PageGroup plc (PAGE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the PageGroup 2021 Capital Markets event. I'm Steve Ingham, as hopefully many of you know, Chief Executive Officer of PageGroup. We have made significant progress since our previous Capital Markets Day 3 years ago, which has positioned the group for the strong results we've seen this year, which in turn has led us to deliver several profit upgrades. We, therefore, felt now was a good time to update you on a number of our key strategic initiatives. As a result, I'm pleased to have with me today virtually several of our senior management team, who will update you on a range of our strategic initiatives. Throughout the presentations, you will have the opportunity to ask questions via the Q&A functionality on the right-hand side of your web portal. We will collate these questions and have a Q&A session with our presenters at the end of the event. Shortly afterwards, the presentations will be available to you in the on-demand section. Firstly, we have Anthony Thompson, Regional Managing Director for Asia Pacific and Exec Board member. He will give you an update on our new market category of high potential disciplines, why we've invested in them and why we will going forward. Nick Kirk, also an Executive Board member and Regional Managing Director for the U.K. and North America, will then provide an update on our experienced hire program and the benefits we have seen from the now over 1,000 experienced fee earners we've added to the group since the middle of last year. Over the past 2 years, we've continued to focus heavily on diversity and inclusion, which is now firmly embedded in our day-to-day business throughout the group. Sarah Kirk, our Global Diversity and Inclusion Director, will provide an update on this crucial area. During 2021, we created our shadow Executive Board with representatives covering different regions, ethnicities, ages, gender, LGBTQ+ and tenure within PageGroup. The role of the shadow Board is to scrutinize the Executive Board's agenda bringing the benefits of thoughts, opinions and contributions, which truly reflect the diversity of our employees and our customers. The 12 shadow Board members will be actively involved in an idea generation and will feed back on strategic topics that are key to our future success. ESG continues to gain pace globally over the past 18 months with clients, candidates and shareholders, indeed, for all our people, an expectation we set ourselves demanding targets. We've broadened our focus from the social element of ESG to more broadly embrace the E and the G. Kelvin, our CEO, will host a Q&A with Jo Bonnett, our Head of Sustainability, to give you an overview of our progress. Another investment we've made in 2020 was in our new Page Outsourcing brand, which services the RPO and MSP markets. Olly Harris, Global Managing Director of Page Outsourcing, will give you an update on the progress we've made to date and where we are focusing going forward. Then, Eamon Collins, our Chief Customer Officer, a role we created to start this year, will provide an update on our completely customer initiative, how we're delivering a great customer experience as well as the demonstration of our new Customer Connect operating system, which is now live in over 80% of the group. He will cover the feedback received so far as well as the benefits we expect to see going forward. He will also present Page Insights, our new data intelligence tool, which is providing insights to our people and customers, further differentiating us from our competitors. During the pandemic, when significant macroeconomic uncertainty existed, we moved quickly to invest heavily in each of these strategic areas of focus, where many of our competitors did not. The decisions made to progress with these areas of strategic importance were not taken lightly, but we believe have ultimately proved to be in the best long-term interest of the group and now sets us apart. The results we have seen so far in 2021 only serve to validate the decisions we've made. And I'm fully confident that these actions have also set a great platform up for the group to continue to outperform in 2022 and beyond. So please let me hand you over to Anthony Thompson for an update on our new high potential disciplines market category.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Anthony Thompson, Executive Board member for Asia Pacific. I have been with PageGroup for 21 years, living in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. I'm also the Executive Board member responsible for driving growth in our technology discipline. Back in 2012, when we launched our vision for the future, we created the concept of large, high potential markets being areas of strategic geographic focus for the group. We have now extended that categorization into the disciplines in which we operate by designating 2 of those, namely Technology and Healthcare and Life Sciences, as high potential. Starting with Technology, I will now provide more detail on this area of strategic investment. As a reminder, we categorize either markets or disciplines as high potential when they are large-scale economies where we have a positive track record and there is attractive conversion rate potential. In Q4 of 2019, we identified Technology as a high potential discipline and a key strategic goal for every Page country from 2020 onwards. Each Managing Director was tasked with setting clear and measurable goals across 2020, 2021 and 2022, while ensuring that a platform for sustainable growth and success was in place. Clearly, COVID-19 had an impact on all businesses in 2020, but Technology was the most resilient, and we've seen strong growth in 2021. Comparing our September 2021 year-to-date results versus the 2019 comparative, we have seen gross profit growth of 40% to nearly GBP 80 million, headcount growth of 25% to over 750 consultants and productivity growth of 12%. Technology is now our second largest business behind Finance. If Technology was a Page country, it would be our second biggest based on headcount and our third largest based on gross profit. In 2021, we expect to exceed GBP 100 million of gross profit, and we're expecting growth in Technology to outperform the group in 2022. Globally, Technology has grown from 10% of our total gross profit in 2019 to 12% in 2021. In many of our key markets, including Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Argentina, Colombia and the Philippines, Technology is now the largest business and represents over 25% of each market's gross profit. It represents well over 15% in 7 other countries. The Technology recruitment market is vast and diverse. Our most commonly recruited job types include Chief Technology Officers and IT managers, programmers and developers, project managers and analysts, network support and a range of specialist functions such as cybersecurity. We are seeing demand and success across all of our brands, both permanent and temporary in Page Executive, Market Page and Page Personnel, with increasingly strong demand for high-volume recruitment, which is so well suited to Page outsourcing. The competitive landscape is extremely broad, ranging from multinational companies such as S3 and Hays through the very specialist boutiques solely focused on recruitment in specific areas of Technology. Technology is already a major business for PageGroup, but we continue to identify new market opportunities for growth in terms of geography, job types and service offering. We understand the need to embrace new ideas and respect expertise. And over 200 of the experienced hires we have made in the past 18 months have been Technology recruitment specialists. Now moving on to Healthcare and Life Sciences, currently representing a smaller part of the group than Technology but a discipline with great potential. Following the encouraging progress we saw with Technology, we subsequently identified Health Care and Life Sciences as a strategic discipline for all locations in Q4 2020. HLS is a rapidly growing sector across all countries. Potential exists in not only the specific roles we currently focus on, but also in further penetrating the sector across all relevant Page brands and disciplines. Competition certainly exists, but it is dispersed. And there are very few global players with specialist expertise across the global landscape that we cover. Our current and potential client base is enormous and includes hospitals, government, SMEs and a host of major multinationals. Aligned with our completely customer philosophy that Eamon Collins will cover later, we have identified 8 major global accounts who we will work with in a strategic and connected approach to maximize customer satisfaction and productive outcomes despite some of the challenges that exist working across 37 countries. These key accounts include AstraZeneca, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. Results are extremely encouraging at this stage, with gross profit up 64% for the year versus 2020, which was marginally ahead of 2019. This relates to the specific discipline as opposed to the sector overall. Looking ahead to 2022, we are targeting gross profit to more than double compared to 2019. Fee earner headcount is up 41% so far this year and is now approaching 200 with the acquisition of several targeted specialists and experienced hires. We are experiencing growth in HLS across virtually all markets, with particularly strong acceleration in the key markets of the United States, Germany, Switzerland, France, China, India and Japan. As with Technology, a specialist focus is key, with our consultants concentrating on a small number of specific job types, ensuring that they develop a high level of expertise and credibility with candidates and clients to provide us with an important competitive advantage. Practical examples of this specialist focus where demand is very high covers clinical, research and development and commercial skill sets, such as product management, in addition to senior leadership. In both HLS and Technology, demand is far exceeding supply, and we are constantly looking to evolve and optimize our approach to finding the best candidates in the most efficient manner. This involves the traditional Page 360-degree recruitment model, the creation of more candidate acquisition career paths internally, the development of dedicated candidate sourcing centers and a higher level of interaction with a range of specialist candidate communities around the world. These 2 business areas represent huge opportunities for PageGroup in the future. Thank you, everyone. I will now hand over to Nick Kirk who will take you through our experienced hires program.

