Questions, answered
What fractional work actually is, what it costs, how hiring one works, and what listing on the bench involves. Answered the way they would be answered on a call, including where the honest answer is that something is not offered.
Fractional work, explained
What the words mean, before anything about this site.
What is a fractional executive?
A fractional executive is an experienced senior leader who does one senior job for several companies at once, usually one or two days a week each. A fractional CFO runs finance for a company that needs a CFO's judgement but does not need it five days a week, and does the same for two or three other companies. The work is the real seat: they own the function, sit in the leadership team and are accountable for outcomes, not brought in to advise and leave.
How is fractional different from interim?
Time and purpose. Interim is one company, usually close to full-time, for a fixed stretch, covering a gap left by somebody leaving or carrying a business through a specific event. Fractional is part of a week, ongoing, with no assumption that it ends. An interim CFO is filling a chair until it is filled properly. A fractional CFO is how that chair is filled for a company at this size.
How is fractional different from consulting?
A consultant is engaged to produce something: a strategy, a review, a recommendation. A fractional executive holds the job. They make decisions rather than propose them, carry the function's outcomes, and are in the leadership meeting as the person answerable for that area. A consultant hands over a document and leaves. A fractional executive is still there next month owning what happened.
What does a fractional executive cost?
Rates are set per day or as a monthly retainer, never hourly, and they vary by seat, market and seniority. In the UK a fractional CFO typically sits in the £800 to £1,500 a day range, with other seats above and below that. At one to two days a week the annual cost usually lands somewhere between a third and a half of the same seat filled full-time, before the employment costs that never appear on a salary figure.
How many days a week does a fractional executive work?
Most engagements are one or two days a week per company. Below one day a week it is difficult to hold a function rather than advise on it. Above three days a week the work is really a part-time employee or an interim, and it is usually cheaper and simpler to structure it that way.
Which seats can be filled fractionally?
Any senior function where judgement matters more than hours in the chair. In practice that means finance, marketing, technology, operations, security, sales, people, product, growth, data and legal. Finance is the most common first fractional hire a company makes, because the trigger, usually a raise or a cash problem, is sharp and dated.
When is a fractional hire the wrong answer?
When the job is genuinely five days a week, when the company needs somebody on site every day, when the work is mostly execution rather than judgement, or when a function is in crisis and needs full-time attention for a period. In those cases an interim or a permanent hire is the right call, and being told so is more useful than being sold a fractional engagement that will not work.
For companies hiring
What it costs, how it works, and what happens if it goes wrong.
What does it cost to use getoperators?
Browsing the bench and contacting an operator needs a company account, and there is no subscription. Whatever rate is agreed with the operator is paid to the operator directly. Fees apply when a company engages an operator it was introduced to here, or asks us to run a search, and they are set out in the Terms of Business and in each company's dashboard.
Do you take a commission or a placement fee?
Nothing is ever taken from the operator's rate. The contract is between the company and the operator directly, and any fee on an engagement or a search is paid by the company, under its Terms of Business.
What is Operator Search and what does it cost?
Operator Search is a search run on a brief, for companies that would rather not sift the bench themselves. A fractional search begins with a search fee of £2,500, for five operators assessed against the brief within five business days, and a further five if none is right. If an appointment is made, the fee is 15% of annualised value, with a minimum of £3,500. Annualised value is the operator's agreed fee for their first twelve months: the day rate multiplied by the days committed and by 46 working weeks, or the monthly retainer multiplied by twelve. A hire counts if it happens within 12 months of an introduction, and a six-month guarantee sits behind it. Full-time and permanent appointments run through our retained search practice on the conventional percentage of first-year base.
Can an operator pay to appear higher in a shortlist?
No, and there is no plan that changes it. Paid shortlists are ranked on fit to the brief alone: sector, stage, seat, availability and verified track record. Operator Pro, an optional operator membership, lists members ahead of non-members in their seat, on the open bench and the seat page, and never reaches a shortlist. A company paying for the best has to receive the best, not the best who paid.
How are operators verified?
Every listing is a real named person, checked against their LinkedIn profile, with a CV held on file. Agencies are not allowed to list under an individual's name. Claims are spot-checked against the CV, and misrepresenting experience removes the listing. Verification is identical for everybody, so it is never a thing that can be bought.
What does available now actually mean?
It means that operator said they are taking calls this month, and nothing more than that. It is a status, not a recommendation. It expires automatically after 90 days, with reminders before it does, which is what stops a bench filling up with green badges that stopped being true months ago.
How quickly can a fractional executive start?
Faster than a permanent hire, because there is no notice period to serve. An operator who is taking calls this month can usually meet within days and start within one to three weeks. The slow part is deciding, not finding somebody.
