Why More People Want to Work Fractionally in 2022 & Beyond

Jacob Sheldon
Shiny
Published in
3 min readAug 11, 2022

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Working fractionally gives a lot of flexibility to workers in terms of commitment and cost. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are the four reasons why people want to work fractionally.

Reason #1. Freedom and Flexibility

Freedom and flexibility in the work are the two main reasons why more and more people want to work fractionally nowadays.

Working fractionally allows people to work from home when their full-time employer doesn’t allow it.

This gives them time they can spend with their families and friends, set their schedules however they want, and work at their own pace.

Freedom of work also allows fractional workers to choose who they work with. When they realize that their boss is a bad manager, they can more easily quit and take on a new client to replace that portion of their income.

Reason #2. The Excitement of Working with Multiple Startups and Scaleups

The excitement and curiosity of working with new-age startups and scaleups has tempted many full-time employees to turn into fractional workers.

People working corporate jobs can be incredibly talented and experienced. They can provide a lot of great advice in their domain, but at some point in their career, they can’t stand the set routine of 9 to 5, which makes them explore other working options.

They end up working fractionally because it’s flexible, easy, and comparably more stable than consulting and freelancing.

Another reason why these corporate prodigies want to work fractionally is due to a lot of red tape in the work they do full-time. It’s tough to work in a place where you can’t discuss your projects with your colleagues and friends due to confidentiality clauses.

The hard truth is — when someone starts their corporate career, they think that work stability is good. But they soon realize it is boring and find it tough to get off the hamster wheel.

When they finally quit, they start looking for work alternatives and end up working fractionally.

Reason #3. More Income Stability

Working fractionally provides a noticeable increase in stability than freelancing. Unlike freelancing, where payment is per hour or per project, people hire fractional talent every month and for a relatively long period of time.

Fractional workers are commonly considered full members of the team, even though they split their time between multiple companies. This establishes them within teams to work for multiple years with a company, instead of on an interim basis.

Reason #4. Ability to Grow Into a Higher Level Role

The growth ability in a fractional role is immense, especially when working for a high-growth startup.

Let’s imagine someone who was a Head of Marketing at a company and scaled it from 5 to 500 employees. They can become a fractional CMO, get the freedom and flexibility in their work life, and work with multiple companies simultaneously.

They get to do what they are best at, and multiple companies can benefit from their expertise.

This also opens up full-time opportunities if a client needs a full-time CMO down the line and it is the right fit for the fractional CMO to commit full-time.

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