Good afternoon. My name is Nicholas Kirk, and I'm the Regional Managing Director for the U.K. and North America and also a member of the Executive Board. I've been with Page for over 26 years, having started as a consultant in our Leeds office in 1995, before progressing through a variety of different roles, disciplines, brands and offices to become the Managing Director for the U.K. in 2018. At the beginning of this year, I took on additional responsibility for the U.S. and Canada. I'm here today to talk to you about our experienced hire program. In Q2 last year, we made the strategic decision to take advantage of market opportunities created by the pandemic. Although we've always hired some fee earners from competitors, during 2020 and 2021, our recruitment drive was on a much larger scale. Based on the feedback we were receiving in April and May last year, it was clear to us that many of our competitors were making short-term knee-jerk decisions that were negatively affecting the morale and engagement of their workforce. This presented us with a unique moment in time opportunity to bring in talent that would position us well as the market recovered and beyond. We instructed our talent acquisition teams around the world to target competitors with a focus on specific individuals that we knew and rated as well as recruiters working in high potential disciplines such as Technology. In terms of experience, the average tenure of those that joined us is over 4 years, with people coming in at all levels: consultants; managers; directors; and even a Regional Managing Director, Olly Harris, that you'll hear from later when he presents his progress to date with Page Outsourcing. Following an unprecedented level of market interest, this highly selective investment program has enabled us to handpick over 1,000 experienced fee earners, who've already added around GBP 50 million to our gross profit during the first 9 months of 2021. Because these fee earners are already established in their recruitment career and possess an existing industry network, they brought 2 significant benefits to Page. They've delivered the hard, measurable benefit of achieving full productivity in a significantly shorter time span. In addition, they've also added value to the business in a number of less tangible ways that, when combined, have made a real impact. I will now expand on both of these points. Firstly, productivity. For the purpose of taking a deeper dive into this area, I focused on the 369 experienced hires that joined us in the second half of 2020. This group had been in the business for around 12 months, so we can now draw some early conclusions from them. The key callouts from this group are: in 2021, the 369 heads have delivered average monthly productivity of just over 11,000 per month to the end of Q3. This is around 20% higher than the average productivity of 2018 starters over the first 9 months of 2019. Unsurprisingly, we've seen variances between the 306 hires that started in permanent recruitment versus the 63 hires that started in temporary recruitments. Perm productivity over the 9 months was higher than the overall average at 11,600. This is to be expected as those that are working in permanent recruitment become productive quicker. This benefit is also seen in our Temp business. However, the productivity of our temp hires is lower at 8,700 due to the time it takes for them to build their temp books as well as the impact of the shape of recovery, which has been more biased towards perm than temp in many markets. That said, this productivity is still ahead of the average from 2019. Through this process, we've also been able to accelerate the growth of our high potential disciplines by making key hires into Technology, Health Care and Life Sciences and Contracting. For example, 238 of the 1,006 experienced hires we've made have gone into Technology, and 198 are working in temp or contracting. In the German contracting market alone, we've been able to add 59 experienced hires, which has helped drive our record performance in that business. Secondly, alongside the hard benefit of the revenue these experienced hires have delivered, there are also a significant number of soft benefits that they have brought to Page. I'd now like to highlight to you some of the less tangible upsides that the experienced hires have brought to our business. Staff turnover amongst this group is 50% lower than non-experienced hires. The key reason for that is that they've already answered 1 major question, "Do I want to have a career in recruitment?" On the basis that they've answered that question positively, our role is to ensure that Page is the best place for them to develop their recruitment career. We're confident that we can deliver that employee experience. And therefore, we expect staff turnover amongst this population to remain substantially below in experienced hires. Aside from some relatively straightforward systems induction, there is very little need for training and input with these hires. This creates a significant time saving versus graduates or those who join us from outside of our industry. Bringing in consultants who have worked for 2 or 3 other recruitment companies, highlights to existing employees, many of whom haven't worked for anyone other than us, that the tools, culture and careers available at Page are better than they could expect anywhere else. Many of the hires we've made have come from smaller boutique agencies that specialize in 1 discipline, such as finance or sales. These individuals have brought new customer relationships to Page that we've been able to take to the next level due to our breadth of offering by specialism and geography. 75 of the experienced hires we brought in have stepped into managerial roles. This has accelerated our ability to grow and scale where market opportunity outstrips the speed at which we can develop leaders internally. In large mature markets, a proportion of the hires we've made have been returners to Page. In the U.K., for example, this figure is 10% of the total. These are typically individuals who had a successful career with us before leaving for what they perceived to be a better opportunity or higher-earning potential elsewhere. The benefit this group brings when they return is that they were almost evangelical about Page, and they increased the sense of positivity and belonging amongst other employees. Experienced hires are able to compare and contrast the tools and technology that they have access to at Page with what they've had in other organizations. We know from their feedback that Page Insights, Customer Connect and Page Learning are market-leading platforms. Eamon Collins, our Chief Customer Officer, will give you further insight into some of these tools later. Our experienced hires have also fed back positively on many of the cultural initiatives we have in place at Page. Our market-leading approach to D&I is award-winning and has become a significant factor in why people join and stay with us. For example, under the Parents@Page banner, we have launched industry-leading maternity, paternity, shared parental and adoption leave policies, which confirm our commitment to supporting our employees through this period of their lives. Sarah Kirk, our Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion, will discuss our culture framework and approach to D&I in more detail shortly. This group has also given us positive feedback on our approach to flexible hybrid working. They've commented on how well we struck the balance of keeping the office at the heart of the business, whilst instilling a modern, agile, trust-based working culture. In the past, boutique agencies have sold flexibility and homeworking as the key benefit of leaving a global recruiter like us. The message is now out there, that you can get that flexibility with us as well as much, much more. Good external hires raised the bar internally as top billers from the competition have come on board. This has inspired existing employees to perform even better. Many of the experienced hires have brought us detailed knowledge of high potential markets like Technology, Health Care and Life Sciences or Contracting, accelerating our growth in these areas and steering us away from potentially costly and time-consuming wrong turns. Over 50% of the hires we've made have been female, further improving the diversity of our teams and offices. And finally, every high-performing consultant that joins us from the competition strengthens us and weakens them. To conclude, our experienced hire program was a unique opportunity that presented itself at an extraordinary time. We were able to handpick 1,000 fee earners to join Page whilst many of our competitors sat on their hands. In recent months, as the market has become increasingly buoyant and the war for talent intensifies, it has undoubtedly become more difficult to attract competitors. That said, those that have joined us act as an advert to others in the industry who can see how a move to Page has positively impacted the careers of people they have worked with previously. In that sense, this approach has become self-fulfilling. In the future, our strategy is where possible to recruit experienced hires supplemented by both graduates and recruits from outside of our industry. This will further support our plans for the disciplines and markets where we see the most potential for growth during 2022 and beyond. To bring our experience higher campaign to life, we now have some short videos from some of the experienced fee earners we have added to the group so far with their thoughts on what it has been like to join Page. After that, Sarah Kirk, our Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion, will discuss the progress we have made in the area of D&I. [Presentation]

