HeadFirst Group presents record revenue of €2.2 billion
Over €400 million organic sales growth, gross margin of €63 million
HR-tech service provider HeadFirst Group has achieved revenue (gross billing value) of over 2.2 billion euros for 2022, with a gross profit of 63 million euros. This represents revenue growth of 38% compared to 2021, largely achieved organically through successfully serving existing and new clients. In 2023, the company continues its strategy, in which digitalization and international growth are two key pillars.
Organic growth and targeted acquisitions
Revenue of over 2.2 billion euros represents an increase of 600 million euros compared to 2021, of which more than 400 million (27%) is organic growth. In addition, HeadFirst Group made a number of targeted acquisitions: the Belgian HR tech company ProUnity, IT talent sourcers StarApple and StackOps, online recruitment platform OpenTalent and the platform for freelance services ZZP365. Marion van Happen, CEO at HeadFirst Group: "We had a successful year in all areas. We welcomed new clients and again helped more professionals - self-employed and employed by our suppliers - to valuable assignments. The new brands in our group found their place. And finally, as an employer, we were rated as a Great Place to Work."
Digital transformation
HeadFirst Group also aims to grow in 2023 through the combination of successful service delivery to its clients - both clients, suppliers and independent professionals - and targeted acquisitions that add value to the group. To enable HeadFirst Group's expansion in Europe - a key part of the strategy - IceLake Capital joined as a new investor in 2022. Van Happen: "We are accelerating our digital transformation with the goal of mixing technology and human touch in the most ideal way in our services. By deploying tech smartly, we create that colleagues have personal contact at the times it really adds value for our customers. With IceLake on board, we are going full speed ahead on that strategic line in 2023."
Van Happen continues: "Our purpose is: Join the next world of work. This new world of work is transparent, inclusive, increasingly technology-based and less fixated on the contract form. We are taking the lead in the journey to this next world and invite everyone around us to contribute to it."
More information
HeadFirst Group's annual report can be read and downloaded at hfgroup.headfirst.group/investor-relations.
About HeadFirst Group
HeadFirst Group is a leading, international HR technology service provider and the largest platform for professionals in the Netherlands. The organization offers a diversity of HR solutions, such as Managed Service Providing, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, intermediary services (matchmaking, contracting) and HR consulting. Every day more than 25 thousand professionals work for over five hundred clients in Europe, with which HeadFirst Group realizes an annual turnover of over two billion euros. The main brands of HeadFirst Group are the MSP (including intermediary services) labels HeadFirst, Between and Staffing Management Services, RPO and recruitment specialist Sterksen, IT talent sourcer StarApple and the Belgian HR-tech company ProUnity.
HeadFirst Group organizes knowledge session for SGP parliamentary party
HeadFirst Group organizes knowledge session for SGP parliamentary party
On Thursday, March 16, HeadFirst Group, in cooperation with our partner ONL voor Ondernemers, organized a knowledge session for the SGP parliamentary party. On behalf of the SGP, Chris Stoffer (MP) and Arnold van Huizen (policy officer) were present. In the past, HeadFirst Group has organized more knowledge sessions for MPs and policy officers. During the knowledge sessions we reflect on the services of HeadFirst Group and what role and added value an HR service provider has in the (flexible) labor market. In addition, we take the MPs and policy officers into relevant developments in the labor market regarding the zzp-dossier and which challenges and bottlenecks we experience in legislation and regulations. Besides a HeadFirst Group delegation, an independent professional and a representative of one of our clients were also present. They gave a short presentation on why they use our services as client and contractor and where the added value of HeadFirst Group lies for them.
All in all, it was a very successful session and we were able to provide the SGP Parliamentary Group with the necessary information and knowledge. We would like to thank our cooperation partner ONL voor Ondernemers for their hospitality and the attendees for their sharp questions and the discussion we had. Through this type of knowledge session, we try to put ourselves in the limelight as a professional discussion partner and make a valuable contribution to the labor market and self-employed workers file.
