the traditional CFO position, not to mention diversifying their financial risk as they build an income stream from multiple businesses not just a single employer.

Giving back and making a difference

Many CFOs feel like they’re no longer making a difference and that they can make more impact by working with SMEs. For over two decades, Linda Nelson has helped multiple corporates double their profits and float, sell, or pay out significant dividends, but with limited connection. She felt like she’d lost her purpose and decided it was time to pursue a career as a fractional CFO:

“Without an understanding of the people and their values, it all felt a bit shallow and worthless. I have a wealth of knowledge having worked in multiple business sectors and I have the learnings from some pretty hard knocks. I want to use all that experience to help business owners so that ultimately, they can sleep at night, be confident in their decision making, and build their own success story.”

Similarly, Harnish Hadani decided to leave corporate as he wanted to help change and impact SME businesses positively, business owners’ lives, their families, and the lives of their staff. He wanted to use his skills and experience to create the most impact by fulfilling their personal and company ambitions – whether it be by improving the existing business, scaling up the business, or preparing a business for a possible sale or exit.  As a fractional CFO, he now gets involved in financial, operational, and strategic decision-making for his clients so that he can add the most value to help shape the future of their business.”

There is an alternative to the grind of corporate life. CFOs can build flexibility, variety and control in their lives by becoming self-employed and building a portfolio of clients they can service one day per week or two days per month. They dial their time up and down as required to fit the needs and budgets of the organisations they work with, while also retaining balance within their schedules and focusing on their specialisms.

This isn’t just a nice idea; it is a practical, alternative vision of the future of work for senior executives that is gaining significant interest and is being adopted by businesses globally. It provides a new way of working for CFOs and other C-suite executives within organisations by moving their positions from the ‘pay-roll’ to an ‘access-role’. It disrupts and challenges today’s traditional full-time employment model, offering an alternative which promises purpose, variety, flexibility, and freedom.

Sara Daw is Group CEO of The CFO Centre and The Liberti Group, and the author of Strategy and Leadership as Service – How the Access Economy Meets the C-Suite, which explores the fractional leadership trend.

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