My name is Sarah Kirk, Global Diversity and Inclusion Director at PageGroup. I joined Page in 1996 in an operational role. And in 2012, after 3 maternity leaves, I moved into a new role to establish the D&I team. I'm here today to talk about our commitment to driving an inclusive culture. Inclusion is at the heart of Page, and our culture puts our people first. We're hugely proud of our reputation as an inclusive employer as well as a professional and ethical recruiter. Caring about society and the environment and giving back to the communities where we live and work has always been part of our PageGroup DNA. As a recruiter, we're in a position of influence. We're actively committed to diversity and inclusion, and we're privileged to also be able to support and promote diversity, inclusion and awareness of ethical processes and behaviors for our customers and society as a whole. We've worked hard over the years to create an inclusive culture of trust and compassion and a working environment where all our people feel valued, have a voice, are heard, belong, feel comfortable being themselves and can thrive. Our global framework is built around 3 pillars. Firstly, setting an example. That's ensuring we're walking the talk through the success of our own internal programs and initiatives. We build D&I content into all our training and support programs and have vibrant networks and communities of champions and allies that are truly intersectional. We've also continued to invest and have D&I leads across all our regions globally. Second is pushing boundaries, so that's about helping our customers attract a more diverse candidate pool. This may include looking at hiring practices and using diversing language in job adverts and job descriptions. And finally, shaping the future. We aim to lead the way in the work that we're doing within our sector and customer base. We continue to be recognized externally across all our regions with awards for our work around D&I and culture and engagement. The past 18 months has clearly demonstrated how essential it is to create an inclusive hybrid culture and prioritize the health and well-being of all our employees. We focused on accountability, ownership and consequence. All our senior leadership team have gender diversity targets linked to their bonuses. We recognize that our leaders need to have the tools and confidence to be inclusive and to create a culture where our people want to stay. They therefore need to be comfortable being authentic, vulnerable, curious, build trust, have courage to reset after setbacks and also to live the values of Page, values that are not just words on a wall or in a brochure, they're reflected in everything we do every day all over the world. We launched our continuous listening strategy last year to ensure that we listen to our people regularly. We measure the moments that really matter, asking our employees relevant questions at relevant times. Only by building a culture of feedback and gathering feedback more often across the whole employee life cycle can we fully understand why our employees are joining, staying with us, feeling engaged or leaving. For us to evolve and continuously improve, employee feedback across recruitment, onboarding, development, retention and separation will remain a crucial element to obtain the insight that we need to make informed decisions supported by data. Our annual employee engagement survey and more regular pulse surveys test the temperature of our employees and creates a culture of trust where all our people have the courage to speak up. Our internal networks and communities provide a safe space for our employees to connect, share and learn. We launched our global female mentoring program in 2013 to engage, enable and empower our female leaders and currently have over 330 successful partnerships globally. The program has directly impacted retention. I have been personally told that it's been the reason why people have stayed at Page, and our mentors have shared with me how they've changed their leadership style having looked at the world through a different set of eyes. In 2022, we're launching our global female career sponsorship program to support our commitment to accelerating the progression of females into senior leadership roles. And year-to-date, 57% of promotions to MD level globally have been females. We've signed up to the UN Global Compact Network with a gender target of 50-50 in senior leadership roles by 2030. We are also proud to have been invited to join Target Gender Equality, a gender equality accelerator program aimed at setting and reaching ambitious corporate targets for women's representation and leadership. In addition, we've been recognized as a Times Top 50 Employer for Women in 2018 and 2020 and are a top employer in 8 European countries. We launched our reverse mentoring program as part of our Unity at Page strategy last year, which has been incredibly successful. It's a program where our culturally diverse employees have the opportunity to mentor our senior leaders. Our mentees are members of our U.K. Board, and Kelvin was a mentee in the first cohort. We have set up Unity steering committees, have signed the Race at Work charter and took part in the 10,000 Black interns program this year. In May, the U.S. and the U.K. hosted an event to celebrate World Culture Day with performances from some of our incredibly talented employees. And as part of our Black History Month campaign in October, we ran a live webinar Proud to be Black and British. We have always strived to foster a supportive work environment where work and family life can and should coexist. We've recently reviewed all our maternity and paternity policies globally, have free emergency child and eldercare, run pre- and post-maternity workshops and new parent seminars to ensure that all our mothers or fathers understand precisely the level of practical and emotional support that will be made available to them. We launched our Ability at Page Network to raise awareness of the barriers disabled individuals facing the workplace, both visible and invisible, focusing on ability, not disability. We have networks of mental health champions and mental health-first aiders and have just started an intern program with Ambitious About Autism and have signed a valuable 500 pledge to raise awareness of disability inclusion. In October, we ran another successful global campaign for World Mental Health Day. And last week, we raised awareness across all our regions for International Day of Persons with Disabilities. We are gold clear assured a part of the Disability Confident Employer scheme, and we're finalist for 2 categories in the RIDI Awards. As you know, our purpose is to change lives for people through creating opportunity to reach potential, and that means every single person. Every year, we celebrate Pride Month and support the LGBTQ+ community and our teams across the world. We focus our activities on raising awareness, sharing personal stories and experiences and offer advice and support to promote acceptance without exception. Earlier this year, we ran a fantastic global live event for our senior LGBTQ+ role models and allies with incredible feedback from the business. One of the programs that we're incredibly proud of is our [ Shadow ] Boards, a new initiative that helps the Board to hear a different viewpoint from a more diverse group of people and to ensure different voices were represented when it came to influencing the strategic direction of the business. In 2020, we set up our first Shadow Board in the U.K. And since then, we've launched in 6 other countries. And earlier this year, we introduced our Exact Board Shadow Board. The aim of the Shadow Board is to bring together people who can offer a different perspective on key business issues. The purpose is to discuss solutions and make recommendations on topics that are key to the future success of the business. Shadow Board members are actively involved in idea generation and follow through. There are no constraints and no fixed agendas. It creates a regular platform to share their views, be heard, have a seat at the table, be the voice of diverse employees and the unique opportunity to offer different perspectives and increase diversity of thought. The members are truly diverse with representation across race, age, gender, LGBTQ+, social background, disability, geography and length of service. They are empowered to lead. They have ownership and accountability to use the board to steer and guide not to direct. It is an open application process where we invite volunteers to join and explain the reasons why they'd like to add value. Members share a passion for championing equality and diversity and inclusion, a determination to attract, retain and develop diversity and a commitment to support each other. The membership of the Shadow Board is rotated every 12 months. We have CFO sponsorship and Board members who are proactive and invested in the program. Before I hand over to Kelvin Stagg and Jo Bonnett to discuss our progress in ESG, I would like to play a video to demonstrate just how much our commitment to inclusion has impacted our own people and to be able to bring it to life with their own words. [Presentation]

Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Kelvin Stagg, and I'm the group CFO of PageGroup. I'm joined by Joanna Bonnett, our Head of Sustainability. Over the course of 2021, the topic of sustainability has evolved rapidly. And today, we talk in the backdrop of COP26, where we've heard about the incredible journey to date as well as the significant challenges we face as a society. Today, in this virtual fireside chat, I have 5 questions to ask Joanna and together, we hope to inspire you to action to help us create a greener and more inclusive society. Before we do that, can I ask what you were doing at COP26 and what are your reflections on the Summit?

No matter your view on the politics, what the politicians did or did not agree, COP26 set the new tone. It is clear the public is demanding more from their governments and businesses. I was at COP26 to present to a business summit held by the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, and I was discussing the impact of climate change on employment. What does a greener economy mean to the workforce and how can we transition there?

Great. Thanks, Jo. So my first question for you then is, what's your vision for sustainability for us here at PageGroup?

If I talk just about social sustainability, the PageGroup vision is to change people's lives by creating opportunity for people to reach their potential. And as a recruitment company, we have a huge ability to be able to play that through. Our goal is to change over 1 million lives globally. We're going to do this within 10 years, and we're going to give back to local communities by using our skills as a recruiter. Examples would be through CV writing, workshops, mock interview workshops with charities. We also give back to schools, so LinkedIn seminars, career coaching, workshops for people about to enter the workforce. And using this work, we can really give back to our local communities where we operate.

Can I ask you a second question then? So how can PageGroup go about helping the wider business community, in particular, our candidates and clients tackle climate change?

Another really good question. The answer is threefold. So the first way we can help is there is a new emergence -- emerging profession, that being of the sustainability expert. But over the last couple of years, it's evolved rapidly, and we're moving to a stage where it is a profession. People are a professional sustainability expert. For the candidates that want to get into this space or perhaps to be promoted in the space, we're really at the forefront of this industry. And that's exciting as the market evolves and continues to evolve in the years to come. And by helping our clients, that will then allow them themselves to combat climate change and other issues within society going forward, which then folds nicely and complements our other work and helping towards the structural change that will be required to meet future needs of employment, not only within climate change, but as the world adapts to things like AI. The third thing is the inequalities in society. And what is very clear with climate change is that jobs and perhaps trade patterns will shift globally. And so with this, we need to adapt. As a society, jobs and professions will change.

So that's great, and it sounds like an exciting opportunity for the future. It actually leads me very well into my third question, which is about how can PageGroup help society and our clients, in general, overcome barriers to employment?

The barriers to employment is a really complex issue. So first of all, we're helping with our social impact work, what I mentioned before, our LinkedIn workshops, CV writing workshops that we do with charities and schools, that's the first step. But actually, our way that we can help, not only with society, but our clients and candidates, movements such as the Me Too, the Black Lives Matter, they've highlighted social issues that have always been within society, perhaps brought things to the forefront. This, combined with the heightened awareness from, say, the Me Too campaign, it places more and more pressure on businesses and rightly so, to be more inclusive. People should not, in today's educated world, feel excluded from the workplace, whether that's when they are physically there or even actually getting to the workplace. We work with our clients globally to overcome these barriers. If I can highlight the work of Michael Luciano, he's in our Milan office in Italy. And since 2014, he's worked exclusively with breaking down those barriers with candidates and clients. So he has placed over 800 candidates, well, with disability into roles. Now that's an incredible number for just 1 individual, and we should be really very proud of the work he's done. And it's not just about giving a candidate a job. His role is to make sure that they get meaningful work. And that they strive to not only have that meaningful work, but with their clients, that, that work allows them to thrive in the future to progress within that employment. So it's not just about placing a job. It's about that whole life cycle. So Michael shows incredible passion for this topic. He is a great example of what 1 individual can do to change people's lives as an individual in society.

