Executives on short-term contracts for crisis-hit businesses indicate a new trend, says Alison Maitland
The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, due to reopen in December after a £200m refurbishment, recently needed urgent help with its new box office equipment.
The equipment had not been fully tested and staff who knew about it had left or been made redundant at the start of the redevelopment. Enter, stage left, Roger Pierpoint, an opera-goer with 25 years' experience in running customer services in the IT sector.
Mr Pierpoint is a classic interim manager, part of a new breed of experienced, independent executives hired on short-term contracts to help businesses through crisis or upheaval or to fill a gap in expertise.
After three weeks in the job, Mr Pierpoint concluded the computer system needed further development. His initial four-week contract was extended to nearly six months. He proposed a new telephone system to handle multiple requests from clients, such as booking tickets and a meal, and became heavily involved in recruiting a customer services team.
'Roger has excellent project management ability, his approach was logical and clear and we now have the confidence that it will all work,' says Mike Morris, human resources consultant to the opera house.
The case of Mr Pierpoint is cited by PA Consulting, which supplied him for the Covent Garden post. Companies that use interim managers usually like the results, but the concept has yet to catch on in many businesses, according to a survey to be published this week by the consulting group.
'There is a dichotomy to be addressed between sophisticated purchasers (of interim managers) and the uninitiated,' says Stuart Cain at PA's interim management practice. 'It's a communications challenge for us.'
Thirty per cent of companies have not even heard of interim managers despite considerable publicity during the past year, according to the survey conducted by NOP Business. It questioned personnel directors and senior managers in 350 randomly selected UK companies employing more than 200 people. Those unaware of the concept were dropped from subsequent questions.
Only 29 per cent of the rest have used interim executives, the majority within the past year. Fifteen per cent plan to hire an interim manager in the next year, and 30 per cent say they may do so. Most respondents expect their role to grow steadily during the next five years.
They are most likely to be found in sectors prone to change, rapid growth or mergers such as banking and finance, utilities, telecommunications and IT.
Companies see them fulfilling two broadly different roles - holding the fort while a permanent executive is recruited, or providing leadership during a period of change. Akzo Nobel, the Dutch chemicals and pharmaceuticals group, used an interim chief engineer to oversee big changes in staff roles and management systems during a Pounds 50m investment in a coatings manufacturing plant in Silvertown, east London.
'To work on the change-management programme required someone with a high level of experience,' says Dave Parr, general manager of operations. 'But once that was completed and the role became less demanding, we would need a less senior person with long-term potential.'
Interim managers are often seen as highly paid hatchet men and women, a role that short-term chief executives have played in the US. They can certainly be expensive: according to PA, the highest-earning 34 per cent in the UK charge between Pounds 500 and Pounds 1,500 a day.
Nearly half the companies using them report cost savings. Most estimate these savings at up to Pounds 50,000 over a year, but 14 per cent put them higher. More than half say the interim managers have passed on skills to other employees, which in some cases is an unexpected bonus.
Nor do interim managers necessarily shake up an organisation. Jackie Sheare was hired for six months by TCA Synergo, a company specialising in information systems for stockbrokers that was already undergoing rapid change.
'They had been through a lot of change, so funnily enough part of my role as an interim was to bring some organisational stability to the business,' she says.
In the survey, 85 per cent of companies using interim managers say they have been very or quite successful. Only 7 per cent report that the hiring of an interim manager was not a success, with a surprisingly high 8 per cent of 'don't knows'.
John Murray, head of PA's global interim management business, says companies can prevent disaster by setting clear objectives for the executive they hire. They should also measure their performance, communicate their role to the rest of the organisation and end the contract when they stop being useful.
'If you define the brief badly or don't set objectives, people will go probing around doing what they think is useful, which you may not want as an organisation,' he says.
Many interim managers are senior people who have left permanent work through redundancy or early retirement. The average age of those placed by PA in the past year is 49. They also tend to be over-qualified for the job and to relish change.
Mr Pierpoint, 53, opted for early retirement two years ago. 'You get to a certain age where you feel you've got a lot of experience but it's nice to go into fresh situations,' he says. 'An interim manager has no baggage, no axes to grind or relationship problems from the past . . . He can judge people and circumstances with an open mind.'
He says he made good friends in the job and will retain links with the opera house. 'But it's not hard to say goodbye if you've done a good job and you've got good people and plans in place for after you've gone.'
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