Interim management contractors are more likely to find themselves hired to implement change management and transformation programmes by clients “bored with a no-growth economy, keen to move ahead and with funds on hand”.
That’s according to a new survey of 12,000 UK-based interims by interim recruiter Russam GMS, which also highlights that, “50% of all interim managers were tasked with supplying skills that were absent in their client’s business – needed now but not all the time.”
Russam GMS chairman Charles Russam notes: “Change management has emerged as a new job discipline in interim management. Increasingly, CEOs are hiring interim change management experts to help them handle their toughest business challenges and to move their business to the next level.”
In additional to technical and business skills, contractors wishing to succeed in the interim sector need “energy, passion and leadership skills”, alongside well developed mentoring and coaching capabilities, as the research identified that 22% of all assignment time is spent on those activities.
The professional discipline league table is led by interim management contractors with general management (20%), finance (17%) and change and transformation (17%) backgrounds. IT interims account for 6% of those surveyed, and production/engineering interims account for only 3%.
However, engineering and manufacturing clients are the largest consumer of interim management contractors, hiring 12% of all respondents. Banking and finance is the next largest sector at 10%, closely followed by charities and not-for-profits hiring 9%.
Although IT interims only account for 6% of all those surveyed, contractors with IT skills command the second highest day rates of £669, after interim management contractors with change and transformation skills who earn an average of £718 a day.
“Interims are proving popular because they bring specialist expertise that tends not to exist within a company,” concludes Russam. “They are adept at quickly identifying and sorting out problems and can be brought in on a short-term basis, so they are an affordable option for many businesses.”