Well, I mean, absolutely inspiring and, as you say, epitomizes our purpose of changing lives. If I can move on to my fourth question to you, Jo. So how is PageGroup looking to minimize its carbon impact?

It is important to remember that Page is an office space employer. And therefore, our impact on the environment is less than other companies in other industries. But that said, we have an important part to play. We are a large multinational. We're a listed entity. And so we must do our bit to reduce our impact on climate change. We have set an ambitious target. We will be carbon net zero with the view of being carbon positive by 2026. So this year alone, we have transitioned 75 offices to green and renewable energy. That represents 52% of our global office footprint. But we've got more to do. So environmental policy and our programs are designed to further reduce our reliance on traditional energy sources. We are transitioning our car fleet over to green. We're reducing our business travel.

It's great progress. But as you say, there's still a long way to go. And that leads me into my final question for you. So in your time here at PageGroup, what are the things that you personally are most proud of?

I'm incredibly proud to work for a business that cares deeply about its people and as well as sustainability. So for me personally, my proudest moments have been the transition here in the space of sustainability. So within my team over the last year or so, we've linked the global strategy to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We have signed up to the UN Global Compact, and we have issued the inaugural sustainability report. That's just step 1. If I look much, much further across our organization, we have got ESG advocates and working groups across all topics, all business functions really striving to become a greener and more equitable society. If I look at the business technology function as an example, they're looking at how they can reduce our electronic carbon footprint whilst increasing our productivity. This has not been driven by senior management here in the U.K. [ Yang Chen ] in Singapore is leading the biztech in ESG working group. And this is a product -- these are his initiatives. It's the working group that he is driving. So it's just yet another example of our employees on the ground, driving the initiatives from their ideas from the ground up.

Jo, it makes me proud to be at Page. Let me summarize the challenge of equipping the global workforce to deal with climate change. I mean it's already being faced today and we have our part. As a large business, we're driving down our operational carbon emissions to be net zero by 2026. We're also playing a significant role in helping society to overcome structural issues, preventing minority groups accessing and maintaining paid employment. Paid employment changes people's lives and creates opportunities. And only by removing barriers to employment today will businesses and their employees be ready to face a dramatically different world tomorrow. I would now like to hand over to Olly Harris.

Hello, everyone. My name is Olly Harris, and I'm the Global Managing Director for Page Outsourcing. I've been at Page for just over a year now, having previously spent over 20 years with the Robert Walters Group, the last 10 of which as CEO of Resource Solutions, the outsourcing arm of Robert Walters. Why Page, I guess, is the obvious question. For me, quite simply, it was down to the opportunity. I've always admired this brand from afar and believe it has the potential to make a significant impact in the recruitment outsourcing world, given just how well positioned it is to excel in this space. So to have the chance to lead this brand, organically grow it and hopefully play my part in building out a market-leading outsourced business underpinned by the wider PageGroup infrastructure is simply a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Clearly, I am there for 1 of the areas of investment that PageGroup has focused on. And I'm personally delighted to be here at such an exciting time in the outsourced recruitment industry and hopefully playing a pivotal role as we continue to grow this exciting brand within PageGroup. The second question could be why now for PageGroup. And I asked myself exactly the same question before accepting this role. The simple answer is that strategically, the timing works perfectly. What I mean by this is that after every significant economic shock, the outsourcing market takes off, mainly as a result of the agility, cost effectiveness and speed at which outsourcing delivers scale for clients. Add to this, the recent investments made by the group in technology and data, its general positioning in the market with a strong global footprint, underpinned by a network of shared service centers and the future looks very bright indeed for Page Outsourcing. And if I look back on my year 1 observations, this positivity is certainly reflected in our performance. Our sales pipeline has grown throughout the year. A lot of hard work has been undertaken. The wins are starting to flow through, and the outlook is positive. Given that outsourcing often causes confusion within the recruitment sector, I will start by explaining in a little more detail what it is we do and highlight just how complementary outsourcing is within PageGroup. As I'm sure you are all aware, the 3 recruiting brands within PageGroup focus heavily on working directly with their end clients. What you may not know is that outsourcing really focuses ongoing in the main, on site and owning all of the clients' needs. Importantly, a lot of roles are filled through non-agency channels. These are roles that agencies never get a chance to see, such as internal mobility, where clients move people around internally; referrals, where colleagues refer people into the client; or direct recruitment, where a client may post a job themselves or use their own LinkedIn license to source a candidate. The fantastic thing is that with Page Outsourcing, it now gives Page the opportunity for the first time to really monetize those non-agency channels. So for those clients who have chosen to outsource their recruitment, they would expect 1 brand, for example, Page Outsourcing, as you can see on the slide, to own all of their recruitment. We normally work with these clients to agree the recruitment strategy, agree the appropriate sourcing channels and then execute on the client's behalf. Mature buyers of this service may fill around 90% of their hiring through these non-agency channels. So as you can see, Page Outsourcing manages to bring incremental fees into the group. And this is why I feel it complements our other brands so well. Also, not only do we monetize those non-agency channels, but we also manage to monetize the agency channels by owning the preferred supplier list on behalf of our clients. This means that no matter who makes a placement with the client, Page Outsourcing will still receive a fee for that placement. In short, when our competitors place candidates through Page Outsourcing, we still receive a fee. Running on the bottom of the slide, you'll see some examples of current clients that work with Page Outsourcing. To bring a couple of examples to life, the first one being an example of RPO light, sometimes called RPO on demand. where a client of ours needed to urgently hire over 100 really hard-to-fill IT tech roles. They could have engaged multiple agencies, had multiple negotiations, multiple briefings, multiple CVs and invoices or they could have picked 1 partner to own all their roles, and that is exactly what they did through Page Outsourcing. We deployed a dedicated team to own all the roles as well as the roles we could not fill ourselves. As a result, we then own the entire supply chain. For the client, not only do they have 1 partner, they have 1 legal contract, 1 invoice and are able to maximize their economies of scale by channeling all their needs through 1 partner. Another example was a recent win in North America. The client has well over 1,000 contract workers but limited control over which agencies to use. There was limited visibility over pay rates, understanding of agency markups or margins, no reporting and a lack of systems with which to process the workers. The hiring managers were also complaining because there was no knowledge being shared with them. The end result was the need to deploy an MSP, managed service provider, and a vendor management solution, or VMS. Page outsourcing won this opportunity and are currently deploying a team of 17. We are in the process of plugging in an external piece of technology to integrate with their current HR systems, which is Workday, which will then enable us to have complete control and visibility of all their nonpermanent spend. These are just 2 examples of the type of work that Page Outsourcing is now focused on. The outsourced recruitment market continues to grow. While statistics are scarce, staffing industry analysts are probably the best at tracking this sector, and they have the market growing around 18.8% per annum. The data does not yet cover the COVID years of 2020, '21. But if anything, the outsourcing market has increased during this time due to the flexibility and agility that it offers to clients. It is a very exciting market to be part of, to be investing in and to be going after. Page Outsourcing has real clarity of the 3 products it is offering: full RPO and MSP solutions, where you are tied with the client for up to 3 years; RPO light or on-demand solutions, which are really popular at the moment, offering real agility; and finally, outsourcing consultancy services, making full use of the group's internal expertise in all things related to recruitment, for example, from EVP to well-being and from D&I to statement of works. We are also well positioned as a company to perform successfully in the outsourcing sector, in part due to our global footprint, allowing us to deliver multi-country solutions, but also due to the fact that we can deliver both RPO and MSP, helping to join up the client's talent needs. Our RPO offering is 1 joined-up global solution, providing our clients with the transparency and consistency globally that they require. The significant back-office infrastructure spend we have made in recent years in technology, transitioning IT to the cloud and the creation of a network of shared service centers has further strengthened our position. With all this investment already complete, coupled with a strong company culture, it makes us well suited to large-scale outsourcing needs. This culture and the PageGroup approach has really impressed me personally. Whether it's the company's approach to D&I or even just collaborative teamwork, it truly is a professional positive company to be part of. A really exciting time indeed. We have had a great year. A lot of foundations have been laid. A lot of client-facing work has been performed. The outlook is positive. I look forward to taking any questions at the end of the presentations. But for now, I'll pass you across to Eamon Collins, our Chief Customer Officer, for an update on our technology and data initiatives.

