Interim management is one of the fastest growing employment sectors in the UK and US, but it’s still widely misunderstood or even totally unknown. Today we’re taking a look at the industry to help explain it to those who haven’t encountered it before, clarify it for those who’ve received a confused impression of what it is and most importantly show why you need it and how it benefit your business. If you’re interested in Interim Management, London has plenty of options to get the expertise you need into your business.
Change and Disaster
Most people are familiar with interim management as a resource that’s deployed by companies in extreme situations: when there are big changes afoot or if the company is in trouble. The unexpected loss of an executive due to illness or scandal could see them replaced by Interim experts until the laborious and resource intensive process of hiring a full time replacement is complete.
If a company is in financial trouble, or an important project has exceeded its budget and deadlines, an interim manager might be brought to take sole control of the issue until it’s been resolved. This is how many people experience interim management. As an intervention when something has gone seriously wrong. And while this is one very useful way that interim managers can be deployed, it’s by no means the only one, so if you see that as the only use for them you’re cutting yourself off from a vital asset your business may need.
An Injection of Expertise
A more constructive way of looking at interim talent is as an injection of expertise for your business.
There will always be unforeseen problems that can affect a business, from a break in the supply chain, to a change in the global financial outlook, to a sudden need to expand in a new direction. The size of your business will dictate the extent to which things can be unforeseen: a small new start up has less people and they tend be younger so there simply isn’t the collective experience to account for everything that could happen.
When you need expertise an interim manager can be the right one to inject. Imagine a small start-up. They just have a small core team: experts in bringing the product to market, an embryonic sales operation and the bare minimum of customer service staff. There isn’t any need to employee a full time HR team for such a business. But they do need the processes and systems to track absence and holiday, and monitor performance that HR bring with it. An Interim HR specialist can spend a short time working with this start up, impart their experience and leave them with the systems necessary to keep things on track until they’re of a sufficient size to support a full HR team.
