The effect on your staff

Having already looked into how an Interim Manager specialises in a field (Blog 2 can be found here). We also looked at the fact that they are employed directly be you or your management team. Now we’re going to look at the differing impacts that employing an Interim Manager or Management Consultant can have on your team.

Firstly we need to rewind to the first blog in this series (you can read blog 1 here). In this blog I highlighted the different ways in which Interims are employed when compared to a Management Consultant.  The outcome being that an Interim is directly employed by you, whereas a Management Consultant is via an agency.

This difference has a fundamental impact on the way in which each works. For instance the Interim is only interested in results for you, your management team, your employees and your business.  A consultant however also has the interests  of his employer, the agency to consider.

So What?

So, the first thing to consider is that whichever option you choose you’ll be saying to your team that they don’t have the skills you need at this time.  Which is fine, not all businesses have the skills they require on tap and most appreciate that. But there is still a need to fill that gap at critical times.

The second consideration should be the way in which the different options work.  For instance when a consultant needs additional expertise or assistance this will most likely come from the agency they represent.  This means that you are constantly outsourcing skills. As a result no knowledge is gained internally and your skill gap will remain in the long term. That is unless you recruit to replace it.

By contrast an Interim doesn’t have the support of an agency nor the tie to create additional income for them. Therefore they will work with your workforce in order to successfully complete their tasks.  Automatically you have a significant difference and the admission that your business is short on skills is recognised. An Interim Manager will therefore be trying to coach and transfer skills over ready for the conclusion of the assignment. As a result this will create excellent value and a great outcome for your business.

This means that whilst an employee may be ‘put out’ by you recruiting an Interim, they will over time come to not only appreciate the reasons why by also buy in to the changes that are being implemented.

The Long Term Difference

The difference in the long term is that an Interim Manager should leave your business well equipped to continue the changes and follow the course they have plotted for you.  There may be a need for smaller assignments but overall you will be in a good place.

By comparison a Consultant will leave your business with the changes they have made and half an eye on coming back in 6 months for another assignment, meaning when they leave they take all of the skills with them.

In Conclusion

In conclusion by using an Interim Manager you will be obtaining a much more personalised solution and service.  One which offers the ability not only to complete the tasks or project at hand, but also to increase knowledge within your business.  The result being longer lasting results and an ability to adapt to changes quickly in the future.

You can read the final blog in this series here