Firms across the UK do not have the necessary management skills to get them through the recession, according to 32% of the senior HR interim excutives polled by interim management provider Alium Partners.

The research also shows that 22% say they did up to 10% more work in 2008 than in 2007, and 11% reported up to a 25% increase in workload.  

The main reasons for hiring interims were internal change management programmes (31% of interims), major new projects (15%) and redundancy plans (12%).  More than half of interims (61%) said that their most recent appointment was for a turnaround situation.

HR interims also say the five negative impacts of the recession on their clients are: the need to tighten expenses (26% of interims), recruitment freeze (17%), decline in sales (15%), declining staff morale (11%) and poor access to funding (10%).

Kate Mansfield, managing consultant of Alium Partners, says: “High level interim HR executives have a great deal to offer in the current environment.  Most senior management teams will not have experienced the impact of recessionary conditions and therefore require some temporary support in a range of HR areas, such as redundancy and headcount planning, managing salary and employee costs, and implementing campaigns to ensure the retention of star performers and wider employee engagement issues.

“The best interims are seasoned in these kinds of situations and have a wealth of experience in the strategic design and hands-on delivery of such project objectives within tight deadlines. Alium’s HR practice has already seen a rise in demand for just such project requirements.”