Jonathan Means serves as Manpower's Vice President General Manager of the Midwest Division. He has held this position since June of 2013. His position requires him to lead all aspects of operation in Manpower's Commercial Staffing business in the Midwest. Such aspects are strategy development, employee selection and sales and service execution.
BELOW IS OUR INTERVIEW WITH MR. MEANS
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* All answers have been paraphrased. Full transcript and recording located at the bottom of the page.
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Could you describe what Manpower does and what the business is all about?
Really our vision is to help our clients succeed in what is a very rapidly changing world work. Our job Manpower is to create products and services that allow our clients to be successful with their people strategy. Getting right down to it we have a couple of core offerings that we provide to our clients. One thing is just basic staffing services, and then we do perm placement. Manpower itself is what we call commercial staffing which includes services for light industrial, office, clerical, administrative and many similar jobs.
Does Manpower act somewhat as the middle man between the employer and the hopeful employee?
Yeah, I think that's a fair way to describe it. More importantly, with our key strategic accounts we help employers really understand how to accomplish their business goals that they have as an enterprise over the next 5 to 10 years. Our goal is to have companies talk about Manpower Group as a company that's really helping them think through their long term labor strategies. We call our strategy "strategic workforce planning."
How much of the work that you guys do is focused on Milwaukee as a city as a opposed to Wisconsin, the rest of the country, and internationally?
We’re in 80 countries. The US isn’t even the largest in terms of revenue; I think France is number one for us. So very much a large, global enterprise. Wisconsin’s a good market for us, you’d expect that given that this is our home state. Milwaukee itself is a good market for us. We have 3 branches in the greater area: we have one right downtown, we have one on Mayfair (Mayfair and Bluemound), and another in Waukesha. We also interact a lot with the city itself, getting involved in an "earn and learn" program for example that targets city students.
Could you give us an estimate of how many people are employed by Manpower in Milwaukee?
It's probably 300 or 400 just in Milwaukee itself. Maybe closer to 500.
Can you give us an estimate of your company’s annual revenue growth over the past 5 years?
We finished last year right around 20-25 billion dollars. Our growth has been about 3 or 4 percent a year. Our net earnings growth has been faster than our revenue growth, which is a function of how we’ve been managing the business more efficiently and effectively so that every dollar that we’re bringing in revenue we’re dropping a little bit more than the bottom line than we have in the past and getting more leverage.
What kind of industry do you provide the most services for/employ the most people towards?
We're certainly best known for manufacturing services; it represents around number 70% of our revenue on the Manpower side, with the other 30% being sort of office services, contact center, and other sort of mid to lower level white collar positions.
How has the big boom in technology over the past 15 to 20 years affected Manpower in terms of connecting people with certain jobs when a lot of the jobs are moving towards technical positions, engineers, IT people, as opposed to blue-collar level manufacturing jobs?
We have invested heavily in the Experis side of our business including strategic acquisition and so on with exactly that in mind. There’s no question that the pace of growth in the technologies will continue to outpace other areas, and it’s critical to our long term health that we are a significant player particularly in the IT portion of that and the IT staffing side. Down to the manufacturing side, there are more and more jobs on the manufacturing floor that require basic stem skills; a basic understanding of how to do basic math and problem solve and not just moving a widget from here to here. We see that; we partner with local community organizations to help them sort of drive more high school students towards that type of opportunity. We want to expose more and more high school students to what’s available in manufacturing because it’s not just about moving a widget from here to here.
Would you say that in next 20 years or so, would majority of Manpower's services shift to another industry other than manufacturing?
It depends on how we measure it. If we measure the amount of hours we’re billing for, I expect there will still be a significant number of hours billed in the manufacturing area. Even if total manufacturing jobs in the US remain stagnant or even maybe decline a little bit, I would expect the growth on the staffing side will continue to be there. On a dollar standpoint, if we’re placing an IT person, that maybe we’re paying 80 dollars an hour, you need a lot few of those hours for the revenue to grow. So I think the revenue will continue to grow really nicely on the professional side.
Would you say that Milwaukee is a difficult place for the manufacturing industry?
This is a challenge for cities in general, so it’s not really about Milwaukee, and yet it’s true for Milwaukee. I think the answer is, yes there is an available accessible workforce that is trainable, hardworking, and understanding here in Milwaukee. Then you have general business climate issues, but that's an issue for us only if it becomes an issue for our clients in Milwaukee.
How would you say that your company has been affected by the late recession that has occurred?
The strategy that Manpower group utilized that was different than some of the other staffing companies, is we sort of rode it out with our expense structure. Paying attention to what staffing companies did, a lot of them shut down a lot of branches, laid off lots of staff, and did that sort of thing. Manpower didn’t do as much of that in the US. We took a bit of a different strategy, and we could because we’re such a large, global company. We could afford to ride out the US piece a little bit more so that when it came back, we were in a better position to take advantage of it, and that played out.
Would you say the recession presented an opportunity for Manpower and the companies it works with to revamp its business structure?
That certainly has happened here. Just because we didn’t necessarily close branches and lay off tons and tons of people, there’s absolutely been reengineering going on in terms of how we deliver services and that has continued and will continue to accelerate.
Where do you see Manpower in the next 5, 10, 20 years?
