As a result 22% reported a 10% increase in their workload last year while 11% saw a 25% increase.
Interim management provider Alium Partners surveyed 1,000 senior interim managers and found the main reasons for organisations taking on HR interims were change management programmes (31%), major new projects (15%) and redundancy plans (12%).
HR interims think the biggest challenge posed by the recession is the need for organisations to tighten expenses (26%), but 10% think the downturn has provided their clients with strategic opportunities such as strategic transformation (26%), cost base reductions (25%), service expansion (15%) and strategic hires (11%).
Kate Mansfield, managing consultant of Alium Partners, said: "Most senior management teams will not have experienced the impact of recessionary conditions and therefore require some temporary support in a range of HR areas, such as redundancy and headcount planning, managing salary and employee costs, implementing campaigns to ensure the retention of star performers and wider employee engagement issues.
The best interims are seasoned in these kinds of situations and have a wealth of experience in the strategic design and hands-on delivery of such project objectives within tight deadlines."
Interim HRs think business lacks management skills to get through recession
Just under a third of interim HR managers (32%) reckon the last organisation they worked for did not have the management skills necessary to get them through recession.
