Rise in the use of interim managers

The latest results from the IMA (Interim Management Association) Ipsos MORI market audit (compiled by all IMA members) for Q2 of 2011 has found the number of Interims engaged by businesses has increased marginally by 2% from Q1 2011. However, the number of executives actually engaged on assignment has decreased by 12% from Q1 as has the number of new assignments started in the quarter but only by 3%.

This is not so surprising as the month of April was challenging given the amount of people taking advantage of the extended holidays.   The length of assignment has remained much the same as Q1 and remains 28% higher than Q1 and Q2 of 2010.  The number of female executive interims currently on assignment has increased 2% from Q1.

The private sector remains active with 61% of completed assignments in Q2 2011 which is up from 57% in Q1.  The increase in the private sector is encouraging as figures have now returned back to those seen in Q3 2008 when the recession took effect and indicates the slight decrease in numbers is due to the decline in public sector assignments.  

Interestingly, the highest number of assignments is Programme / Project management but this could cover a multitude of sins.  ‘Gap management’ also features quite highly and I suspect some ambiguous reasons given for the need of the executive interim in the first place and feel sure the underlying need was likely to be more business critical.

It will be interesting to see how these trends develop but from our prospective, we remain busy helping clients with Change programmes, Restructuring, Turnaround, Business improvement and Finance related assignments.

By Steven Wynne