I would expect that we will grow faster than our segment overall. If the US commercial staffing business is growing at 6%, I would expect we’re going to grow at 7-8%. I would expect to see Manpower probably broaden its penetration of what we would call the MSAs. We would also see an acceleration of growth of the white collar portion of our business.
Really our vision is to help our clients succeed in what is a very rapidly changing world work. Our job Manpower is to create products and services that allow our clients to be successful with their people strategy. Getting right down to it we have a couple of core offerings that we provide to our clients. One thing is just basic staffing services, and then we do perm placement. Manpower itself is what we call commercial staffing which includes services for light industrial, office, clerical, administrative and many similar jobs.
Does Manpower act somewhat as the middle man between the employer and the hopeful employee?
Yeah, I think that's a fair way to describe it. More importantly, with our key strategic accounts we help employers really understand how to accomplish their business goals that they have as an enterprise over the next 5 to 10 years. Our goal is to have companies talk about Manpower Group as a company that's really helping them think through their long term labor strategies. We call our strategy "strategic workforce planning."
How much of the work that you guys do is focused on Milwaukee as a city as a opposed to Wisconsin, the rest of the country, and internationally?
We’re in 80 countries. The US isn’t even the largest in terms of revenue; I think France is number one for us. So very much a large, global enterprise. Wisconsin’s a good market for us, you’d expect that given that this is our home state. Milwaukee itself is a good market for us. We have 3 branches in the greater area: we have one right downtown, we have one on Mayfair (Mayfair and Bluemound), and another in Waukesha. We also interact a lot with the city itself, getting involved in an "earn and learn" program for example that targets city students.
Could you give us an estimate of how many people are employed by Manpower in Milwaukee?
It's probably 300 or 400 just in Milwaukee itself. Maybe closer to 500.
Can you give us an estimate of your company’s annual revenue growth over the past 5 years?
We finished last year right around 20-25 billion dollars. Our growth has been about 3 or 4 percent a year. Our net earnings growth has been faster than our revenue growth, which is a function of how we’ve been managing the business more efficiently and effectively so that every dollar that we’re bringing in revenue we’re dropping a little bit more than the bottom line than we have in the past and getting more leverage.
What kind of industry do you provide the most services for/employ the most people towards?
We're certainly best known for manufacturing services; it represents around number 70% of our revenue on the Manpower side, with the other 30% being sort of office services, contact center, and other sort of mid to lower level white collar positions.
How has the big boom in technology over the past 15 to 20 years affected Manpower in terms of connecting people with certain jobs when a lot of the jobs are moving towards technical positions, engineers, IT people, as opposed to blue-collar level manufacturing jobs?
We have invested heavily in the Experis side of our business including strategic acquisition and so on with exactly that in mind. There’s no question that the pace of growth in the technologies will continue to outpace other areas, and it’s critical to our long term health that we are a significant player particularly in the IT portion of that and the IT staffing side. Down to the manufacturing side, there are more and more jobs on the manufacturing floor that require basic stem skills; a basic understanding of how to do basic math and problem solve and not just moving a widget from here to here. We see that; we partner with local community organizations to help them sort of drive more high school students towards that type of opportunity. We want to expose more and more high school students to what’s available in manufacturing because it’s not just about moving a widget from here to here.
Would you say that in next 20 years or so, would majority of Manpower's services shift to another industry other than manufacturing?
It depends on how we measure it. If we measure the amount of hours we’re billing for, I expect there will still be a significant number of hours billed in the manufacturing area. Even if total manufacturing jobs in the US remain stagnant or even maybe decline a little bit, I would expect the growth on the staffing side will continue to be there. On a dollar standpoint, if we’re placing an IT person, that maybe we’re paying 80 dollars an hour, you need a lot few of those hours for the revenue to grow. So I think the revenue will continue to grow really nicely on the professional side.
Would you say that Milwaukee is a difficult place for the manufacturing industry?
This is a challenge for cities in general, so it’s not really about Milwaukee, and yet it’s true for Milwaukee. I think the answer is, yes there is an available accessible workforce that is trainable, hardworking, and understanding here in Milwaukee. Then you have general business climate issues, but that's an issue for us only if it becomes an issue for our clients in Milwaukee.
How would you say that your company has been affected by the late recession that has occurred?
The strategy that Manpower group utilized that was different than some of the other staffing companies, is we sort of rode it out with our expense structure. Paying attention to what staffing companies did, a lot of them shut down a lot of branches, laid off lots of staff, and did that sort of thing. Manpower didn’t do as much of that in the US. We took a bit of a different strategy, and we could because we’re such a large, global company. We could afford to ride out the US piece a little bit more so that when it came back, we were in a better position to take advantage of it, and that played out.
Would you say the recession presented an opportunity for Manpower and the companies it works with to revamp its business structure?
That certainly has happened here. Just because we didn’t necessarily close branches and lay off tons and tons of people, there’s absolutely been reengineering going on in terms of how we deliver services and that has continued and will continue to accelerate.
Where do you see Manpower in the next 5, 10, 20 years?
I would expect that we will grow faster than our segment overall. If the US commercial staffing business is growing at 6%, I would expect we’re going to grow at 7-8%. I would expect to see Manpower probably broaden its penetration of what we would call the MSAs. We would also see an acceleration of growth of the white collar portion of our business.
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Biography Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jonathan-means/11/801/132
Image Source: "Welcome to Our Website." Manpower. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
Logo Source: http://goodlogo.com/images/logos/manpower_logo_2699.gif