Interims are now a permanent City feature
15th July 2011
By Kerryn Hooper, Interim HR
Interims are part of the fabric of HR in financial services but good preparation is the key to success, says Kerryn Hooper*
Despite uncertainty over UK economic recovery, optimism in the financial services sector is at its highest level for more than a year: banking aside, business volumes everywhere else are up for the third quarter in a row and profitability is rising. This, at least, is the headline conclusion of the latest CBI/PwC financial services quarterly survey. But by the same token, the survey results also portray a sector still preoccupied by the threats and opportunities of regulation. Whether it’s ring-fencing in banking, Solvency II in insurance, or the new Pension rules coming into force next year, these and other regulations all point to one thing: change. In turn, that means upheaval, uncertainty and, inevitably, winners and losers.
It’s therefore no surprise that demand for skilled navigators of change – HR managers equipped with the ‘hard’ skills of organisational design and the ‘soft’ skills of implementation – remains strong following the wholesale cost-cutting period of the recession. Many of these people have eschewed permanent employment for new careers as interim executives, moving from one change project to another; increasingly those focussed on the multitude of new regulatory and compliance rules. Someone who started life as an interim well before the recession is Lisa Layden. An HR director at Deutsche Bank until 2002, Lisa has spent most of the last nine years working in the City on interim assignments for the likes of Merrill Lynch, Kleinwort Benson, Rothschild and other well-known names in financial services.
“Until a few years ago my interim assignments were mostly caretaker roles carrying out typical senior HR business partner-type work. That’s now changed and all of my last few assignments have been special projects to support business growth, she says.
“My sense is that most in-house HR professionals are already fully committed so when their employer wants to set up a new office overseas or integrate a merged or acquired business, they are comfortable calling on interim project support. These assignments are typically fast-paced and high-profile so they value an interim’s ability to slot in, quickly take control and deliver the required result with minimum fuss.”
Layden has noticed two other significant changes in the last three years. The first is a greater focus on quantifying value and return-on-investment for the projects she’s been involved in. The other is that clients no longer perceive interims as people just filling time between permanent jobs.
“There’s greater public scrutiny on financial services today. This and the recession have driven many companies to become better at correlating value against costs. HR managers, through experience, have learned what heavy-hitting career interims can do for them and what kind of people we are,” she explains.
There are times, however, when she feels companies could get more from the arrival of an interim by being better prepared, starting with the most basic tools for the job.
“Even obvious things can sometimes be forgotten, like having a Blackberry and network access ready to go from the first hour of the assignment; otherwise the client is wasting time and money. The whole point of hiring an interim with specific skills is that you’re calling on an expert with lots of varied experience. So it’s a missed opportunity if you don’t encourage ideas and thoughts to tap and retain that expert knowledge – this is the learning legacy.”
There are other factors that characterise a great interim assignment, in our experience. The starting point is having a clear and comprehensive brief. Common sense perhaps, but we still see too many that aren’t. It can be helpful to use the SMART acronym. A good brief should be: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Picking up Lisa’s point about legacy, by being too proscriptive in their candidate brief, clients can miss out on great ideas from other sectors. For that reason, we often encourage clients to use interims with wide-ranging experience from multi-sector backgrounds. Once an assignment begins what else should you do? We have compiled a short list of our best tips for ensuring success.
- Help the interim navigate your organisation’s formal and informal networks
- Avoid project ‘scope creep’ (don’t say: “could you just also do this?”)
- Think about the exit strategy early to transfer knowledge and secure a legacy
- When filling a vacancy previously held by an interim, consider deferring some changes until after the full-time recruit arrives allowing them to stamp their own mark
- Communicate early and explicitly with all relevant stakeholders
- Ensure the interim’s internal sponsor ‘walks the talk’
* Kerryn Hooper is a specialist in placing HR interim managers and is based at the City office of Archer Mathieson
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Kerry having embarked upon my first Change Assignment as an interim I was encouraged by the experiences of Lisa.
Regards
Adele