HR Tech Another Success: Part I

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

HR Tech was again a very worthwhile investment of my time. Here are some highlights of the new Outsourcing Track presentations I attended:

• Cisco Uses RPO to Help Hire Up to 15,000 a Year:Using a hybrid co-ownership model, the Randstad Sourceright recruitment team works alongside the Cisco recruitment team to provide services including sourcing, recruiting, and onboarding. Services provided are primarily in the Americas, but may expand into EMEA and possibly Asia where Randstad Sourceright has a presence. Using the hybrid model, Cisco has been able to cut its $120m talent acquisition spend in half.
  • Mark Hamberlin, VP HR Global Staffing, Cisco
  • Rebecca Callahan, President RPO, Randstad Sourceright
• Ericsson Outsources Global Payroll in Manila:Ericsson issued a RFI to 25 vendors, then created a short-list of 5, and ultimately selected Talent2. Managed payroll services provided by Talent2 for Ericsson in Southeast Asia and Oceania include 4,500 employees in 12 countries, which prior to outsourcing had 12 different payroll processes. Manila is the shared service center. Major benefits obtained by Ericsson thus far include: reduced risk management, minimized complexity of dealing with local tax laws, and ease of expanding into new countries.
  • Mark Howes, HR Director Asia Pacific, Ericsson
  • Mary Sue Rogers, Global Managing Director, HR Managed Services, Talent2
• Whirlpool Leverages RPO to Transform Talent Acquisition:Pre-RPO recruitment was decentralized and lacked consistency and methodology in its sourcing approach. Business partners were also spending a lot of time doing transactional work including screening and reviewing resumes. Kenexa’s RPO services include: sourcing, screening, administration, candidate management, creation of employment value proposition, and management of the candidate experience primarily in North America with some testing in Europe. KPI’s include: time to fill, quality of the candidate slate, diversity slate, and end-user satisfaction.
  • Lynanne Kunkel, VP of HR, Whirlpool North America
  • Rudy Karsan, CEO, Kenexa

Here are highlights from my RPO meetings:

• Pinstripe and Ochre House: Pinstripe has won 12 new RPO contracts YTD and its partner Ochre House continues to win new contracts in EMEA including North Africa and the Middle East as a result of its acquisitions of TAAHEED and Carmichael Fisher in early 2012.
• ManpowerGroup Solutions: New contract wins YTD include 40+ RPO deals globally in 20 countries. It has also expanded existing clients into new geographies including a U.S.-headquartered firm that expanded into China and Southeast Asia and a Spanish-headquartered firm that expanded throughout Europe and Latin America.
• Randstad Sourceright: Currently with ~100 RPO clients, it won 18 new contracts YTD. Four of its new wins are global deals as a result of the merger of Randstad and SFN Group, which was completed in September 2011. Its fastest growth has been in the mid-market.
• The RightThing, an ADP Company: Total RPO client count is at 80+. YTD wins include several enterprise and mid-market clients with ~50% as new clients and ~50% as existing ADP clients that added RPO services.
• WilsonHCG: Primarily serving large and mid-size clients, WilsonHCG also has small clients with <500 employees. The company has a 94% satisfaction rating with candidates and hiring managers across clients.

Stay tuned for my next blog where I will discuss additional meetings I had with Patersons, IBM, Hogan Assessments, SHL Assessments, Secova, ADP, Equifax Workforce Solutions, HireVue, and JobVite.

In the meantime, NelsonHall just published its fourth global RPO market analysis.

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ManpowerGroup Latin America Analyst Event

ManpowerGroup Solutions held its first analyst event outside of the U.S. in Mexico City to focus on the fast-growing Latin America market which includes Mexico and Central America (MeCA), and South America. I must first say the hospitality extended to us by both the Latin America and U.S. ManpowerGroup teams present was the warmest I could have imagined.

The agenda included:

• Introduction to ManpowerGroup MeCA
• Talentism is the new capitalism: ManpowerGroup insights from the World Economic Forum
• The economic landscape in Mexico and Latin America
• ManpowerGroup priorities, progress, and perspectives
• The RPO and MSP market in MeCA
• Visit to ManpowerGroup client and ManpowerGroup office (particularly helpful to understand how jobs are advertised in Mexico)
• Labor and workforce demographics in South America
• ManpowerGroup brand, messaging, and target markets
• The global RPO COE
• Analyst perspectives on topics including: client readiness for global talent planning, client satisfaction, and ManpowerGroup strategies

With such an informative agenda, I’d be writing a small book if I tried to cover all the content, so I’ll focus on the client visit to KidZania. KidZania is a global organization with franchises in Mexico. It is opening its third office there by June, which we were able to visit. KidZania is focused on creating a live learning experience for kids that allows them to role-play adult activities including working different jobs, spending money, and even learning how to drive a miniature car after acquiring a permit. The facility is Disney-like, but better because adults are not allowed inside. ManpowerGroup also has its first job agency within KidZania, so kids can assess their skills and search for jobs available on computers.