If you have any questions about our knowledge sessions as a result of this post, please contact Sem Overduin, Public Affairs Officer at HeadFirst Group. Sem can be reached at Sem.Overduin@headfirst.nl
HeadFirst Group expands collaboration with insurtech Alicia for self-employed workers in Belgium
HeadFirst Group brings its partnership with insurtech Alicia, specializing in embedded insurance for self-employed workers, to Belgium. The HR-tech service provider thus takes another important step in its further reaching strategy towards an international platform organization. Florine Onderwijzer, Managing Director Professionals & Partners services at HeadFirst Group: "Thanks to our solution, self-employed people in Belgium can now also start an assignment quickly and properly insured. "
Unburdening zzp'ers
The partnership builds on the ambition to offer support to professionals. Not only in finding challenging assignments, but also in optimizing their own business operations and making them as simple as possible. According to Marijn Moerman, CEO and co-founder of Alicia, this also includes taking care of the right insurances: "In addition to the flexibilization trend in the Netherlands, the number of freelancers in Belgium also continues to rise: last year by 7 percent to almost 200,000. At the same time, insurance coverage is declining. Zzp'ers are insufficiently familiar with the risks and finding appropriate insurance is a considerable search."
That, according to Onderwijzer, is exactly where Alicia makes a difference. "Together we have developed a scalable process for offering high-quality insurance products. Thanks to full digitization, there is more time for personal contact when it matters and we are also able to offer more comprehensive support to self-employed people outside our own borders. This next step in our cooperation thus fits perfectly with our international ambitions for our services for professionals."
On-demand and embedded solutions
In early 2022, HeadFirst Group and its platform Select joined forces with Alicia. It offers embedded solutions for relevant insurance and services that are made available in an integrated way through connected platforms using APIs.
All zzp'ers who are provided with assignments through HeadFirst Group can insure themselves for numerous topics at once, as part of the total package of services that HeadFirst Group has offered for years. "Our goal is to put together the most ideal package of services that professionals primarily need to be entrepreneurs and be able to focus fully on their core business. Through the collective purchasing advantage, self-employed people get attractive and flexible products at a lower price than if everything is purchased separately from different service providers."
HeadFirst Group on its turning point to platformization
In conversation with Simone Groeneveld and Bart van der Geest
To rank second in the Flexmarkt Turnover Ranking Top-100, the prestigious ranking of the hundred largest flex companies in the Netherlands, for the third year in a row, and still remain agile. How do you do that? We sat down with Simone Groeneveld, Managing Director MSP services, and Bart van der Geest, Head of Marketing and Communications at HeadFirst Group. We talk about the road to a platform organization, their vision for tech and touch, ambitions and growth. What makes them so successful?
With revenues of over 2.2 billion euros, HeadFirst Group is the strongest grower in the MSP and Intermediary segment. HeadFirst Group is a leading, international full-service HR-tech service provider and specialist in the professional organization of permanent and flexible labor. With a diversity of HR solutions and its platform, they offer total talent solutions. Bart indicates: "We have achieved this growth in part because we have moved from traditional job placement to being able to offer a diversity of solutions, of which MSP is a leading one."
We move as a speedboat between big corporate steamers, where we can really make speed."
Simone explains further, "We have chosen to be a platform organization. Originally, we are not. We are in the middle of a very cool turning point because of the high level of digitalization and the strategic choice to become a platform company. I myself chose HeadFirst Group because we are agile. We move like a speedboat between big corporate steamers, where we can really pick up speed. With a focus on talent. Employing talent as well as possible should be a celebration and this should be serviced as well as possible!"
Tech and touch
What can you do digitally and what do humans do? Where in the process do you choose to have personal contact and when do you let tech work for you? Bart says they are looking for the ideal balance between tech and touch. "We are in a transition from traditional employment intermediary to a platform company. In much of our existing services, 'touch' will always be important. Take our MSP services, but also the partnerships with our suppliers. We see that customers appreciate this. A new part of our services is organized around our online platform Striive, where supply and demand find each other directly and the goal is to make the process end-to-end as digital as possible. If you look sec at the definition of a platform, there is often no "human" involved at all. That will never be the case with us, because we also keep adding 'touch' at the moments when it adds value to the customer journey. When you look at other markets in which platforms move between supply and demand, you see a number of disruptors that have changed the market overnight. But that's more appropriate in the business-to-consumer market, like renting a cab ride or house. In the world of labor, that's going to be a little more steady."
