Change & Transformation
Organisations remain committed to change and transformation projects that drive successful evolution, prioritising those based on impact and results. Graham Pile, director at Investigo, highlights the trends for the year ahead.
Here are the key areas leaders need to prepare for in 2024:
Improving outlook for 2024 – how smaller focused projects are driving transformations.
Change management – will growth in this sector continue?
Investing in talent – why decisiveness is key to securing the best talent.
Following a general lack of prior investment in new tech and large programmes of transformation, many clients are still moving forward with transformation roadmaps, using internal and existing resources where possible. Even though this approach may push back timelines, it seems to be something they are comfortable with.
The last year has seen conservative hiring of permanent roles into transformation agendas. Large corporates seem more comfortable reporting to shareholders on sustained revenue or profits and cost-cutting rather than investing in full-time headcount, with many hiring freezes across BAU and change.
On the interim side, there’s been less investment in 3-5 year strategies or ‘Big Bang’ transformations, with more focus on smaller, quicker wins and immediate ROI projects. Reduced senior interim hiring in change and transformation has meant less forward-thinking. It’s been more about getting in-flight programmes finished quickly. Big 4 clients are looking at their spend and how to bring in more cost-effective resources in the form of boutique consulting and interim hires.
Salaries plateaued during 2023. 2022 was clearly a candidate-driven market, with competition rife and salaries inflated. Whilst salaries have not come down, and are arguably still high, counter offers and salary negotiations are less frequent.
Change management continues to be a booming market, both for internal centre of excellence (CoE) and programme-aligned change through interim resources. We feel this is to ensure effective adoption and people engagement to speed up ROI.
Clients are investing in effective portfolio management to ensure prioritisation and benefit realisation through in-flight transformation programmes. Competition for the larger transformation roles, both perm and contract, remains high. Therefore, we would typically see rates and salaries drop – although this doesn’t seem to have taken effect just yet.
Finance transformation is busy, and organisations are investing in programmes of work which improve efficiency and lower spend through consolidated processes and new target operating models.
When looking to secure the best talent, decisiveness is the key factor. Clients who are taking a long time to make decisions are not attracting the best talent. Multiple decision-makers are slowing down processes, resulting in candidates disengaging.
We are hearing the freezes on permanent hiring are thawing from Q2 onwards. Clients are also learning that delaying hiring decisions is pushing back timelines, so are beginning to move faster. We are not expecting a bounce back to 2022 levels of hiring; we are more expecting a normalised market this year.
H1 looks to be a period of investment in interim hiring following a stabilising 2023. Clients are considering more outcome-based models to keep control of programmes and outputs, which our sister company, Definia, can help support. We expect to see more consultancy-based engagements throughout the year.
Organisations continue to invest in transformation programmes, with a focus on cost-effective boutique solutions and smaller ROI projects. Permanent hiring is expected to improve in 2024 with the return to calmer market conditions. Demand for talent is still strong, with competition to secure the best talent likely to remain high in 2024.
