Interim Contracts reach Record High–The Grapevine

The Grapevine Magazine has a report on interesting findings from Axon Resourcing; that interim contracts are growing in the market-place.

Axon’s co-founder Andy Edwards ascribes this to a “continued lack of confidence from business”.  However, I wonder if it is possible that we are seeing a move towards using expertise on demand in order to maintain business agility?

There is plenty of evidence that organisations are using temporary work and outsourcing at scale for lower-skill jobs in order to save costs and build flexibility. Could it be that the same thinking is being extended to higher-skilled knowledge workers, too? The IIM’s Interim Management Surveythis summer found that 74 per cent of interim managers were hired for their specialist skills.

Either way, it’s great news for interim managers but a strategic shift towards business agility would also be great news for a flexible economy.

(Technical note: I intended to post this as a comment on the grapevine site but was thwarted when my activation mail arrived as a mess of HTML ).    Fixed.