My name is Eamon Collins. I'm Chief Customer Officer of PageGroup. In my time here at Page, which runs to just under 15 years, recruitment has seen large amounts of change. Running our marketing teams globally has given me a ringside seat to some of the fastest parts of that change. Expectations and behaviors of our customers has evolved. My role was created at the start of 2021, as we drive towards a different relationship with our customers. We see the value for them and us in building long-term relationships, driven by data, utilizing technology alongside what remains at the heart of that relationship, the human element, where we see Page adding greatest value on behalf of the customer, but also for us as a business. Avoiding the drag towards being transactional, our focus is on how we as a business continue to develop our systems, processes and products differently from right now. So what is the context of where we operate as a business? We meet our candidates' expectations of a low-friction experience to apply for jobs. This drives volume, which risks driving a low-quality transactional relationship. So we also use matching technology to allow people to self-qualify their applications, driving relevance of what they applied for. We've also seen existing trends heightened by the pandemic, an ongoing war for talent, with workforce and people at the center of discussions on the future prospects in most businesses. Often, the most sought-out candidates are waiting to be found, less active in applying for roles. It's critical that we build relationships with them before they are on the market. We need to be efficient at the point of transaction in order to maintain productivity. We need to prove and drive long-term value in our relationships with our customers. To do that, information and integration is critical for current success and future growth. We started this journey 9 years ago with our NextGen website. We understood the importance of single, global platforms for efficiency and effectiveness. We understood how building relationships for the long term with both candidate and clients would be critical, adding Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot capability. We understood how access to data drives better decisions, whether that is automated or as a source of differentiation in the hands of our people. They need to be empowered to make better or faster decisions. Customer Connect is our core operating system, with Salesforce at its heart. We had Global Systems before in PRS, but across multiple instances, giving limited opportunity to update. Customer Connect, like the other core components of our system, is a single global platform, allowing us to drive change, evolution and response to market demand effectively and efficiently. Our integrated suite of tools uses AI, data and a great user experience to do more of the heavy lifting on behalf of our consultants, making us an attractive employer and leaving them to focus on what they do best, building human relationships. For the rest of my presentation today, I'm going to be focusing on the customer journey and the tools we have deployed to enhance it. Before I do, there is a final element of context. I want to outline the customer framework we now have in place across Page. We are committed to taking our business on a journey of new thinking around customer. Initially, the program is focused on building out our customer fluency, deploying the capability of our intelligence and insight tools. Core measures are in place to widen and deepen existing client relationships as well as insight into satisfaction with what we deliver. Each of our leaders globally is committed to and measured on their delivery against this framework. Over time, we will grow the reach of the framework to look at our service proposition in line with customer demand as well as building out the technology platform to deliver it. From the start of the year, we've seen a significant uptick in our customer focus. This is not just lip service, but a true culture shift that underpins and drives getting the most out of the platforms I'm about to take you through. Ultimately, to drive return, this shift is not about technology. That is only an enabler. It is about a focus on the customer experience we deliver, be that candidate, client or our own consultants. There is a constant hum of promises around technology being deployed across our sector. I want to show you that for us, this is more than talk or ambition. I will give you a brief demonstration of how Customer Connect and Page Insights are delivering today to over 85% of our fee earners, with the remaining markets of France and LatAm scheduled to go live in 2022. We believe that all of our people operating on a high-performing system with a single customer view will contribute towards our goal of shifting productivity, allowing us to drive growth by means other than just head count. I will demonstrate our technology with journeys that walk you through on-screen sequences from the point of view of candidates, clients, consultants and Page leaders. Meet our candidate. She is already active on our website, reaching us through our recruitment media partnerships or via our deployment on the Google ad platform. We have over 61 million visits per year to our 58 websites deployed across our single global platform. Every action on the site informs us even anonymously and allows us to build a profile of Anna. We deliver real-time site personalization, giving Anna a more meaningful, useful and helpful experience. It's what we all see and use daily on websites outside of recruitment. We are bringing that experience to Page users. We are using AI and machine learning to build thousands of journeys to meet our customer needs. We are not second guessing where users should be guided next. Those journeys are triggered by the actions of the customer themselves using Thunderhead technology and delivered through marketing cloud e-mail and SMS channels as well as the website. This personalization engine makes what we do scalable across our geographies and specialisms. Anna is 1 of 40,000 applications Page will receive in a 24-hour period. Our integrated system, Customer Connect, displays her application to the consultant working the role, highlighting her relevance to the job description. The consultant can see and review all applications and progress Anna through the workflow, adding her to the shortlist, alongside other relevant candidates from our existing database found using the integrated search tool. Emma is working the role on behalf of Page's client. Emma can review all of her key tasks for the day, and she has visibility on the status of all open jobs she's working. She can see the pipeline of talent on each role and the stage each candidate is at in the process to fully brief her client on progress. This end-to-end view of her sales pipeline improves visibility on forecasting, understanding shortages in the talent pool and allowing Page to focus efforts in candidate sourcing to fill the future pipeline. In parallel, Emma is looking at our future pipeline of job activity. Using Page Insights, she can identify sectors and clients where she should focus her efforts. She uses Page Insights to drive discussions with her clients on their recruitment needs and likely levels of competition for talent and pain points to meet their needs. Integrated Pardot client-marketing campaigns are at the same time flagged in Emma's console for follow up. She can access details on which of her clients engage with the campaigns and has visibility on points of interest to call them about. With no direct input from Emma, Anna is placed in a candidate life cycle. Triggered campaigns and reminders give her the right information at the right time to make the most of her relationship with Page and help her be successful in her search for a new role. This process automation built into Customer Connect takes away some of the manual tasks previously done by our consultants and allows them to focus on talking in more depth with our customers. Data integration on Customer Connect acts as a single source of truth, which means our clients can be kept informed and updated by consultants across our network, both on live opportunities but also to further widen and deepen our relationship. We can understand where their interests lie and where opportunity exists for us to service their needs better, including painlessly referring recruitment needs in other countries. Page Insights builds a picture of the latest market pressures around key roles for them. We work with clients to build up key areas of focus for their talent pipeline that drives their business. At the same time, we add value delivering broader engagement via triggered and automated campaigns, allowing our teams to have the right conversations with clients at the right time, adding value with meaningful insights and content. Our Page Insights dashboards give up-to-date visibility to our leadership team, be that managing operational effectiveness for real-time performance of their teams or reviewing client and sector trend analysis to understand where to focus future effort. In addition, we've coupled our data from Customer Connect with powerful external data sets to drive market insights. It helps us identify trends across the economy to inform our strategy and to drive customer value as a trusted partner, helping our clients plan their talent needs. As said, there's a hum of promise on technology in our sector. And hopefully, the brief skim across the surface of our platform has shown you that we are far advanced in our journey already. But I would say that. Let's hear from our partners on their assessment. And what do our own people say about the new system? [Presentation]