Simone adds: "We want a customer journey that is tech driven as much as possible, because it is ideal for our clients to do things partly online and automated, but that there are also parts of the process where we consciously employ people and take care of them. Think of invoicing and contracting, as well as advising professionals and clients. Where we were previously an HR service provider with tech components, we are now an HR tech service provider. That's where the difference is."
Platform Striive
On the side of independent professionals and suppliers, HeadFirst Group has been working primarily digitally for some time. In its online environment Select move professionals and suppliers for over a decade. Here, a professional can be found by HeadFirst Group recruiters and bid on assignments from hundreds of clients themselves. Transparent and without extra links. Bart says that HeadFirst Group - with its Striive brand - has now also taken the step towards platformization on the client side. "You could say that we were ahead of our time with professionals and suppliers. There is a lot to gain in the steps we will now take for clients. Where we come from helps us make this step."
Ambition
HeadFirst Group's ambition is to double in revenue between now and 2025, but to get there they have therefore had to change their organizational model, Bart points out. "We are already fairly scalable, because we are quite far along when it comes to digitalization, but at the same time we can really take further steps in that. We're in the middle of a transition to an even more scalable organization, because in terms of vision, we foresee that that's where added value lies for the type of company we are."
It is important that as employers we are challenged on our creativity. Rethinking and thinking outside the box of what we have always done. For example, think about looking at skills rather than just an education. Parties and individuals who dare to do that keep themselves in the game and remain agile."
Winning Party
That transition is really necessary, Simone points out. Especially when you consider the tightness in the labor market. "To me, talent is anyone who moves around the labor market. You are a winner if you know how to bring parties together. With that, I see the need increasing when it comes to independence, such as being independent from an employer and freedom in how you can organize your work. This also means that there is still a great need for flexible employment. But uncertain times often also make people want permanent employment again. We are a party that deals with the deployment of talent and it doesn't matter in what form of work. It shouldn't matter. And we want to connect that with tech. How do you make clever use of data and algorithms in this? What role does talent pooling play in this? If you work with HeadFirst Group soon, we will be able to get the best talent out of the market."
Not just the transaction is the focus
According to Simone, that goes beyond just bringing supply and demand together. "How are we going to ensure that we also properly support you as a self-employed person with, for example, training and insurance? Not only the transaction is central, but also providing a platform where you can meet and develop yourself. And by the way, we also make sure you have cool jobs, because we work with parties in the Netherlands that also have the coolest assignments."
Sense of urgency
The talent market is unpredictable and, according to Simone, we still don't understand the sense of urgency of the talent shortage. "We all shout it, only we don't really feel it yet. Doing critical jobs remotely is something organizations find difficult, especially with IT jobs, for example. If that's still an issue you're struggling with, you're really going to have to do things differently. It's important that we as employers are challenged on our creativity. Thinking around and thinking outside the box of what we've always done. For example, think about looking at skills rather than just an education. Parties and individuals who dare to do that keep themselves in the game and remain agile."
"When we look very factually at the data of the labor market and how scarce it is now, but also look at the aging population towards 2030, the labor market is not going to be any different than it is now and it is only going to get tighter. Especially when the workload gets higher and people drop out, the risk spiral is only bigger," Bart points out.
Recruitment marketing automation
A crucial element in what makes you agile as an organization, Simone sees in defining your talent strategy. She partnered with UP for the MSP label Staffing MS because she believes you need to roll out your sourcing and talent strategy in a different way. "I advocate RMA (Recruitment Marketing Automation), because it allows you to build a continuous pipeline and make things transparent. We're also in a competitive market to recruit internally. But we want to be "on" and always engaging with talent. With RMA, we know how to find and entice another target group than we do now. I believe this is a necessary part of your talent strategy. How do you continuously stay in view of your target group? You have to structurally seek that market and be visible, in order to gain insight into the behavior of your target group so that you can follow up much more efficiently. You let RMA technology work for you, allowing you to focus on other things." In conclusion, Bart points out: "It would be crazy that when we digitize more and more on the service provider side, we don't do this in the employee journey. Ideally, we would have done this two years ago and been prepared, but now we're doing it fast and well!"
