By Alistair Cook
Executive Director, HR Interims and Deputy Managing Director, Digby Morgan

In line with the ever increasing reputation, effectiveness and commercial influence that HR has on the business we have seen rapid growth in the use of interim HR professionals across the UK. Other business functions such as finance and IT have been utilising short and long term interim staff for years. Indeed HR departments have often been instrumental in identifying these needs within a function and hiring the interim staff on their behalf. However, appointing interims within their own function or for an HR driven project is a relatively recent development. Where organisations have identified a need in areas such as change management, transition, OD, mergers and acquisitions or a locum HR Director they have often gone to the leading management consultancy firms, non-specialist interim providers or simply not known who to call. As a result companies have often been presented with rigid and costly solutions or needing to make significant compromises in technical HR knowledge and expertise which they believe to be essential for the assignment.

This is where a specialist HR interim business can really add value. We have a massive network of HR professionals that we can tap into at very short notice to provide the calibre and skill sets that our clients require. It is for these reasons that HR Interims has grown at a rate of 180% over the past two years. The continued demand for the successful placement of interim HR professionals within the market is a trend that is destined to continue. Our case studies show how Colt Telecommunications and Skandia utilised the flexible resourcing that our interims can offer during a period of significant change for their organisations.
[Click to view case study]

As the HR interim market matures, we are beginning to see an increasing number of HR professionals who have worked exclusively on interim assignments for five years or more. Whilst this has long been the case within the finance and IT markets this is a relatively new phenomenon within the HR arena. Most interims in the HR market choose this path in order to exert greater control over their work-life balance or because they want to broaden their experience in different companies/industries prior to returning to the permanent job market. Whatever the initial motivations that an interim has, it continues to be a ‘win-win’ option as around a third of all interims are offered a permanent role within the client organisation.

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