CHALLENGES AND SUPPORT FOR FRACTIONAL WORK
Professor Lawrence Loh, director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, said fractional work gives employers access to people with “specialised knowledge, leadership skills and even institutional memory”.
“That arrangement gives you access to high-level expertise in a very cost-effective way,” he said.
He said companies can scale their use of fractional workers up or down according to their needs, including for projects, seasonal work or interim roles.
“I think for many companies, particularly if they do succession (planning), sometimes a fractional person can stay back and do the mentoring and hand-holding while the company is doing the transition.”
However, Prof Loh cautioned that some jobs cannot easily be divided into separate tasks, while others require close coordination among employees. Having fractional workers absent at certain times could also create bottlenecks for employers.
He added that fractional work may be more suitable for knowledge-based and professional roles, while jobs involving physical demands or fixed schedules can be harder to adapt.
“Some work is just not amenable to be fragmented, or it cannot be modularised,” he said.
He added that employers adopting such arrangements need to review job responsibilities, reporting structures and performance indicators to accommodate workers who are not present full-time.