This article was published on UpinBusiness
HeadFirst Group officially recognized as a Great Place To Work
As of January 2023, HeadFirst Group is "Great Place To Work-Certified. The eponymous global authority that assesses organizations in terms of organizational culture surveyed employees of the leading HR-tech service provider for this purpose. With a Trust Index of 71%, HeadFirst Group meets the criteria for being a great employer. Joke de Graaf, Head of HR: "The certification is a fantastic recognition that our employees experience what we stand for as an organization and remain committed every day."
HeadFirst Group is labeled a 'Great Place to Work' by over three-quarters of the employees surveyed and scores high with 96 percent on a physically safe working environment. The employees experience being able to be themselves within the organization and being treated fairly, regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin and/or religious beliefs. De Graaf explains, "We stand for a diverse and inclusive work environment, where everyone wants to and can use their potential and feels appreciated for it. We are extremely proud to see this reflected in the results."
The road to organizational success
Another theme in which HeadFirst Group excels is trust in the individual. "Our employees receive extensive guidance to help them get the best out of themselves. This is because we believe that if they grow and improve, we as an organization will do the same. A good example of this is the Lean program we started last year, for which colleagues worked in groups on improvement projects. In addition, we pay a lot of attention to vitality and mental health, for example through ergonomic (flex) workstations and access to the platform OpenUp, but also activities in our in-house theater and our own gym at the headquarters in Hoofddorp," says De Graaf.
Keep learning and growing
De Graaf realizes that building good employment practices is an ongoing process. "Based on the survey results, we are going to work on the areas for improvement so that we can further optimize our employership from our core values of Customer first, Learn every day and Connecting people. Putting the internal and external customer first, growing and developing every day and putting connection first. With this conviction more than 400 passionate employees from seven locations in the Benelux work every day with great pleasure on innovative solutions to offer added value to clients, suppliers and professionals," said De Graaf.
About Great Place to Work
Great Place to Work helps companies create a culture of trust. They do this through the Trust Index™, the employee survey that measures trust, pride and joy. They believe trust is the foundation for better
individual performance, better team performance and better business results. Growth and innovation
then follow naturally. The philosophy is based on more than 30 years of experience in 60 different countries.
HeadFirst Group's HR tech company ProUnity wins comprehensive framework agreement with Smals for external hiring in Belgium
The ICT services organization of Belgian public institutions Smals awards the framework agreement for finding and managing external ICT professionals to ProUnity, the Belgian HR technology company that is part of HeadFirst Group. The framework agreement is effective January 1, 2023 and has a term of four years. Simone Groeneveld, Director MSP services at HeadFirst Group: "This offers great opportunities for freelancers and secondment companies in the Benelux to offer their knowledge to dozens of Belgian government organizations."
"Belgian governments are investing heavily in technology and innovation, with a view to providing better services to citizens and businesses. To support this, Smals will be looking for some 400 new employees this year. At the same time, we are supplementing our projects and services with temporary ICT expertise. With ProUnity we give a large group of professionals a gateway to work on challenging assignments, in all kinds of domains, with equal opportunities for everyone," explains Donald De Keyser, Management Controller at Smals.
Great opportunities for professionals
Already about 50 government organizations publish daily assignments on the ProUnity platform. Current users include the Federal Parliament, the federal government departments of Finance, Justice, Interior and Development Cooperation, the Walloon government, as well as Sciensano, RIZIV, RVA, Forem, Actiris, the Federal Police and the Center for Cyber Security.
