Interim management is priced on a day rate rather than a salary, and the number is usually higher than the equivalent permanent salary looks on a daily basis. That comparison is the source of most of the confusion about cost, so it is worth setting out what the rate actually covers and what drives it.
A day rate is a whole cost. There is no employer's National Insurance, no pension contribution, no holiday or sick pay, no notice period, no redundancy exposure and no recruitment fee. It also carries no long-term commitment: the arrangement ends when the situation is resolved, which in a distressed or transitional business is precisely the flexibility you are buying.
Four things drive where a rate sits. Seniority is the largest — a site or general manager sits well below an operations director running a portfolio. Sector and complexity matter next: licensed hospitality, multi-site retail estates and regulated environments carry more risk and require narrower experience. Urgency affects it, because same-week deployment has a premium over a planned start. And duration affects it, with longer assignments typically priced more keenly than a two-week emergency cover.
Beyond the rate itself, expect travel and accommodation to be charged at cost where the assignment is away from the manager's base, particularly on multi-site work. These should be agreed and capped in writing at the outset. What should not appear later are separate charges for reporting, handover or mobilisation — those are part of the job, and we set out ours plainly before anyone starts.
The right way to judge cost is against the alternative rather than against a salary. In an administration, the comparator is a business that cannot open, loses its key staff within a fortnight, breaches its licences and is worth materially less to a buyer eight weeks later. Measured against that, the weekly cost of competent management is usually a small fraction of the value it protects. Where trading is marginal, the honest answer is sometimes that the operation should not trade at all — the tests for that are in can a business keep trading in administration.
For planning purposes, most operational assignments run between four and sixteen weeks, with the heaviest cost in the first fortnight when presence needs to be full-time and daily. Many settle into reduced days once the operation is stable, and that step-down should be explicit in the engagement rather than something you have to ask for.
We quote a clear day rate and expected duration before deployment, with no recruitment fee and no lock-in. If you want to talk through a specific situation and what it would cost to cover, get in touch — or read what an interim manager is first if you are still scoping the need.