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

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.