Interims are increasingly seen as a strategic business tool that can be brought in to manage a project or fill a particular skills gap, explains Bill Penney of Ashton Penney, a specialist provider of interims. We find them being used as change agents, project managers, and turnaround and business renewal specialists. Not surprisingly, they have become especially useful in HR roles, especially after mergers, takeovers and redundancies. A good interim is also able to restructure a business to prevent further job cuts.
Its strange, therefore, that many organisations remain unaware of interims as an option for senior roles. According to a joint BIE Interim Executive Management/ MORI survey, over 60% of board directors have not used an interim at or near board level.
Top interims should not be confused with contract workers, temps or consultants (see overleaf). And the interim way of working is not for the faint-hearted. Fewer than half are on assignments at any one time, often through choice.
Research from interim provider Russam GMS reveals blue-chips to be relatively big users: 62% are currently on assignment in these organisations although there are plenty that still havent recruited on this basis. Sectorally, engineering and manufacturing are the biggest users at 18% of assignments. Financial services interims have a 9% market share, closely followed by IT and telecoms.
Chiumento Consulting Groups research on the kind of roles interims are employed for shows that 74% are on short-term projects requiring specialist knowledge up from 59% in 2002. The most common HR issue they are hired for is to implement restructuring and change programmes up sharply in 2003. Training-needs analysis, design, delivery and evaluation stand at 13% up from 5%, employee coaching and mentoring is at 11% while 8% are employed to handle the HR implications of an M&A.
Project managers
According to Kate Mansfield, interim consultant at Courtenay HR: HR directors are now much more commonly recruiting interims into their teams to provide additional expertise on specific projects. This may, for example, involve leading a project on a merger or acquisition, downsizing or restructuring.
The most common situation, she explains, is for interims with change-management experience to work in HR as project managers on a pay and benefits-type assignment, the introduction of an HR information system or setting up shared services.
Sue Simons, director of personnel at car rental firm Avis Europe, has recently recruited an HR interim in a classic project-based role where a specific skillset was required. We are working with an interim who is a key part of a project team involved in the implementation of a new ERP system and a new way of working, together with instituting changes in roles and responsibilities for 160 Avis Europe IT personnel, she explains.
Change agents
In an effort to anticipate the implications of the forthcoming EU works council legislation due to take effect in 2005, Starbucks, the coffee giant, employed an HR interim in 2003 as a vital organisational change agent. The new legislation means that UK businesses employing
more than 150 staff will have to establish a consultative forum of elected representatives from across the employee spectrum.
Starbucks decided to use the pending changes to bolster employee input into its working practices. I was recruited by Starbucks to work on a number of different projects to
do with reward and review strategies, explains interim Louise Marron. I was also responsible for the
implementation of the works council legislation and the training, development and coaching of employees
on this issue, and setting up a framework.
Starbucks saw the EU changes as an opportunity to improve its employee communications strategy, she adds. Elected representatives will meet on a regional and national basis to air issues concerning working terms and conditions. It is important that staff feel confident about their ability to communicate with people higher up the company.
Marron worked closely with a permanent colleague in the HR team to ensure that the right skills were imparted to take the project forward on her departure. I have been an interim for seven years and have never been tempted to take a permanent role, she says. I enjoy shaping something and then moving on.
Crisis management
When Siemens Energy Services was awarded a British Gas contract worth 50 million to read meters across the south of England, a potential crisis loomed. HR staff were already working flat-out, so a decision was made to bring in an interim manager principally for the emergency recruitment of some 220 new staff.
I began my job within a week of the contract being awarded, explains Melanie Adams. Not only did we need more than 200 people in place by 5 January when we were contracted to begin work across postcodes from Cambridge to Brighton but they all needed to be fully trained and ready to go by then.
A similarly urgent task was undertaken by Ian Donald on behalf of engineering giant WS Atkins although this time the mission was to recruit highly skilled chemical
engineers to determine the viability of extending the life of existing oil platforms. To drill new ones unnecessarily could have incurred costs into hundreds of millions of pounds.
I had worked in the AMEC Group, a process engineering company that builds the platforms, and so had a good insight into the market, says Donald, who reported directly to the managing director of the oil and
gas division. I travelled to Glasgow, Aberdeen and London to find this very specialist group of people who could accurately judge if there was further life in the oil and gas reservoirs.
Business accelerators
Interims can be of benefit when businesses are getting off the ground or can give a swift boost to a developing company, says Bill Penney. One such business accelerator is Jackie Hammond, who recently completed an assignment for the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH). Set up in January 2003, CPPIH is an independent,
non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department of Health. Its remit is to ensure that the public is involved in decisions about health services.
The job was to help with what was effectively a start-up involving change management and strategic organisational development and implementation, as CPPIH replaced the old community health councils, explains Hammond. We had to create a vision for what the body would become as and when permanent staff were finally in place. We established procedures and determined the required funding levels from government.
The CPPIH comprises nine regional centres and an HQ. It also supports patient forums for each NHS trust. Hammond had to look at staffing plans across the whole organisation, from appraisal systems, payroll services and occupational health schemes, to recruitment of HR developmental people and knowledge managers, and the outsourcing of aspects of HR. The IT development aspect of it was all about creating a knowledge management system so information can be shared nationally, she says. The team worked towards targets such as having four key people in each centre and establishing a blueprint for how to deal with staff consultation by April 2004.
Source of permanent staff
Although interims claim to be determined never to return to full-time, permanent roles, some do end up on the payroll. Many businesses are seeing interim management as a more fail-safe way of finding the best permanent staff, notes Charles Russam, founder of Russam GMS. Its 2003 survey found that 26% of interims said they would never take a permanent position, while 56% stated they would jump at the chance if the right offer came along. Nearly half 48% claimed to be happiest switching from interim to permanent roles as and when it suited them. Many
simply saw a permanent job as an extended assignment.
When interims are tempted to become permanent staff members they rarely lose their independent mind-set which, Russam believes, is of benefit to both parties. Three to four years on, most interims find themselves back in the interim market. This is now becoming an established cycle.
