Financial Times

A CEO of a Fortune 500 company stressed the need to treat the contingent workforce of an organisation as important if it is to improve its productivity and bottom line.

Speaking at the 11th World HR Congress in Singapore recently, attended by over 200 delegates from 60 countries, Jeffrey Joerres, Chairman and CEO of Manpower Inc, a global employment services firm, defined a company’s contingent workforce.

He said it was made up of its temporary workforce, contract workers, consultants and outsourced employees, which according to a recent global survey conducted by Manpower makes up about 20% of the company’s total workforce. He further stated that currently the need for skilled employees is rising globally. Companies are increasingly looking to augment their permanent workforce with a contingent workforce, and with a talent shortage globally, the 20% figure is bound to increase at a dramatic rate in the future.

Manpower Inc’s global survey has also revealed that HR professionals have been abdicating the responsibility for their contingent workforce.

“Most HR professionals ignore this as an issue that they have to deal with; they have already decided to outsource it and now this becomes an issue for someone else,” Mr. Joerres said.

However, the CEO offered a warning, “While it might be comfortable to deal with only the permanent workforce, if you don't deal with the other element, which is the contingent workforce, you are losing a major part of your productivity, which in turn will affect the company’s bottom line”. Jeffrey also stressed the importance of engaging the contingent workforce as he believes that this category of employees may now work for the company for many years, and hence they become crucial to the company. Furthermore, how a company treats this workforce can affect the company’s relations with it’s permanent staff. Thus, he re-iterated that treating the contingent workforce as an important part of the company can help a company to improve it’s productivity and it’s bottom line.

As for the Chairman, CEO and President of Manpower Inc, under his leadership, the company has transformed its business strategy, adding higher margin business lines and expanding the footprints of the organisation by an additional 16 countries.

Since he took to the helm six years ago, Manpower has climbed the ranks of the Fortune 500 list, moving from 183 to 140. The company was also named “Best Managed Company in America” for the third consecutive year in 2005 by Forbes Magazine.

The magazine also named Manpower as the “most admired company in the staffing industry in 2005” for the third year in a row. Jeffrey was included in the Institutional Investor Magazines celebrated list of the best CEO’s in the US for the second consecutive year in 2005, a testament to his management skills.