ProUnity makes access to these assignments quick and easy for a range of professionals, self-employed and employed by secondment companies, in the Benelux. Smart use of the combination of its comprehensive marketplace and VMS platform allows them to deploy their talent to Smals and its members. The ProUnity platform monitors the entire collaboration, from the publication of new assignments and the management of contracts and time registration to reporting and invoicing, in strict compliance with Belgian tax and social legislation.
"ProUnity is an innovative tech company, with a sense of personal touch. This perfect balance between tech and touch is essential in our service and industry," explains Simone Groeneveld. "When we welcomed ProUnity into our group in July 2022, we knew they were capable of this kind of commercial success. A big compliment to the ProUnity team. This is an important step in our further reaching strategy towards an international platform organization."
IceLake Capital invests in HeadFirst Group to accelerate future growth
HeadFirst Group, the leading HR-tech service provider for professionals in the Benelux, announces it has reached an agreement with IceLake Capital to join as a new investor. With this, HeadFirst Group aims to enable the company's future growth in Europe.
HeadFirst Group provides a diversity of tailored HR services for large and medium-sized companies in the private and public sectors, employing more than 20,000 highly skilled professionals every day. The company has a proven track record of strong organic growth and expansion through acquisitions. For example, it doubled its size in the past two years to more than two billion in revenue. HeadFirst Group's core market segments Managed Service Providing (MSP) and mediation of STEM profiles are also developing well. With the strong market position in the Benelux as a basis, the company sees plenty of opportunities to expand in Europe. With IceLake's involvement, solid financing is in place to realize these ambitions.
Financing for growth
HeadFirst Group has found in IceLake a pragmatic and highly ambitious shareholder that fits the company and its entrepreneurial culture. IceLake was founded by private equity professionals and entrepreneurs who have extensive experience in growing companies. IceLake's initial investment is part of a broader commitment to HeadFirst Group's international M&A roadmap.
Han Kolff, Chairman of the Board of HeadFirst Group, commented, "We are very pleased to welcome IceLake as a strong financial investor, alongside our existing financing partner Kartesia and our founders. This confirms the great performance of our employees in professionalizing our organization and achieving solid growth over the past years. With IceLake on board, we will be able to realize our growth strategy in Europe."
Bastiaan Hagenouw of IceLake added: "We are very excited to invest in HeadFirst Group. We are impressed how they have developed into a company with a unique and market leading position in HR services. We look forward to working with their experienced board and management team to realize their ambitions for future growth and to offer their innovative value-added solutions to an even larger group of clients, suppliers and professionals."
Jean Diercxsens, managing director at Kartesia, agrees: "We have seen HeadFirst Group more than double in size and profitability in the two years we have been involved as a financial partner and remain committed to being part of this. Kartesia is pleased to have IceLake as a new investor, allowing HeadFirst Group to continue its profitable growth and international expansion."
The transaction is subject to customary approval by competition authorities.
About HeadFirst Group
HeadFirst Group is a leading, international HR technology service provider and the largest platform for professionals in the Netherlands. The organization offers a diversity of HR solutions, such as Managed Service Providing, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, intermediary services (matchmaking, contracting) and HR consulting. Every day more than twenty thousand professionals work for over five hundred clients in Europe, with which HeadFirst Group realizes an annual turnover of over two billion euros. The main brands of HeadFirst Group are the MSP (including intermediary services) labels HeadFirst, Between and Staffing Management Services, RPO and recruitment specialist Sterksen and IT talent sourcer StarApple.
About IceLake
IceLake is a private equity firm focused on forming partnerships with entrepreneurs and management teams to support their (international) growth ambitions.
About Kartesia
Kartesia provides tailored credit and capital solutions for leading mid-market companies in Europe. The group manages more than EUR 5 billion and operates from local offices across Europe.
Signing of Diversity Charter
We see diversity and inclusion (D&I) as an absolute added value for our organization. We are therefore very pleased that we were able to sign the Diversity Charter yesterday, during the Week of the Entrepreneur. We did this during a meeting of SER Diversity in Bedrijf and T-Mobile in The Hague. With this Charter we pledge to deploy strategic means to promote D&I in the workplace.
