Positive learnings out of Boyden UK & Ireland Interim Management’s Q3 webinar, highlighting an uptick in interim market activity, transformation and IR35 evaluations.
Date: 29 September 2021
Location: Virtual webinar
At the start of Covid-19 the Boyden UK interim team started hosting webinars to create a space where our interims can join us for a discussion about what is going on in the market. 18 months later and we are still hosting these virtual webinars, mostly because people have been very positive about them. Throughout most of our calls we have polls which have provided a great snapshot of what is going on.
Perhaps most excitingly on this quarters call was when we asked whether people felt comfortable gathering for an IRL – In Real Life – networking event before Christmas, and the overwhelming majority said yes! Watch this space.
With regards to market activity, 60% of people on the call felt Q3 was busier, whilst 30% felt it was quieter and 10% felt it was the same. The experience from the Boyden team is that there has definitely been more activity, although we did start to see a slight shift of which skills were in demand, and indeed the demand for CFO and finance related skills increased during this period, following a relatively subdued demand for interim CFO’s for some time.
Pleasingly none of the requirements people were hearing about were business as usual, with all interim requirements being driven by growth, improvement, and transformation requirements.
We were surprised to see that over 55% of participants have yet to go through an IR35 Status determination whilst 18% have gone through 2-5 and 5% of people have gone through over 5, and whilst a few people have turned down a role because it was inside IR35, most people had not turned down a role because it was inside IR35.
We are working closely with our clients and interims using an independent company to assess each project on an individual basis, as recommended by HMRC. We are fortunate that we do not work with any clients that are carrying out blanket determinations and all our clients are responding well in working together to establish the IR35 status determination for each and every project.
If you have suggestions for poll questions for our next call, please email them to Abi.Vickers@boyden.com or contact any of our Interim Team partners that joined the discussion - Lisa Farmer, Richard Plaistowe, Andy Dunne and Dirk Niederberghaus
If you would like to register for our next Boyden Brief Webinar, please do so here.
