Government departments and local councils are too quick to hire external interim managers, making it more difficult to find cheaper permanent staff, the Financieele Dagblad reported on Wednesday.

Market research involving 320 freelance managers by recruitment agency Schaekel & Partners showed that external managers are still much in demand and costs for their services are rising steadily.

Nine in 10 managers worked for a government or local council in a temporary capacity in the last two months and almost three in five said they expect demand to increase next year.

‘[The departments] have become a prisoner of their own system, agency partner Piet Hein de Sonnaville told the paper. ‘By immediately hiring external temporary managers it becomes more attractive to people to go freelance.’

Government departments and local councils should not spend more than 10% of their personnel budgets on temporary managers but far exceed this. Figures from last year’s financial reports shows that government departments spent 13.4% of their human resources budget on external staff while local councils spent 16.5%.

Laziness, and a lack of creativity and decisiveness, are the main causes of the rise in temporary managers. ‘I know of an interview which floundered over a €200 a month pay difference. The job was then given to an interim manager at €1,000 a day,’ De Sonnaville told the paper.