It is true that interim management is an activity still not very well known and developed in Spain, perhaps because the labor market is very rigid, with a small market and without much tradition. But in recent years it has grown strongly and has begun to take its place as circumstances are changing more and more and faster, so that other types of more flexible relationships, among which is the interim management, are entering with force.
- What is an interim manager and what does he/she do?
In this case, interim management, as its definition indicates, consists of the full-time or part-time incorporation, through a service contract, of professionals with extensive managerial experience to carry out a specific mission within the company with previously defined objectives to be achieved within a specific time frame.
- Positions most in demand in Interim Management
In this type of environment is when our companies need more if possible, mainly, a boss who sets the course, directs, motivates and involves the team, people who refine and grease the operational machinery to improve the functioning of our companies; who optimize financial resources to get the highest profitability and give clarity and confidence in the business to external agents; to look for new market niches, develop business and diversify the portfolio of products and/or services; to advise companies on the most appropriate ways to continue growing or, many times, surviving, or to improve each of the areas of the companies. All this has led to the fact that the most in-demand interim management positions today are those of General Management, Financial Management, Operations Management, Sales and Development Management and Advisor.
- Current situation of Interim Management in Spain
"We live in times of uncertainty........" How many times have we heard this phrase in the last two years when Covid arrived and turned our so-called "normality" upside down, at least until then. But time goes by and new factors and circumstances are appearing that affect both the economic situation and our daily life, so it seems that we are not going to recover that so-called normality. Many of them, moreover, as happened with Covid, were not foreseen, such as inflation, the crisis in raw materials, the rise in oil prices, or, in recent months, the war in Ukraine, or are linked in one way or another to political decisions or negotiations, such as energy prices, the rise in interest rates, etc. All this forms a cocktail that causes companies to focus their decision making more on the short term in order to adapt to the changing circumstances and, in many cases, to be able to simply survive.
On the other hand, to help companies in this adaptation, public initiatives have been launched at European level that are also trying to mobilize private funds for strategic projects and tractors, but it seems that they are not yet reaching SMEs, which make up the vast majority of our business fabric, and should promote a transformative process. In this environment, interim management activity will emerge and, in fact, it is undoubtedly emerging strengthened. Changing environments require tailor-made and temporary solutions, and these are some of the greatest values that interim management brings.
- Future of Interim Management
The flexibility, experience, executive management skills, speed in decision making, among others, that interim managers bring, are more necessary than ever for companies to face all these constant challenges. In Servitalent we are very optimistic about the evolution of the market in the next 12 months. The year 2020 was complicated by the situation experienced with Covid, but the ground was further fertilized to promote this type of flexible relationships, with very high added value, quick impact on the business and adapted to the specific and temporary needs of companies. This has been seen in the growth that has taken place in the market throughout the past year 2021, which has undoubtedly continued to be an atypical year and VUCA environment, and what we are seeing in 2022. It is true that there are external factors that are again generating uncertainty, as mentioned above, but we believe that in the medium term this will further strengthen this activity which, in a way, needs to continue to evolve with the cultural change, both in companies and in professionals, which has already been occurring in recent years with the preponderance of labor relations.
Due to the continuous changes in the circumstances of the environment that we have mentioned and that are here to stay, companies are looking for quick and more intense solutions to solve their needs or the new challenges they have to assume, for which interim management is becoming more and more, if possible, the most appropriate tool for its contribution of value, adaptation, flexibility and speed of implementation.