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Mutual reinforcement of tech and touch opens new perspectives

HeadFirst Group acquires Belgian, award-winning HR-tech company ProUnity. With this acquisition, the group takes an important step in its internationalisation and platform strategy. With the acquisition, HeadFirst Group triples its existing business in Belgium, thus gaining a prominent position among the large service providers in the field of hiring talent.

Platform organization
ProUnity operates in the Belgian market as a Managed Service Provider (MSP) with its own marketplace and Vendor Management System (VMS). With its unique combined offer, it helps organisations to find and manage external staff via a single platform quickly and efficiently. By adding ProUnity to HeadFirst Group, the Dutch group broadens its HR-tech portfolio, which already consists of its hiring platform Select and collaborations with external VMS partners. In this way, it increases the flexibility in solutions for its clients. ProUnity will retain its name and management team.

Marion van Happen, CEO at HeadFirst Group: "ProUnity is an innovative tech company, a digital native platform organization, with a sense of personal approach. This has earned them a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 award two years in a row. HeadFirst Group was originally an HR service provider and is now making the switch to a platform organization. The perfect balance between tech and touch is essential in our services and industry. ProUnity will be an accelerator in this."

David Muyldermans, founding partner at ProUnity, is delighted with the cooperation: "After our rapid growth, this new step together with HeadFirst Group comes at the right time for our team, our clients, and our subcontractors. ProUnity already works for large and international companies, and we see their demand increasing. Now we can offer them an even stronger answer. We make each other stronger and will continue to blossom, as people and as organizations, with respect for everyone's identity."

Internationalization
ProUnity serves over forty clients, mostly large profit companies and Belgian organizations in the public domain. HeadFirst Group already has a Belgian office since 2016. With the addition of ProUnity, it triples its existing business in Belgium. With this scale, HeadFirst Group can serve clients internationally even better, which fits its further-reaching strategy toward an international platform organization. Van Happen: "In that respect, ProUnity also fits well within our group. Just as we are now growing with our Dutch clients abroad, we aim to do the same with Belgian clients. Above all adding value in organizing talent in this scarce labor market. By clever use of platforms, with an international supply of professionals - on location, remote and hybrid - where borders are literally and figuratively blurred by corona."

Of all the self-employed in the Netherlands, over a third have no provision for incapacity for work, which amounts to more than 400,000 self-employed. Since 2019, that number has fallen by 3% to 37% To accelerate this trend, HR service provider HeadFirst Group in cooperation with insurtech Alicia is launching a unique new product for disability: Select iCommunity Crowdsurance (SiCC).

SiCC - a nod to sick - becomes part of the total package of services for entrepreneurs that HeadFirst Group has been offering for years, including benefits such as accelerated payment of invoices, various insurances and unlimited online learning in the Select Academy training environment. Florine Onderwijzer, Managing Director of Professionals & Partners services at HeadFirst Group: "Our aim is to compile the most ideal package of services that professionals primarily need to be entrepreneurs and to fully focus on their core business. Through the collective purchasing advantage, a self-employed person gets attractive and flexible products at a lower price than when everything is purchased separately from different service providers. The introduction of SiCC is the next step toward our goal."

Self-employed want to, but have nothing
Part of the self-employed deliberately chooses not to make any provision for incapacity for work, according to the most recent Self-employed Labor Survey (2021) of the CBS. For example, because they can bear the financial risk themselves (25.9%) and/or can rely on the income of a partner (20.5%). However, there is a large proportion who would like to make a provision, but find the costs outweigh the benefits (46.6%) and/or simply cannot afford it (30.7%). This group serves HeadFirst Group with its new product SiCC.

Onderwijzer continues, "In putting together our range of services, we listen explicitly to the wishes of affiliated professionals. With SiCC we are filling the most important, still unmet need. We are extremely proud of the fact that we are making a provision for disability available in such an accessible manner."

