A current business trend involves hiring interim managers in lieu of permanent staff members. Read on to learn eight reasons why your company will benefit from bringing interim managers on board.
1. Money Matters
Interim managers offer many of the same advantages as full-time managers, but are far more cost effective. From a less intensive recruitment process to a simple daily rate, interim candidates are less costly than their permanent peers. By hiring an interim manager, you also save on health care, vacation days, and paid leave. And when it’s time to part ways upon conclusion of the contract, there’s no need to pay severance.
2. Keep Your Head Count Low
Interim managers offer a breadth and depth of expertise without adding to your head count. Hiring multiple interim managers across several departments adds up to even greater savings with no sacrifice of quality.
3. Less Baggage
But you don’t just keep full-time employees at a minimum when you bring in an interim manager. You also minimize baggage. Most permanent employees can’t help but be influenced office politics and/or concerns about their own future with the company. Because these things are explicitly not of concern to interim employees, they are able to focus their efforts most directly on the task at hand.
4. A Fresh Perspective
By removing pre-existing organizational biases from the situation, you gain the advantage of a manager with a new perspective. This can help facilitate or accelerate the HR workflow. Furthermore, interim managers aren’t limited to one viewpoint; by nature, they offer a different viewpoint.
5. Focus on Fit…Not on Perfection
Your goal is to find a person who can fulfill the needs of your organization for a finite period of time. This requires a different set of qualifications than hiring for a full-time position. When it comes time to make a hire, you don’t need to be bogged down by finding the “perfect” person. Your only question is, “Can this candidate meet our needs in this moment?” If the answer is, “Yes,” your work is done.
6. Temporary Trumps Bad
When you need a man (or woman!) on the ground and don’t have time to delay, an interim manager offers a preferable alternative to a rushed permanent hire in many cases. After all, an interim position is designed to be impermanent so a poor choice is far from catastrophic. Hiring a “bad” full-time employee, however, will cost you — both in terms of time and money.
Employees come and go; interim managers go without severance.
7. Get Results
Not only can you quickly fill a position with interim managers, but they can immediately begin producing results. As interim managers may be familiar with many types of human resources offices, cultures and processes, they’re far more likely to hit the ground running than full-time candidates with narrow or limited experience.
8. Short-term Stay, Long-term Impact
But just because an employee’s tenure at your company is limited, doesn’t mean his/her potential impact is. In fact, interim managers offer a fresh viewpoint with lasting potential. Not only do they have the capability to affect organizational change through their contributions, but they also leave a lasting legacy in terms of decisions made on the job.
In short, interim managers offer your business essential talent where and when you need it. And while money may be the first reason that comes to mind, the benefits are far from merely financial.
