Servitalent emerged about a decade ago to provide temporary management services, and since then has worked hard to promote and spread this activity among Spanish companies.
As a company, we believe that temporary management, through the Interim Management service, is a key strategic lever for providing the appropriate management experience to the cyclical needs of companies.
One of the tools used by Servitalent to achieve this goal has been the State of Interim Management in Spain Report, which has become a reference point in the industry. The results of this study are included in the fourth edition of our Interim Management Hiring Guide.
Changes involve challenges and generate new needs and opportunities, and this is almost always inherent in an Interim Management mission, hence the market has been growing exponentially in recent years. The year 2022 has been no exception and we have seen how different factors have emerged that have brought uncertainties and clouds to certain sectors and have generated opportunities in others. This has forced companies to fend for themselves in facing those that have affected them, whether positive or negative, sometimes to survive, others to defend their position and others to continue growing or facing a future with greater guarantees of viability. What we have seen is that what was worth yesterday may not be enough today, and sometimes advancing and improving is an obligation in itself.
To do all this, we must be prepared and, above all, do it by finding the most flexible way with the greatest chances of success, because mistakes are increasingly costly. Having the ability to solve these challenges internally with the talent that companies have is becoming increasingly difficult due to the variety and speed at which these external factors arrive, and even the difficulty of predicting them. Therefore, being able to access the appropriate external talent, at the right time, for the necessary time, and with high speed of analysis, diagnosis, and implementation, becomes an increasingly strategic tool. This is where Interim Management provides its true value and competitive advantage.
Based on all of this, in the data from our study, we have seen that the most common types of missions during the past year 2022 have been the management of an organizational and/or strategic change (34%), which has increased compared to 2021 which had been 31%; the professionalization of the company's management and/or transition process in the family business (20%), which has a significantly high growth rate since the previous year was 12% and it fits well with the typology of companies that we have in Spain, mostly SMEs, which need to undertake these processes to face these new challenges; the development of new businesses or new markets (launches, diversification, internationalization, etc.) (12%), which remains in line with 2021 (11%); the restructuring of the business and/or processes (12%), which decreases compared to the previous year (14%); the temporary replacement of a management position (7%), which also decreases slightly compared to 2021 (8%); the management of a change linked to an M&A operation (5%), which increases compared to 2021 (3%), since it has been a year where this type of operation has increased and interim management is a very suitable tool for managing change; the management of a digital transformation process (5%), quite in line with 2021 (6%); and the launching of a department or of a part-time coverage of it (4%), which has decreased significantly compared to the previous year, which had accounted for 13%.
Regarding the size of companies that have hired these types of services, we can see that 41% have been small companies (>50 employees), increasing compared to 39% in 2021, 34% correspond to medium-sized companies (50-250 employees), which represents a decrease compared to the previous year when it had been 39%, and the remaining 25% to large companies (>250 employees), which implies a growth from 22% in 2021. As we can see, 75% of the companies using this type of service are SMEs, which make up the majority of the business fabric we have in Spain, although the growth of their use by large companies is something to watch to see if it consolidates this year or not.
Finally, regarding the work format, we see how the hybrid form of work is consolidated and even slightly increased compared to the previous year, as it represents 61% whereas in 2021 it was 58%; the in-person format stands at 30%, with a slight decrease from the previous year's figure of 32%, and the remote format is 9%, which also implies a slight decrease from 10% in 2021. These figures tell us that the hybrid format is here to stay, as companies are more accustomed to combining presence and telework, and it allows both companies and interims to access missions in other geographic areas more easily, flexibly, and even at lower costs by avoiding higher travel and lodging expenses.