ManpowerGroup Solutions began providing RPO services to KidZania in 2010 after the client was searching for an agile vendor that could provide a flexible workforce solution with a focus on talent. The client stated the following three primary objectives of which ManpowerGroup has exceeded its expectations:

• Find the right candidates fast
• Reduce time / cost of recruitment, including quickly scaling up and down to meet hiring needs
• Create the right culture among kids, parents, and collaborators.

I’ll revisit the Latin America market in a future blog, but for now I will say that although Mexico had one of its biggest recessions in 2008 – 2009, it has made a quick recovery, and is expected to create ~1.2m jobs this year. Mexico is about more than just outsourcing for labor arbitrage; it is about outsourcing for job skills where more than 100,000 engineers and technicians graduate every year from science and technology programs. Just last month, for example, Volkswagen’s Audi luxury-car unit announced that it will open its first North American factory in Mexico.

ManpowerGroup has more than 2,000 clients in MeCA and is present in 10 countries in South America. RPO is provided to both Mexican headquartered clients and U.S. MNCs with hiring needs in Mexico.

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

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HRO Get Ready for the Human Age

ManpowerGroup reported its 3Q 2011 earnings last week, a bit more on that later. First, I want to highlight a “big idea” approach to talent management that the company has launched. Speaking at the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jeffery Joerres, ManpowerGroup Chairman and CEO, announced that we are on the cusp of “Entering the Human Age.” According to Joerres, in the Human Age, talent is the key differentiator for business success and technology becomes the great leveler, allowing skilled individuals to vault the restrictions of national borders, and increasingly, of when and where they work.

Many of the elements ManpowerGroup addresses are already known in the world of HR and HRO. The impact of the technology-enabled globalization of talent, the need to simultaneously deal with an aging workforce while engaging a mobile new generation, and the growing mismatch in available labor versus skilled talent. All of these lead to the need for a new strategy and approach to attracting, developing, and retaining talent.

The future of talent envisioned in the Human Age is both hopeful and daunting as we are only entering the transition period with a long road ahead. It is a future in which employers would benefit from a consulting/outsourcing partner with the scale and scope of ManpowerGroup, with $22bn in revenues and a presence in 80 countries.

I love big ideas that come from HRO service providers showing that HRO can be more than transaction, technology, and contact center cost and efficiency management. Big ideas can also lift and differentiate a company’s brand.

One of the keys to brand management is consistency and constancy of messaging. IBM is doing a very good job of taking a big idea phrase, i.e., smarter planet, connecting it to its brand, and naturally to its consulting and services. Going one step further, IBM makes the concept a central theme running throughout its strategic initiatives. For example, the HRO team had to show how its investment initiatives supported one or more of the six imperatives for a smarter planet.

ManpowerGroup is making a good start. The speech in Davos was backed by a special ManpowerGroup website for more information on the Human Age, including a 58 page booklet outlining the concept and providing research and experienced insight on changes that will be integral to the new age. Other 2011 white papers from ManpowerGroup are picking up the phrase and it was also used in its 3Q 2011 earnings report. Further use across the external website, news releases and other collateral, as well as internal use will strengthen the connection to ManpowerGroup.

For 3Q 2011 ManpowerGroup reported revenues of $5.8bn, up 16% overall and 9% in constant currency. EPS were $.97, up 43.5% from $.62 in the prior year quarter.

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

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RPO Continues Its Stride in Q2 2011

If you didn’t pay attention to the news and only looked at the recent financial results reported by staffing and RPO providers, you’d think that everything is fine with the global economy.  Let’s take a look at a few of the highlights including year-over-year revenue growth in Q2 2011 compared to Q2 2010 and some numbers of contracts awarded:

• Talent2 (fiscal year 2011 for period ending June 30) +26%, RPO +57%
• Kelly Services +16%, KellyOCG + 22.5%, and RPO ~+50%
• Kenexa +59%, RPO + 45%
• Manpower + 24%, ManpowerGroup Solutions +21% with 37 RPO deals closed in Q1 and 31 new RPO contracts awarded in Q2
• Pinstripe won or extended 15 RPO contracts in H1 (revenue not reported)
• SeatonCorp +20%, PeopleScout +95% with 9 new RPO contracts signed.

