Interim Manager: 7.5 Months on Average, More Than €1,300 a Day

An interim manager assignment in France lasts 7.5 months on average, at an average daily rate above €1,300 (Source: France Transition, press release republished by Cercomm, 2026). These benchmarks come from the second-half 2025 barometer of France Transition. It is the French federation of interim management firms. Cercomm is a French recruitment news site.

For a business leader who has never hired an interim manager, these figures give an order of magnitude. They say nothing about that leader’s own situation. A sample scenario, told below, shows what still has to be decided.

Sample scenario: a CEO’s first week

Sample scenario, built for illustration. It does not describe a real assignment.

On a Thursday at 6:12 p.m., the chief operating officer of a services company sends in a letter of resignation. He leaves in three months.

The CEO has the weekend to decide: recruit a successor, promote from within, or bring in an interim manager. She has never used one. All she knows is that she cannot leave the position empty while a search runs.

On Friday she asks her network two questions: how long, and at what price. The answers are federation averages.

The chair of the board asks what she can promise him. She has nothing in numbers about her own company to show him.

On Tuesday she meets an interim manager. He asks to meet two team leads before committing, to hear what each expects of him.

Then he asks three questions: what has to be kept running during the assignment, who decides, and what will show that the assignment is working.

Together they write one page. It sets the scope, the target duration, three indicators tracked each month, the decisions the manager does not make alone, and the exit date.

On the first day in the role, she brings the teams together. She announces the duration, the scope and who has the final say in a disagreement.

A team lead asks one question: what happens at the end? The answer is on the page: the manager documents the work, trains the team that takes over, then leaves.

During the first two weeks, the interim manager changes little. He follows the existing meetings, asks questions, notes what is blocking.

On day fifteen, a manager challenges a priority. The page says who decides. The disagreement is settled in one meeting.

At thirty days, the first indicator is presented to the executive team. The teams know who decides, for how long, and on what basis the assignment will be judged.

The scoping page is written before the start and presented to the teams on the first day in the role.

Duration: 7.5 months on average

The average duration reaches 7.5 months in the second half of 2025, up from 6.6 months in the first half (Source: France Transition, 2026). Leave out stand-in assignments, which replace an executive while a successor is found, and it rises to 8.3 months. France calls them “relay” assignments.

Stand-in assignments are the shortest. The federation sees longer durations as managers staying on for long-term transformation projects.

Cost: an average daily rate above €1,300

Interim manager cost is quoted as a daily rate, which holds above €1,300 on average (Source: France Transition, 2026). That rate showed an inflection at the very end of the year, as competition increased. More managers are looking for assignments.

The press release gives neither a range nor a total budget. The federation’s page on the cost of an assignment says the same. Its assessment factors “cannot lead to putting a figure on an average cost, or even to giving evaluation ranges”. Each request is handled case by case (Source: France Transition, “Cost of an assignment” page, undated; quotation translated from French).

The cost of an assignment depends on the number of days billed, which the average does not tell.

Situations: transformation work is growing

Change management and transformation assignments keep growing (Source: France Transition, 2026). The federation links this to the rise in company insolvencies, at a historically high level according to the Banque de France, France’s central bank.

Sales and marketing roles are also rebounding, as companies look to restart growth in an uncertain climate. Industry remains the leading client sector, despite a decline in manufacturing output. Distribution and retail saw a rebound in the last quarter of 2025.

The market has slowed. Companies have slowed investment decisions and made approval cycles longer. The federation sees a targeted adjustment and more selectivity, rather than doubts about using interim management.

Teams already in place: an effect the press release does not measure

The press release measures neither the effect of an assignment on the teams already in place, nor its results. No source reviewed does. The sample scenario describes a practice, not a statistic. Announce the duration, the scope and who decides, and answer the question about the exit. It follows the logic of izybiz’s scoping: the stakes, the constraints and the indicators are written down before the assignment begins.

Scoping a first assignment: duration, rate, indicators

At izybiz, an assignment lasts three months at minimum, with a standard duration of six to twelve months. It is billed by the day or at a fixed fee, with no public rate. Scoping takes the first fifteen days: stakes, constraints and indicators.

First levers are set at thirty days, then a checkpoint takes place at sixty days with the board or shareholders. Each result is documented at the end of the assignment. Details are on the interim management page.

Before signing, four points to settle:

1. The target duration, measured against the average.
2. The billing mode, daily or fixed fee, and the number of days.
3. The role the interim manager takes on (CEO, deputy CEO, COO, CDO or CFO) and the limits of their decision-making authority.
4. The tracking indicators, the documentation handed over and the exit date.

A scoping page written before the start answers all four points.

After the assignment: few hires, many first-timers

Slightly under 10% of interim management assignments end with the client hiring the manager (Source: France Transition, 2026). The federation reads this as a new trend of talent retention. In other cases, the organization runs without the interim manager: at izybiz, the manager documents, trains, structures, then leaves.

About a third of clients and managers discover interim management each year, says the federation. It calls the share of “first-time users” stable. A first assignment is common.

Limits of the federation’s figures

The figures come from the 34 member firms of France Transition. Their business volume is about two thirds of the intermediated market, by value. These averages bring together assignments of very different durations, functions and sectors.

The sample scenario is built for illustration: it reports no real assignment.

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