08/09/2026
COST OF A FULL-TIME C-SUITE HIRE TODAY
💰 Base salary: £150,000 – £250,000.
📈 Employer NI + benefits: £25,000 – £40,000.
🔁 Recruitment fee (20–25%): £35,000 – £60,000.
💰 Bonus: £30,000 – £75,000.
🎁 Equity (1–3%): You bet your house on it!
That's £240,000 – £425,000+ before they've attended a single board meeting.
Now add the time cost.
🕐 4–8 months to find the right person.
⏳ 3–6 months to onboard them properly.
📉 18–24 month average tenure - if you're lucky.
You spend 6 months finding them, 6 months getting them up to speed.
And maybe, just maybe 12 months of real impact!
Before they leave for a bigger role, a competitor, or a package you can't match.
Now let's talk about what's actually happening today.
→ Companies are stripping out full-time senior leadership to cut costs.
→ Junior people are being asked to step into strategic roles they weren't hired for or skilled to handle.
→ And commercial governance is quietly falling through the cracks.
Your business doesn't just need hands.
It needs commercial judgement and Board-level thinking. Judgement built on ability and experience by people who’ve been there and done it multiple times before.
The kind of leadership that builds reputation, defends margins, and makes the right call under pressure.
⚠️ Leave that to someone without the experience?
You'll spend the next 6–9 months unpicking avoidable mistakes.
Made in the absence of the leadership that should have been in the room.
This applies whether your gap is technology, operational, marketing, revenue, people, or financial.
CTO, COO, CMO, CRO, CHRO or CFO.
Every discipline; Same problem, Same cost, Same risk.
COMPARED TO FRACTIONAL
✅ £40,000 – £90,000 annually — role and scope dependent.
✅ No equity.
✅ No bonus.
✅ No pension, NI, or healthcare.
✅ No recruitment fee.
✅ Available next week.
✅ Zero ramp time — they've done this exact thing before.
✅ Embedded, strategic, commercially accountable — owning the outcomes!
Not a consultant who delivers a deck and disappears but an Independent Outcome-focused Leader.
A fractional executive who sits in the business, owns the problem and has the scar tissue to know what actually works.
One route is a calculated investment.
The other is a 'gamble' dressed up as a hire!
Which one makes more sense ?
The Takeaway: You don't need a full-time salary to get real leadership, real accountability, and real results.
Learn more about scaling your technology leadership efficiently at therestistech.com or contact me ([email protected]) today for a confidential and impartial discussion on how we can add value to your business.
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