

Manpower: World Leader Or Leadership Embarrassment? - salemh
http://staffingtalk.com/manpower-world-leader-leadership-embarrassment/

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salemh
Poignant comment: _As an industry executive with quite a bit of tenure I could
certainly throw some additonal wood on this Manpower fire, however to be
brutally honest, many of the issues raised within this string are common
across many global staffing organizations. If the discussion is about trying
to optimize on the model that built a 22 billion dollar company, then folks
are wasting their time here, unless venting helps relieve some pent up angst.
Unfortunately the real issue is the traditional branch based staffing model as
practiced by the majors has probably reached the end of its lifecycle. Due to
their market leadership positions, the corporate towers of companies like
Manpower feel immune to the realities of the marketplace, an all to common
arrogance that historically ends badly. They are big, bad, and think they have
the power to manage the status quo into eternity, clinging to a “push”
orientation which is breaking down in general. This is a fallacy any field
person can recognize because they live market reality every day at street
level. This business is commoditized. When you are big, profit is made and
grown by volume, and operational efficiency (aka cost containment) first and
foremost. Even the efforts to go up market in the skilled professions have
been commodiitized, the only exception being where the laws of supply and
demand heavily favor the supplier. In todays world profit is achieved at the
cost of valuable high touch interaction with candidates and capital investment
in the core business, ultimately sacrificing quality and driving employee
dissatisfaction. This is an industry which measures success almost exclusively
on the basis of size (volume or hours, which are becoming increasingly empty
from a profit perspective). Besides being primitive, it is out of step with
market reality which is telling all of us that for human capital its not size,
but substance which matters today, for the customer, the candidate, and the
delivery mode itself.

The entire way traditional staffing services are delivered needs to be re-
invented and, given the stressers in the marketplace for talent, that re-
engineered model probably has a substantial workforce skills development
component associated with it. I expect this industry, which has experienced a
measured amount of change relative to others, is headed for a period of
susbstantial change soon, and when it happens, it will be fast._

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bozo31415
isn't every business model under attack ?

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salemh
Of course? The article, while focusing its attack Manpower is more an
indication of systemic problems of the large-scale staffing firms. Race to the
bottom, wage squeezing, etc.

