Diversity, in the interim

Diversity, in the interim

Interim roles, often viewed as short-term fixes, can serve as valuable entry points for underrepresented talent. Interim leadership solutions enhancing DEI efforts and disrupting traditional, repetitive hiring patterns.

Many skilled professionals, including those requiring specific accommodations, face challenges in securing and maintaining leadership roles due to rigid hiring structures, unconscious bias, or career interruptions such as caregiving responsibilities. Interim positions provide a practical way for these individuals to step into influential roles, demonstrate their capabilities, and build pathways into permanent leadership.

Short-term leadership appointments offer an opportunity to consider candidates outside the typical hiring mould—such as interim executives those with deep sector experience but non-traditional career progression, or specialists with lived experience in accessibility. By embracing a more inclusive approach, councils can expand their talent pipeline in a way that is both low-risk and high-impact while fostering diverse perspectives within their teams.

Interim hires also allow organisations to trial new ways of working, test different leadership styles, and assess whether certain proposed workplace structures, such as flexible working arrangements for still predominantly in-person industries, could indeed become permanent fixtures. Interim leadership roles offer a dynamic way to experiment with workplace transformation. This kind of structured experimentation can help shape long term policies that improve employment conditions for professionals of varied abilities and backgrounds.

Beyond filling immediate gaps, interim roles encourage a shift away from rigid qualification checklists, focusing instead on adaptability, lived experience, and broader skill sets. For HR teams, this approach offers a “work around” opportunity to tap into a wider talent pool, especially if the role traditionally demands skills in shortage.

Rather than treating interim positions as temporary fixes, our client organisations are starting to view them as a strategic vehicle to enhance representation across gender, ability, and background – building a stronger interim talent pipeline. While these roles may be short-term, the expanded thinking they inspire can lead to more lasting improvements in workplace diversity. It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s certainly an approach worth considering as part of a broader HR strategy.