David Arkless, ManpowerGroup’s president of global corporate and government affairs, constantly criss-crosses the globe advising on labour issues, talking to governments and spearheading a campaign against human trafficking.
It’s an impressive and worthy remit that more than fulfils his modest childhood ambition: “I grew up in a very, very working class family in a council estate around Durham. So when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, all I wanted was to have a decent job,” he explains.
Luckily for Arkless, he had the brains – and the highly desirable rugby skills – to make it to Durham University. Still unclear about what he wanted to do, his university career advisor pointed him in the direction of HP. “I thought he meant the sauce company,” admits Arkless.
Luckily for his career, it turned out to be the technology company. Lucky because at that time the company – and the industry as a whole – was young and expanding incredibly rapidly, enabling Arkless to pick up skills and experiences with a speed that would be difficult to imagine in more established industries, or indeed in HP, today.
As he was a graduate in psychology and anthropology, the vendor thought that he’d fit nicely into its HR department. He quickly climbed the ladder, but was also able to gain valuable experience outside the normal HR remit at the same time.
On one occasion, for example, Arkless remembers that a sales representative was unable to be present himself to make a proposal to the Egyptian government and so they sent him – the HR guy – instead. “I called it career development by chaos theory. I was in the right place at the right time,” he recalls.
As luck would have it
But luck is a quality that is vastly underestimated in career development, Arkless believes. “I talk to loads of MBA classes and I tell them ‘don’t fool yourselves’ – your career will be a succession of lucky and unlucky breaks,” he says. “It’s how you deal with those breaks that will shape your career.”
And it was grabbing one of those lucky breaks that led him to leave HP and set up his own consultancy firm. By chance in the late 1980s, Arkless had ended up sitting next to Percy Barnevik, then chairman of power and automation technology company ABB, at a conference dinner and started berating the power generation industry for its woefully small margins and poor performance on big projects.
Two days later, Barnevik contacted him, saying that he’d give him three days consultancy work and, if he could prove how the firm could double its profit margins, he’d get more. Arkless seized the opportunity and set up his own consultancy, Caden Corporation, on the promise of those three days of work. That first year, he grossed more than £1m.
After just a handful of lucrative years in the consultancy business, recruitment powerhouse ManpowerGroup offered to buy his business. This meant that Arkless had a choice to make again. Should he continue to run the by now multi-million pound organisation and keep expanding it or sell when it was potentially at the top of its growth curve?
Still in his 30s, he decided to accept the offer, take the money and work for the company for two or three years before moving on. That was in 1992 – and he’s still there.
Arkless’ first job was, in the words of the chief executive, to coordinate Europe. This was no easy task – each of the 42 country operations was run independently, but it was his job to ensure that they all worked together, even though he did not have the managing director’s title that would lend him the necessary authority.
Taking a stand
Today, however, Arkless is president of global corporate and government affairs. The role was created when he took a step back from his day-to-day role and pondered on what he felt was missing at the company.
He realised that one area in which it was failing to realise its potential was in the governmental arena. One in five employees work for government, yet 94% of Manpower’s revenues were generated from the private sector.
As a result, Arkless decided it made sense to increase the size of the firm’s public sector customer base. Moreover, given Manpower’s worldwide reach, he felt it was ideally suited to take a global view of labour issues and would benefit from establishing itself as an industry thought leader.
But there was another strand to his thinking. About eight years ago, a customer survey revealed that people did not really believe that the firm stood for anything. Therefore, Arkless proposed that it make a lot more noise about its activities generally, but more specifically, that it make a stand on three key global labour issues: preventing human trafficking, helping refugees to get a job and stopping migrant workers from being abused.
Although a noble thought, it was also a commercially astute one too. Arkless sold the concept to the board by suggesting that adopting a humanitarian stance would boost employee motivation and involvement and increase staff retention rates.
He pointed out that every time an experienced person left the company, it cost a year’s salary to replace them and train someone new. His prediction on employee churn has proved true and some countries have seen a huge 30% cut in attrition rates.
Anti-human trafficking
ManpowerGroup is now a leader in ethical working practices. It was the first supplier to sign up to the Athens Ethical Principles, which advocate a zero tolerance policy on working with any firm that benefits in any way from human trafficking, and it is involved in a number of projects to raise the issue up the corporate agenda.
Arkless himself is also president of the End Human Trafficking Now! campaign, an ambassador for the UK’s Centre for Social Justice and an advisor on the CSJ’s Anti-Slavery Report.
And his work with governments and on anti-trafficking takes him round the world. This month, he will be in Marrakesh trying to encourage Arab investment in North Africa, before moving on to Davos for the World Economic Forum, the biggest gathering of business and political leaders in the world. From there, it’s on to Atlanta to talk about the anti-human trafficking agenda.
It’s a pretty typical month for Arkless. Last year, he spent 320 days travelling on 390 flights.
But Manpowergroup also supports a raft of projects aimed at helping refugees find work. “It’s brilliant when it works, but it’s so hard,” he admits, recalling one case of a refugee in Mozambique who it took four years to train and place in a job.
“It took four years for one person, but when you get it right it’s amazing. I am the most privileged person I know,” Arkless concludes.
And finally…
Who do you admire most?
American entrepreneur, Ron Bruder. Bruder grew up in the Bronx and went on to become a highly successful property developer.
Rocked by the events of 9/11, he travelled to the Middle East to try to make sense of what had happened. Seeing the levels of unemployment among young people there, he set up the Education for Employment foundation to help them find jobs.
His belief is that being in work helps to create a stable society. This man is my absolute inspiration. He did this with his own money and has put thousands of young Arabs in jobs – and he’s Jewish.
What’s your most hated buzzword?
‘No problem’. Whoever says that to you is lying.
‘No problem’. Whoever says that to you is lying.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
My HR boss at HP advised me to play the long game. I was a being a young Turk in HR and he realised I was so enthusiastic that I needed to think about how things would turn out in the long-term and that you can’t just do things for today.
My HR boss at HP advised me to play the long game. I was a being a young Turk in HR and he realised I was so enthusiastic that I needed to think about how things would turn out in the long-term and that you can’t just do things for today.
How do you relax?
I’ve worked out every day for the last 36 years.
I’ve worked out every day for the last 36 years.
