This is a great blog post from BIE’s Carlie Richings on Paul Brown and John Seddon, until recently interim managers at the Office of Nuclear Regulation.

Reading Carlie’s post, and the underlying reports in the Guardian and the Telegraph (in turn sparked by David Hencke’s piece on Exaronews), it’s hard not to believe that government departments are running scared in the face of ill-informed press and public opinion.

Ministers may talk about the importance of nurturing a Flexible Economy but fail miserably in distinguishing between cases of “disguised employees” attempting to avoid tax and genuine interim managers.  Interim managers are independent professionals each running their own small business and providing expert services to client organisations, as required: expertise on demand, the foundation of a flexible economy.

As the IIM said in its recent statement, The Value of Interim Management to the Flexible Economy, we need to recognise that interim management is a very different proposition from traditional employment. It offers precisely targeted expertise on demand, enabling innovation and flexibility across the economy to the benefit of tax-payers and shareholders everywhere. We must not lose sight of this difference nor of the value it represents.

It would be great to see some political leadership that defends this difference – and the economic agility that interim and other forms of freelancing offer – rather than caving in to a knee-jerk assumption that anyone operating through a limited company must simply be guilty of tax evasion.

Freelancing, Interim Management, Organisational Humanity, Sovereign Professional, Strategic Resourcing