The initiative to sign the Charter came from the D&I Taskforce. This group was set up by colleagues who consider D&I very important and are working hard for it. As an organization, we support this initiative and are proud of the fact that we were one of the 24 employers who participated in the signing ceremony. Within six months of signing, we will submit a Plan of Action, describing our D&I policy and linking targets to it. In addition, we will report annually on our progress.
Marion van Happen, CEO HeadFirst Group, on Diversity & Inclusion
"We are a learning organization in the area of Diversity and Inclusion. It's about learning and evolving together so we can build a future where workplaces are more diverse and equal. Numbers are not our goal, but effectiveness. As an HR technology service provider, we see a role for our organization in creating a fair labor market."
HeadFirst Group acquires successful IT talent sourcer StarApple
HR technology service provider HeadFirst Group Adds StarApple Group, consisting of the brands StarApple and StackOps, to its organization. Both companies are specialized in sourcing IT and digital specialists. HeadFirst Group thus takes another step in deepening its portfolio of solutions for labor market issues in the professionals segment: the current high-tech solutions of HeadFirst Group are enriched with the services with a great human touch of StarApple Group.
StarApple Group, is an ambitious and young organization, founded in 2008 and has since grown into a successful IT talent sourcer. StarApple Group has already successfully connected more than 10,000 specialists to a variety of organizations. Caner Hamamioglu, General Director at StarApple Group: "Growing talent is our mission. We do this by carefully connecting professionals from our network to assignments, where professionals not only do what they have done before with other clients, but are also challenged to take a step forward in their development. Design your career, we call that. With the cooperation with HeadFirst Group we can do this on an even larger scale and we are looking forward to that enormously."
Responding to dynamic market
HeadFirst Group foresees that combining various services is necessary to continue to solve all the issues of clients in today's dynamic labor market. Marion van Happen, CEO at HeadFirst Group: "The scarcity in the labor market will not disappear in the coming years. This requires creativity in opening up the market. We believe that combining high-tech solutions with services with a great human touch is the key to customer success. For us, those customers are both clients - whom we continuously provide with mission critical talent - and professionals, whom we actively help from assignment to assignment with the most attractive clients."
StarApple Group remains independent
StarApple will become an independent brand within HeadFirst Group, maintaining its own identity. The current management will continue to lead the organization in its growth strategy into the future. Hamamioglu: "HeadFirst Group will be the driving force behind StarApple. With our enthusiastic team of over eighty colleagues, we will continue to offer a full service recruitment solution for our clients and professionals. And we get access to the group's platform, which gives us extra power to realize our growth ambitions."
Gender equality in the workplace is not a women's issue
Over 300 companies participated in the SER Diversity in Bedrijf initiative - Diversity Day - on Tuesday, October 4, to draw attention to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. It is important that organizations continue to work on this even after this day.
Alliance and advocacy
Among other things, gender equality is not yet commonplace for many companies. For more women to reach the top, male role models are needed to influence the behavior of other men. Men hold the majority of leadership positions, so the power lies with them to change things. We need their support to help and make a real difference in closing the gender gap and achieving equality in the workplace.
Together with BrandedU, we gathered inspiring stories and experiences from men who have taken the steps and influenced change within their own organizations. From these, we formulated five strategies:
- Strategy #1 - Use Privilege: use it to open doors for women.
- Strategy #2 - Create a safe space to be authentic: hold yourself accountable to create inclusive spaces.
- Strategy #3 - Start breaking the rules: use your position as gatekeeper to change the rules, or better, break them.
- Strategy #4 - Practice curiosity: ask questions, even the uncomfortable ones.
- Strategy #5 - Respect: be the one to show your emotions.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of actions that can be taken by male leaders to advocate for women's visibility and gender equality. Most of all, we hope it spurs inspiration.
HeadFirst Group is a learning organization in the field of diversity and inclusion. It's about learning and evolving together so we can build a future where workplaces are more diverse and equal. Numbers are not our goal, but effectiveness. As an HR technology service provider, we see a role for our organization in creating a fair labor market.
Documents:
WhitepaperBrandedUHeadFirstGroup.pdf