On-demand and embedded solutions
In early 2022, HeadFirst Group joined forces with platform Select. It provides embedded solutions for relevant insurance and services that are made available through connected platforms in an integrated way using APIs.

Marijn Moerman, CEO of Alicia: "Together with HeadFirst Group and crowdsurance specialist Tulpenfonds, we have developed an accessible and collective product for work disability, as an alternative to individual insurance. A solution that can be purchased in Select with one click. This renewed product prevents professionals from being faced with a surprise in the form of a variable contribution. Furthermore, the e-wallet always provides insight into the benefit to which the self-employed person is entitled. With this, it is perfectly in line with our conviction that modern work does not have to be at odds with good provisions for the self-employed.

SiCC is a donation-based facility. It is a net benefit for up to two years, in line with the need of professionals to have an affordable, flexible solution that does not pay out until retirement age, but for a framed period.

HeadFirst Group is for the third year in a row in the second position of the Flex-market Turnover Ranking Top-100 2022, the prestigious ranking of the 100 largest flex companies in the Netherlands, based on their turnover in 2021. With a turnover of over EUR 1.547* billion, the HR service provider is even the FlexTopGrowth leader in the segment 'MSPs and intermediaries'.

Influenced by an improving economy, the need for digitalization and further flexibilization of the labor market, the demand for professionals in 2021 rose to great heights: HeadFirst Group received a record number of assignments (23,263) to match candidates. The organisation was able to fulfil them successfully. A record number of 26,938 professionals worked through HeadFirst Group at some point in 2021.

Marion van Happen, CEO HeadFirst Group, explains, "2021 was a year of connecting people. This was mainly because our core business, connecting professionals with wonderful clients, was running at full speed. The year was also marked by the integration of Between Staffing Group - acquired at the end of 2020 - and HeadFirst Group. In addition, we started our cooperation with recruitment specialist Sterksen. By taking this step, we have become a unique one-stop shop for Total Talent Management (TTM) solutions, offering a solution for every staffing need."

Creativity needed by scarcity

The developments in 2021 have been demonstrably successful. Existing large master contracts have been extended with, among others, NS, CAK, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. In addition, several new European tendering procedures and tender processes were won at Action, Airbus, Alliander, the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) and the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA).

For these and hundreds of other clients, HeadFirst Group feels the need to pull out all the stops, as it too faces a challenging market with major shortages - permanent and flex - of personnel. Van Happen: "That is why we have to be more creative than ever and find talent in new places. For example, we recruit talent from abroad or from traditionally underrepresented talent pools. We also let professionals work for our clients completely remotely from another country and we train professionals for positions that are and remain scarce. We do everything we can to make the best possible use of all the available labor potential.

Leading international platform

Meanwhile, HeadFirst Group continues to focus on strengthening the foundation of the organization. "To improve the user experience of our online platform, we are developing a new front-end. We are also applying the Lean philosophy to streamline and simplify our processes, making them more attractive to our customers and employees. We have established a Growth Board to work on product innovation, with the primary focus on a new smart matching solution for the mid-market. All these steps will help us achieve our main goal: to be the leading international platform in the labor market by 2025," concludes Van Happen.

* In the Flexmarkt Turnover Ranking Top-100, HeadFirst Group has a turnover of 1,627.0 billion euros. This is the turnover including part of 2020, calculated due to the extended financial year of HFBG Holding B.V. The correct turnover of HeadFirst Group for 2021 is EUR 1,547.0 billion.

About Flexmarkt Turnover ranking Top-100

The Flexmarkt Turnover Ranking Top-100 is published annually by Flexmarkt in collaboration with Corporate Finance International (CFI). The Turnover Ranking provides an overview of flex companies, from small to large, with various forms of services in personnel mediation and hiring. In addition to employment agencies, it also contains numerous payroll companies, as well as secondment companies, self-employed intermediaries and MSP service providers. In terms of turnover, this leading ranking covers more than half of the total Dutch temporary employment sector and thus provides a clear, representative picture of the developments in the market.