We've demonstrated the importance of our integrated systems to what we do now and how it meets customer needs. What about the future? Having a single global platform is critical in allowing us to scale opportunity faster. It will allow rapid rollout of new process and models. It drives effective and efficient deployment of new functionality as standard for all markets. We only need to deploy once. An example we've given before is the seamless addition of over 200 changes to our websites in a year. A single platform also serves as an incubator for innovation, whether that is deploying data labs to examine how data can drive activity and relationships or the use of automation to take away mundane tasks or deliver information to the enabled super recruiter. And building our system around the Salesforce platform allows us to benefit from the best of user experience development, not just from recruitment, but across all sectors. It puts the customer at the heart of what we do and allows us to build future apps to address ever-evolving client and candidate demand.

You have seen throughout the presentations today how we've continued to invest strategically in the business over the past 18 months and how this has positioned us, not only for the great results we've seen so far in '21, but as we enter '22 and beyond. Clearly, some of the results we've delivered this year have benefited from an element of pent-up demand, which we believe we've maximized but, nonetheless, the recovery is continuing at pace. There is no doubt that the current recovery is different to that experience previously coming out of the global financial crisis. However, we've also invested significantly over the last 10 years to change the structure and the footprint of the group. In 2012, when we first announced our vision to focus on our 5 large high potential geographic markets of Greater China, Germany, Latin America, Southeast Asia and the U.S., they represented just 12% of the group. Today, they now represent 40%. And of course, the group is much bigger. More recently, strategic initiatives such as our new high potential disciplines category of Technology and Health Care and Life Sciences as well as our experienced hire program and Page Outsourcing, all mean we're better aligned to the current market needs. Alongside this, the transformation of both our technology platforms through cloud provision and enterprise-grade software implementations and optimized operational support structures place us in an excellent position to maximize current market conditions. I'll move into the RPO and MSP market through our Page Outsourcing brand allows us to tap into a new area of the market, using the power of the Page brand and broad geographic and discipline coverage. In addition, further leveraging the back-office investments we've made in recent years should ensure delivery for this brand will, in time, have a conversion rate in line with the wider group. Our focus on our technology, as you've seen in action today, gives us a competitive advantage and is a clear differentiator in the market, being able to offer greater insights to our clients and candidates. Our strategic progress on D&I and ESG makes Page an attractive place to work and is bringing the best out of our people, all in line with our purpose of creating opportunities to change lives. Our experienced hire program is not only bringing tangible financial benefits to the group in terms of productivity but is also bringing softer benefits to our existing fee earner population. These initiatives and strategic investments have helped drive our recovery this year and makes us confident that we can achieve faster growth and higher conversion rates than in the previous cycle. During 2020, we made the bold decision to not actively reduce our headcount too severely, instead looking to retain the platform so that we were in the best place to recover. This was done at a time of significant macroeconomic uncertainty. The scale of the headcount reduction was far less than in the GFC of 2009. We're clearly benefiting from the evolution of the recruitment market with video interviewing and remote working increasing significantly the time to hire and therefore, increasing our consultants -- sorry, decreasing, and therefore, increasing our consultants' productivity. Remote working has also increased the pool of candidates available to us, with candidates being willing to take jobs further away from home and clients being more willing to accept remote working. All of our markets are now candidates short. This means clients' internal recruitment functions are our biggest competitor are less able to fill the vacancies themselves and as such, become more reliant on external recruiters to complete the hiring. Candidate scarcity also drives up fee rates, further increasing our gross profit. Candidate shortages are also driving more wage inflation in the current cycle than we've seen since the global financial crisis. Wage inflation benefits us as the value of the role placed increases. Finally, a consequence of having to make hiring decisions faster to land candidates facilitated by video interviewing is that the number of placements each consultant can make has increased. Our investment in Technology, as Eamon outlined earlier, means we're also better placed to cope with this demand. In summary, we strongly believe the decisions and actions we took during the pandemic have positioned the group to recover more quickly and take market share. The markets we're focused on have strong fee rates and huge potential for growth. This highly profitable growth continues to drive our strong cash-generative business model, which should enable us to make further supplementary cash returns to shareholders in the future. So that concludes the formal part of the presentation today. All of the presenters are now on hand for a live Q&A session, apart from Anthony Thompson, who's based in Australia, so we let him go to bed. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand you over to Eamon, who will moderate this session. Eamon, over to you.