Why was growth and the number of contracts awarded so high when the sad reality of the news headlines is that there are debt problems, slowdown in GDP growth, and a continually high unemployment rate?   Well, that is precisely why!  There are several reasons including:

• Organizations who have had to downsize are turning to RPO because they don’t want to invest in hiring recruiters and associated staff only to potentially downsize again (i.e., it’s better to outsource recruitment to a vendor that can provide variable pricing and who can scale up or down quicker than the client)
• Obtaining  better quality of candidates and quality of hire from an outsourcing specialist
• Allowing HR to work as a strategic partner and in-conjunction with the RPO vendor to engage employees and retain talent (instead of focusing on hiring)
• Wanting to get out of the technology management business, which isn’t usually a client’s core competency
• Reducing time to hire, improving hiring manager satisfaction, etc.

In addition to revenue growth from new contracts and renewals, growth comes from existing clients that have increased their hiring volumes. Other sources of growth are from contracts won in prior quarters that take several months before fully ramping up.

RPO does not look like it is going to slow down anytime soon.  In NelsonHall’s HR Outsourcing Confidence Index, published in June, pipeline growth reported in the prior quarter was higher for RPO than all of the other HRO services.

At NelsonHall, we’ve seen an increase from buyers wanting to know who we see as the leading RPO providers by country and region. Buyers, are you evaluating outsourcing recruitment, if you haven’t done so already?

Gary Bragar,  HR Outsourcing Research Director, NelsonHall

A Steady State in HRO for 2Q 2011

After several quarters of new HRO activity, the pace settled down a bit in the second quarter, but was still plenty interesting. Here are several samples from 2Q 2011.

Capita stands out for its volume and breadth of HRO activities. It is the largest MPHRO provider in the U.K. according to the NelsonHall MPHRO 2011 market report. Capita was awarded preferred supplier status by NHS in North Mersey, providing a potential of up to £27m by offering a mix of HR, payroll, and RPO services to 12 Mersey NHS trusts. There were also two awards for occupational health services, which it is expanding into the more holistic well-being services. An acquisition was also in the mix. Team24 was brought in to enhance medical RPO capabilities, further strengthening a market segment in which Capita is rated third in the U.K.

I like to look at the mix of new partnerships, offerings, and mergers and acquisitions to see where vendors are placing their bets on expansion and growth. Global remains hot and deal activity is there to keep hopefuls in the game of capturing new markets.

A leading example is ManpowerGroup’s strategic moves in China. It purchased REACH HR in south China, added Xi’ an Fesco with its 10k associates, and partnered with the city of Kaifeng in the Henan Province to add coverage in the west and north central area of China. To top off this spree, ManpowerGroup aligned itself with China’s Ministry of Industry & Information Technology (MIIT) for a five year plan.  It will develop a talent exchange center, enabling ManpowerGroup’s local partners to provide workforce solutions focused on manufacturing.

Remember that China is not a market you can just jump into and Manpower has been on the ground in mainland China for 17 years. It has the needed relationships and is well-positioned to benefit from the development expansions now moving into inland China.

Other APAC activity included Australia. Mercer was awarded a superannuation pensions administration contract by RBK. Also, Towers Watson is partnering with Link Group to enter the superannuation market in Australia which is not big in numbers, but each group plan can have a large number of members. Finally, Futurestep opened global service management centers in Australia and New Zealand.

Elsewhere in APAC, Genpact was selected for a five year learning content development contract by JobSkills in India; Merce r launched a flex benefits offering in Hong Kong, and is partnering with PayrollServe to offer its HR services in APAC; and ManpowerGroup acquired Web Development Company in India to strengthen IT recruiting.

With plenty of recent HRO deals in implementation and early stabilization, along with perkier volumes and special projects in existing contracts, service providers need to focus on balancing delivery performance with new acquisitions. Compared to some of the things we have experienced in HRO, a steady state is not such a bad thing!

