Adecco – Update

Adecco is the world’s largest provider of personnel services. Every day, Adecco brings more than 600,000 workers and about 100,000 companies together. The company operates more than 5,100 branches in about 60 different countries. Its services encompass the provision of temporary staff, personnel recruitment, outsourcing, onsite management and other HR solutions. Its most important markets are France (where it generates about a quarter of its revenues), the rest of Europe, North America (20% of revenues), Japan and emerging markets (10% of revenues). The company successfully integrated in the US Hechter. The key employment sectors in which it operates are industry (accounting for about half of all revenues), general office work and IT. Over the medium term, Adecco stands to benefit from the increasing emphasis companies are placing on keeping their employment costs flexible, according to economic conditions, and thus on employing more staff on short-term contracts.

Thanks to the firm’s comprehensive database, temporary staff are more likely to find interesting work at Adecco than they would from its smaller competitors. Adecco has a vast reservoir of employee contacts also enables it to meet a wide range of specific employer needs. Specialist recruitment, where higher margins apply, represents about one third of the global personnel services market. It is in this particular section Adecco has room for improvement and growth.  

Adecco’s business is highly dependent on economic cycles, thus exposed to considerable cyclical risk, and therefore subject to higher volatility. Based the improved economic conditions now prevailing in the euro-zone, the European labor market is set to recover. Hence the outlook for the company is good.