The Adecco Group is a Swiss–French company based in Zürich, Switzerland. It is the world's second largest human resources provider and temporary staffing firm. It is a Fortune Global 500 company and is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. Services offered by the group include temporary staffing, permanent job placement, career transition, and talent development in the office, industrial, technical, financial, and legal sectors, as well as business process outsourcing and consulting. the company had placed 115,000 workers in full time employment and had 500,000 workers in temporary roles daily. It operates three global business units: Adecco, Akkodis, and LHH. Its operating brands include Badenoch & Clark, DIS AG, General Assembly, Innovation Foundation, Lee Hecht Harrison, Modis, Pontoon, Spring Professional, and Yoss.

History

The Adecco Group was formed on 1 January 1997 by the merger of the French company Ecco founded in Lyon as Interecco in 1964, and the Swiss company Adia Interim, founded in Lausanne in 1957 as Adia. In 2015, Alain Dehaze becomes CEO and, in 2022, was succeeded by Denis Machuel as CEO.

Mergers and acquisitions

In September 1997, the company acquired US temporary staffing company TAD Resources International of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for $387.5 million. The company acquired Olsten Staffing in late 1999, and became the largest recruitment company in the U.S., with a combined revenue of €11.6 billion. UK recruitment company Spring Group was acquired in 2009, and a year later in 2010, Jacksonville, Florida-based staffing firm MPS Group was acquired for an estimated 1.3 billion. At the start of 2011, The Adecco Group began a joint venture in Shanghai with Chinese HR services company FESCO and in September of that year, acquired US-based Drake Beam Morin, Inc. In January 2012, it was announced that the company had acquired Japanese staffing service VSN Inc. 2014 saw the acquisition of U.S freelance worker-on-demand company OnForce of Lexington, Kentucky Canadian recruitment services company Knightsbridge Human Capital Solutions, a company offering career transition, talent and leadership development, was acquired in 2015. In March 2016, the company acquired UK recruitment services company Penna Consulting PLC. The Adecco Group acquired Vettery, a recruitment marketplace startup, for $100 million USD in February 2018. In April of that same year, the U.S.-based education technology provider General Assembly was acquired. In 2019, the company announced the sale of U.S. healthcare staffing business Soliant Health to Olympus Partners for a cash consideration of $612 million. In November 2020, Vettery purchased competing tech marketplace Hired for an undisclosed amount and combined the two business's products under the Hired brand. French engineering and technology consulting firm Akka Technologies was acquired in July 2021 for a reported €2.0 billion.