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

ManpowerGroup Solutions Analyst Day – It’s All About Talent – Part II

In my blog last week I wrote a bit about RPO and briefly about the broader content presented at ManpowerGroup Solutions Analyst Day June 8^th.  Now I’d like to take a broader view. A takeaway for me is there is no doubt in my mind that ManpowerGroup truly gets that there is a talent shortage globally, which is rapidly getting worse, and is actively helping its clients to attract and retain talent. Though unemployment rates may be high, there is a mismatch between availability of skills and demand for skills. Access to talent is going to be critical for companies to succeed! Estimates are that unemployment levels of skilled talent are 4-5% while unskilled talent is nearer the 20% range.

According to ManpowerGroup’s 2011 Talent Shortage Survey, 34% of employers are having difficulty filing vacancies. In the U.S. 52% of U.S. employers experience difficulty in filling mission critical positions. This is not just high-tech positions we are talking about but includes manufacturing, where an ever-increasing number of workers are retiring. It’s not just a U.S. problem, it is a global problem, including countries such as Japan, China and Australia, where 30,000 engineers are needed. As an example, to help solve the Australian problem, engineers in India are being looked at in addition to partnering with educational institutions to develop those skills.

At the end of the analyst event we were given a booklet written by ManpowerGroup, called “Entering The Human Age, Thought Leadership Insights”. In the introduction written by ManpowerGroup CEO Jeffrey Joerres, it states that “a new era is upon us, the Human Age, when optimizing human potential will be the single most important determinant of future business success and growth. From 2011, 10,000 baby-boomers will turn 65 every day for the next 19 years. To thrive and grow, companies and governments will need to engage and motivate older workers to remain in the workforce longer, and find a way to engage and train their youth, particularly by aligning training and education systems with the skills required by employers”. Sounds to me like an opportunity for learning providers to be ready to help! There is much more valuable information and insight to be had at http://www.manpowergroup.com/humanage/index.html

In sum a very worthwhile day and if you are an RPO provider, Learning BPO provider and/or anyone in the talent management business, you are in the right job to help your clients succeed in the new Human Age.

Gary Bragar, Lead HRO Analyst, NelsonHall

ManpowerGroup Solutions Analyst Day – It’s All About Talent

On June 8, 2011, ManpowerGroup Solutions held its first analyst day where it talked about multiple services, including its RPO business, which is currently providing recruitment services in ~35 countries, including for eight global clients, which range in scope from two to ten countries. ManpowerGroup Solutions has a center of excellence in the U.S. to share best practices so it provides a consistent experience and doesn’t reinvent the wheel for each implementation. It is smart enough, however, to recognize that the greatest satisfaction for the hiring manager comes when services are delivered locally. Thus playing to its strength of having the ability to deliver RPO locally, with a total company presence in ~82 countries.

In Q1 2011, it closed 37 RPO deals: 8 in APAC, 9 in EMEA, 2 in LA, and 18 in the U.S. For the next eighteen months, it’s focus includes driving consistency of operation and customer experience and improving the client’s employment value proposition via improved employer branding and candidate experience.

ManpowerGroup Solutions still has the largest RPO deal to date in the industry, a $200m contract with the Australian Defense Force to provide full end-to-end services from sourcing through onboarding for 8,500 – 10,000 new hires annually. Approximately 300 personnel are employed onsite to support the contract which includes a marketing team of 22 people providing services that include social media and employment branding. There is also an 80 seat call center to proactively manage relationships with candidates and 90 I/O psychologists.

Other highlights of the day included a presentation on ManpowerGroup Solution’s Tapfin business, a MSP that handles over $3.3bn in managed services spend and administers 221 MSP programs globally.  This was followed by a demo of Workforce Scan, a consulting process to help model future scenarios of emerging supply and demand gaps in the availability of talent needed by taking a 5, 10, 15, or 20 year timeframe view.

There was also an announcement of a new contact center offering to help existing client centers increase productivity, improve customer service, and retain talent through a set of services including: talent sourcing; program and process management; best practice and benchmarking consulting; and talent-based outsourcing for center-based and distributed workforces such as virtual / work-from-home models. NelsonHall will cover more on this recent announcement in our tracking service and next HRO Industry Insight Newsletter.

According to its new Workforce Strategy Survey, almost a quarter of employers across 36 nations admit their workforce strategy does not support their business strategy or have any idea if it does. More than half of this group is doing nothing about it, which sounds like more opportunity for RPO providers to help employers with workforce planning.  I’ll share more on this topic next time!

Gary Bragar, Lead HRO Analyst, NelsonHall