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