Who handles the contract and the payment?
The company and the operator do, directly, between themselves. No contract is issued on their behalf, no money is held, and no invoicing runs through this site. The commercial relationship belongs to the two parties in it.
What happens if the engagement does not work out?
The agreement is between the company and the operator, so ending it is governed by whatever was agreed between them. Most fractional engagements are written with a short notice period on both sides for exactly this reason. Bad actors are removed from the bench, but contracts are not arbitrated: the deal belongs to the two parties, not to this site.
Can a fractional executive be hired permanently later?
Yes, and it happens. Some companies use a fractional engagement as the most honest trial there is, and later hire the same person into the seat full-time. Nothing on this site prevents it. Where the introduction came through getoperators, the Terms of Business set out the fee on a permanent appointment.
Which countries does this cover?
The UK is the deepest market on the bench, with operators in the United States and the UAE as well. Most fractional work is done remotely with occasional days on site, so the practical question is usually time zone overlap and whether the operator can be in the room when it matters, rather than which country they are registered in.
Can a role be posted instead of searching?
Yes. A posted role is checked before it goes live and has to be a seat that is genuinely open, so the board is not used to collect CVs against a vacancy that is already filled. Listed operators see the brief and apply directly.
For operators
What listing costs, who sees what, and what is expected.
What does it cost to list?
There is no registration fee, and no subscription is required to be visible.
How do companies make contact?
Through the listing. A company browsing the bench sends a request, and the operator decides whether to accept it. Details are not handed over in advance of that decision.
Who can see an operator's name, email and phone number?
Only a company whose booking that operator has accepted. Until acceptance, a company sees the professional profile and nothing that would let them make contact off the platform. This is enforced in the product, not by policy.
Is there a reply deadline?
Three days. A request that goes unanswered for three days expires, the company is told, and the available now status switches off. Unanswered requests are the one thing that kills a bench for everybody on it, which is why this rule is strict rather than a suggestion.
Can a day rate be kept private?
Yes. A rate can be shown in whatever currency it is set in, and it is never converted into another one, or it can be marked as available on request so that only the seat and the experience are public.
Is a profile photo required?
To appear on the bench, yes. A listing without a face reads as unfinished to a company deciding who to contact, and an unfinished listing costs the operator the enquiry rather than costing this site anything. Profiles without a photo stay in the account and off the public bench until one is added.
How many clients can a fractional executive hold?
Three to four at one or two days a week each is the usual working ceiling, and most people settle around three. The limit is rarely the calendar. It is the number of companies whose context can be held properly at once, because thin attention across five clients is what ends engagements.
Is it necessary to be full-time fractional to list?
No. Plenty of people list while still employed, or while running one engagement and looking for a second. What matters is that the availability shown is true when a company reads it.
How do reviews work?
A review can only be left by a company that actually hired that operator through the bench, from a single-use link issued after the booking. Reviews are checked before publishing. They cannot be bought, traded, or written by the operator being reviewed.
About getoperators
Who runs it, how it earns, and what it refuses to do.
What is getoperators?
getoperators (getoperators.co) is a UK-based marketplace of verified fractional executives: CFOs, CMOs, CTOs, COOs and seven other senior seats, each with a published day rate, that companies book directly one to three days a week. It also runs executive search for permanent hires. It covers the UK, the US and the UAE.
How does getoperators make money?
Mostly from companies: a fee when a company engages an operator it met here, Operator Search when a company asks us to run the search, and a retained search practice for permanent hires run with a search partner, all as set out in the Terms of Business. Nothing is ever taken from an operator's rate. Operator Pro is an optional membership an operator can choose, and it never touches a shortlist.
Is the number of operators on the bench published?
No, and it will not be. A small number teaches people not to come back and a large one tells competitors how the business is doing. What matters to somebody hiring is whether the right person for their seat is on the bench, which is a question about their seat rather than about a total.
Are the profiles real people?
Yes. Every listing is a named individual, verified against LinkedIn with a CV on file, and nothing is listed on anybody's behalf without them. There are no placeholder profiles and no agency listings dressed as individuals.
Who is behind getoperators?
getoperators is an independent business based in London, United Kingdom. Anything that needs a human reaches one at support@getoperators.co.
Take the answers as data
Every question answered here, and on the seat pages, the city guides, the market pages and the platform comparisons, is published as one open file with each answer naming the page it comes from: JSON or CSV, and ?topic= filters it. Free to reuse and republish under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, with a link back here. The rate bands behind the money answers are published the same way, at day rates.
Still not answered
The rules the bench runs on are written out in full on the rules, and how the whole thing works end to end is on how it works. Anything else reaches a human at support@getoperators.co.