It is no longer traditional for executive teams and business owners to outsource specific roles or functions. Outsourcing has become an efficient way to ensure business operations run smoothly and scale quickly. Despite being a common practice, it remains limited to lower or mid-level functions.

Outsourcing C-Suite functions is a practice significantly unfamiliar across various industries. This is because C-suite positions are essentially what defines your organisation. Your business executives are responsible for ensuring your people, policies and plans align with your organisation's strategies and operations. 

Indeed, making the decision to outsource such delicate roles remains one of the most difficult challenges faced by business owners, founders, and CEOs. However, outsourcing such high-end functions is gradually becoming a growing practice globally. 

In today's fast-paced business world, organisations are no longer defined by one individual. This makes your investment in an outsourced C-suite executive - the CFO, CMO, COO or even the CEO, like any other personnel investment. 

Businesses make strategic decisions every day. The decision to outsource your high-end roles should be carefully thought through and considered like other strategic choices such as brand differentiation, market positioning, etc.   

As your organisation evolves and reaches various stages in size and complexity, the need to have top business veterans increases. 

For certain businesses, this may mean bringing in top executives on a part-time or "fractional" basis. During fractional C-suite engagements, the C-level executive spends some hours per day/week providing guidance and oversight to your business. 

Businesses do this to learn from experts without necessarily bearing the full brunt of a full-time engagement. However, as businesses grow, they can also consider "hiring" the C-suite executives but managing them through a premium staff outsourcing vendor like Workforce Group.

Business leaders consider outsourcing their C-suite executives to ensure access to fringe benefits that would be otherwise extremely expensive for their current organisation. 

Other organisations outsource their C-suites to gain insights, ensure objective analysis, learn from the depth of experience, expand to a new industry, diversify their core capabilities, and ultimately drive business success. 

In this article, we share ten (10) scenarios in which outsourcing your C-suite roles can provide an immense competitive advantage for your business, either on a fractional basis or on an outsourced full-time engagement. 

Here are ten (10) situations when you should seriously consider outsourcing your C-suite roles:  

Situations to Consider Outsourcing Your C-Suite Roles

This scenario is used by startups and business owners to scale without complexity and bottlenecks. The idea is to find individuals who will come in and quickly help make decisions and take actions that will drive operations at a much higher level on a temporal basis. 

An outsourced expert consultant or interim leader can guide your functional team as needed or until a permanent placement is made. 

2. When you need a better Employee Value Proposition

This scenario is used by businesses who want to attract the best C-suite executives and provide the best benefits while avoiding the associated cost or detailed investment in their HR team.

Outsourcing providers often have better contracts and negotiated terms with HMOs and others. As such, they are often equipped to provide better health, mental and social benefits such as gym access, social events access, and better healthcare coverage, among others, to their C-suite staff without the higher associated costs. 

Some industries experience extremely high turnover in senior leadership positions. Businesses in these industries leverage outsourcing to provide a pool of high-quality replacements. 

Outsourcing these roles also ensures flexibility, reduces the impact and Mean Time to Fill (MTTF) caused by high attrition. 

Businesses consider outsourcing their C-suite roles when they are experiencing rapid growth and the time has come to organise a team for increased efficiency. 

You can expect that with growth, you will need new people who need to be trained quickly. To grow the business, business owners need to relinquish control and stand aside from important company decisions to allow the new person to operate effectively. 

For this reason, outsourcing such a function makes it easy to bring in the expertise needed. The business can benefit from the individual's knowledge and expertise without bearing the burden of other administrative and repetitive tasks. 

This concept is also particularly beneficial where the business owner or CEO requires the professional support of a C-level colleague whose input is beyond that of a traditional 'coach' while still retaining control over business operations.  

If you're not running a large-scale enterprise, there is a good chance that your C-suite is likely made up of people already in your network.

 While it is a good idea to work with people you know and trust, it can also lead to rigidity and put a cap on your organisation’s growth. You and those around you are increasingly likely to share the same ideas and viewpoints – which can hinder creative thinking and innovation. 

As is the case with expertise, you need to look for what you currently lack. For example, if your business is young, your outsourced executive should be able to provide a veteran perspective, while older organisations might consider young and dynamic executives to give their operations some energy. In addition, by outsourcing your c-suite, you can create an opportunity for natural intellectual diversity, which is difficult to find in most organisations. 

Every day, business owners wake up to the emergence of new titles, such as "Chief Data Officer", "Chief User Experience Officer", "Chief DE&I Officer" etc. The business landscape also calls for a shift in focus and priorities.

 As a result, proactive businesses engage the services of an outsourcing firm to recruit and manage those roles on a fixed-term basis while the business owners evaluate the impact of those roles on their business.

 Business owners may then decide to outsource those roles on a full-time basis, hire executives, or engage the outsourcing firm to help with exit management.

As a result of industry changes, your organisation may get into situations where senior input is crucial. 

For example, your organisation may be trying to break into new markets, facing new opportunities or might have taken a significant hit due to external factors and so will need a strategic C-level input that cannot wait for the extensive recruitment cycle to be complete. 

Most HR teams experience low volume of ideal applicants when recruiting business leaders. Recruitment and Outsourcing firms also often have access to a larger pool of senior business leaders and can provide recommendations on C-suite executives to hire.

Outsourcing such a function can provide immediate expertise while deciding whether to leverage outsourcing for transitional executives until the search for permanent recruitment or continue using the outsourced C-suites. 

C-suites are crucial to the success of your organisation. In implementing the organisation's strategy, each executive plays a vital role in ensuring the efficiency of operations by controlling costs and expenditure. 

It therefore, makes sense that cost-efficiency and increasing profitability depend on having the right individuals on your board. Your organisation can achieve this by outsourcing its C-suite positions. 

With the world becoming a global village, organisations are looking to scale and expand into international markets. Outsourcing your C-suite functions in your target country can help you with growth, strategy, and reputation building. It is also a way to reduce costs at the beginning of your global expansion. 

Pulling an outsourced C-suite on board is an excellent way to give a fresh injection of expertise and energy to the business, especially when looking ahead and planning the future. 

An outsourced C-suite can stand as a bridge between organisations and business partners, planning succession and transitioning into the future. 

Ultimately, every hiring decision comes down to a question of need. If your organisation's need for specific C-suite roles requires outsourcing that specific role, then it is best to do so. 

The era of differentiating between full-time staff and outsourced employees is long past. Today, organisations outsource senior roles to drive specific business results and improve the quality of life for their executives. 

Remember, the underlying principle of outsourcing is to focus on your core while allowing others to take the stress off you in areas where they can add the most value. 

Effectively running a business is a rewarding yet draining experience. It requires a lot of constant commitment, energy, and unfailing strength.

Although this can be exciting for you as a business owner or executive team, the reality is that you are human and will often require expertise injection and assistance with handling transitions or specific crises. In these situations, outsourcing your C-Suite executive roles can be priceless. 

At Workforce Group, our goal is to help you maximise your business resources while gaining the required expertise to grow your business.