Adecco Group

The Adecco Group, the world's second-largest staffing firm with €23.6 billion in FY2022 revenue and approximately 39,364 internal employees, placed nearly 600,000 people daily into flexible work assignments across 60 countries through 4,586 branches. Despite its scale, the company's staffing operations relied heavily on branch-based, manual processes for candidate sourcing, matching, and onboarding. France's digital staffing market had grown eight-fold in preceding years to approximately €350 million, signaling a structural shift toward digital-first workforce solutions that threatened incumbents with legacy operating models. Adecco's country-level IT systems and manual recruiter workflows limited productivity gains and exposed the company to share loss against digital-native competitors. Group EBITA margin excluding one-offs stood at 3.5% in FY2022, within the historical range but below the upper end of the 3.0–6.0% through-cycle target corridor set under its new Future@Work strategy.

In December 2020, Adecco launched its Future@Work strategy, reorganizing around three global business units (Adecco, LHH, Modis/Akkodis) with digitization as a cross-cutting enabler. For the Adecco workforce solutions brand — the largest unit at approximately €18.4 billion in FY2023 revenue — key actions included:

Omnichannel platform deployment: Built a 24/7 digital candidate engagement model integrating branded mobile apps, chatbots, and email campaigns alongside the existing branch network. Candidates could register, be matched algorithmically, and complete digital onboarding — signing contracts, uploading documents, and completing verification — through their mobile devices rather than visiting a branch.

QAPA acquisition (September 2021): Acquired QAPA, France's second-largest fully digital workforce solutions provider, for an initial consideration of €65 million plus earn-outs through 2023. QAPA's AI-driven matching algorithm and technical team were integrated into Adecco's existing digital platforms (InFO and Adecco Direct) to accelerate sourcing and matching speed across France, the Group's largest European market.

Adia on-demand platform expansion: Continued rollout of Adia, a mobile-first, cloud-based staffing platform developed in partnership with Infosys. Adia uses machine learning to match candidates to jobs based on skills, experience, proximity, availability, and historical reliability — enabling businesses to hire, plan shifts, issue contracts, and approve timesheets in real time.

Simplify, Execute, Grow operational plan: Launched a parallel G&A cost reduction program targeting €150 million in run-rate savings by mid-2024, focusing on consolidating back-office systems, standardizing processes across countries, and eliminating manual overhead from the recruitment workflow.

Market share gains: The Adecco segment achieved relative revenue growth of +830 basis points in FY2023, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of market share outperformance. The segment grew 4% year-over-year despite a softening European staffing market, with double-digit growth in Germany, Italy, Iberia, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific.

Record group revenue: Total group revenue reached a record €23,957 million in FY2023, up 3% year-over-year from €23,640 million in FY2022.

Margin improvement: Group EBITA margin excluding one-offs improved to 3.6% in FY2023, up 10 basis points year-over-year, with EBITA growing 8% organically — driven by productivity gains from digital investments and G&A savings.

G&A cost reduction: The Simplify, Execute, Grow program delivered €92 million in run-rate G&A savings by year-end 2023, on track toward the €150 million target. The program ultimately achieved €174 million in real-terms savings, well ahead of the original target.

Timeframe: Future@Work launched December 2020; QAPA acquired September 2021; primary results measured over FY2022–FY2023 (approximately three years from strategy launch to full-year measurable impact).

Technology partnership with Infosys provided cloud infrastructure and machine learning capabilities for the Adia platform without requiring full in-house development, reducing time-to-market and technical risk.

QAPA acquisition brought a proven AI-driven matching algorithm and approximately €45 million in existing annual revenue, providing immediate digital scale in France — the Group's largest European staffing market — rather than building digital capabilities from scratch.

Scale advantage: With 4,586 branches and operations in 60 countries, each percentage point of recruiter productivity improvement driven by digital tools had meaningful absolute impact across €23+ billion in annual revenue.

Future@Work organizational redesign separated the Group into three focused business units with dedicated digital investment priorities, reducing the complexity that had previously slowed technology rollout across fragmented country operations.