When Jeffrey Joerres first joined Manpower, in 1993, the labor market
was relatively stable and the company still focused largely on
traditional office, clerical, and industrial staffing. But since then
globalization and rapid advances in technology have dramatically
reshaped the employment landscape. During his 15 years as CEO, Joerres
expanded the company’s international operations and moved into the
increasingly competitive market for IT, finance, and engineering
professionals. In this interview with HBR’s editor, he describes how
micromarket analysis reveals “geolocated pools of skills” that
businesses can tap—until competitors muscle in, deplete the skills pool,
and drive up wages. So companies must acquire a “nomadic mentality”
that will allow them to establish more-temporary, smaller operations as
well as large ones. He acknowledges that “when full-scale robotics and
artificial intelligence arrive in a broad-based, affordable, easily
justifiable way,” hordes of workers will be displaced, with little or no
preparation for very different jobs. Joerres advises companies that
want to develop a workforce strategy to put multiple work models in
place—crowdsourcing, distant manufacturing, temporary contractors moving
to full-time—and truly practice them. “When are we done with this
efficiency thing?” he says. “The answer is never.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]