Thanks, Steve. Hello, everyone. I'm going to jump straight in and go straight back to Steve actually with a question that's common from quite a few participants. Why have you been able to outperform the market so much this year? And how sustainable do you think that is?

Well, I think the strategic investments that have just been mentioned, I mean, particularly, I think the hiring of 1,000 experienced hires, they hit the ground running quicker. And that's important as the market's picked up. So I think there's that. I think, as I mentioned, there was a bit of a pent-up demand, which we were able to take advantage of when I think others -- other competitors were still recovering. I think there is a high level of staff attrition, which means that there's a lot of people changing jobs but, at the same time, there's a lot of demand as a result of those vacancies, and there are candidate shortages. And so we've also managed to take advantage of that. And one of the key pieces of feedback we've been getting from the new technology that we've been rolling out is it's enabled our consultants to access candidates that otherwise they may not have been able to access. So it's giving us an advantage in being able to find candidates to fill roles in a candidate-short market. So I mean, there's a multiple answer, I could probably go on as to why we've managed to take advantage of it. We didn't cut too deep when it first hit us back in Q2 of last year. We retained all of our experienced people. We kept the platform. We've got a greater diversity than we had before in terms of geography and discipline. I think that helps us, particularly with disciplines like Technology and so on doing well. So there's a multitude of answers, but I think we were well positioned to outperform our competitors when the market recovered, and it has and is.

Thank you, Steve. This one is going to Kelvin. It's from Anvesh Agrawal at Morgan Stanley. And his question is your fee rate is well above 2019, but headcount is below. That displays productivity. However, how much of that is driven by fee rates and wage inflation?

Yes. Good afternoon, everybody. Certainly, some of it is going to be related to fee rates. But generally, our fee rates tend to only move by about 10% in absolute terms, so 2 -- roughly 2 or 3 percentage points up and down as you go through a cycle. There's a lot of other things that drive productivity. So some of it will be wage inflation and salaries. That's quite different depending to the markets. I think it's quite niche specific in certain roles, particularly ones, as you probably expect, in things like digital or parts of technology, information security. One of the other points, Nick mentioned when he was talking about experienced hires. So actually 2 elements there. Lower staff attrition. And so actually keeping people for longer when they're more productive, but also hiring in people that can become productive earlier because they already know something about recruitment. And probably the final point I'd make, which is probably the thing that's making the biggest difference, is the actual number of placements each consultant can make. And so the speed that people can recruit. One of the things that, obviously, we've experienced over the last 18 months is the ability to recruit people via video using Teams or all of the other different video techniques. And it just means, particularly in Michael Page, where historically, you'd have 3, 4 interviews. You'd have to get people to come into the office and do them. It's going through much quicker now. And so you can speed through it. And as always, at this point, when you're very candidate short, you're going to be encouraging the clients to move quickly or they're likely to lose the best candidates to other recruiters or to other offers. Back to you, Eamon.

Thanks, Kelvin. Okay. Next question is from Matthew Lloyd at HSBC. And rather weirdly, I'm going to ask this one of myself. So I suspect today is about the business you have built and what it's capable of, but Robert Walters were in the press today saying demand incoming vacancies slowed in November. Is this what you experienced? Are there any other nuances or details we should consider? So yes, we spotted that comment coming out on a day like we've got today and actually gave us the chance to flex the muscles of our Page Insights product. And that includes data both from our own systems and external sources. The trend we see is not the same. Actually, we tracked over -- I think the Walters figure was around 32,000 vacancies for professionals. As you figured, we've tracked for that month is actually 126,000 vacancies. And our data is [ digital ] from about 100,000-plus corporate websites, plus over 200 of the leading job boards as well as our own sources. And actually, what we've seen is rather than a slowdown, we've seen a continued acceleration in the metrics around recruiting. And our pipeline looks pretty strong. So that would be our kind of answer to that question. So I'm going to move on to the fourth question. This one is going to Nick, and it's from Anvesh Agrawal again at Morgan Stanley. And his question is, can you comment on supply of experienced consultants in the market? Presumably, your competition is also catching up.

Okay. So thanks, Eamon. I think as I tried to put across in the presentation, what we did was a moment-in-time opportunity. You either took the opportunity or you missed it. And we took the opportunity when it presented itself, which we've never seen before, and it may never come again. We have lost people, but typically not to the competition. We tend to lose people into talent acquisition roles with organizations like Amkor or Amazon, organizations like that. And what we have been able to do, because of bringing on the onboard and the development of Page Outsourcing, is now offer that talent acquisition, that 180 role, if you like, within our own business. So we've had 8, 9, 10 people in the U.K. alone this year, who may well have gone to TA roles in other organizations that we've been able to keep and move across into Page Outsourcing instead.

Thanks, Nick. Olly, I've got a couple of questions on Page Outsourcing for you. Let me just find them in the console. And these questions come from Kean Marden at Jefferies. So the first question is your win rate in year 1 pitches was just over 10%. Where should this be in the medium term? Second question was, has fee compression and outsourcing started to reverse in the tight labor markets? And the third is how easy are you -- how easy are you finding it to resource the rapid growth?

Thanks, Eamon, and thanks, Kean, as well. Three questions there I counted. I'll try and remember all 3, and I'll take them in reverse order, if I may. The first one was around the challenges of headcount. And then I'm sure we're all up to date with what we're seeing in the press. I think, in fact, there was a post on LinkedIn last week the most in-demand role, is it a recruitment consultant? I think there was 300,000 open vacancies, that was the stat going around LinkedIn. So yes, there are challenges out there. However, I think we're in a really, really strong position to address those. And I think there's 4 key reasons why. And you've heard throughout the presentation this afternoon about the 1,000 key heads. That means we have people up to speed already to support our clients as opposed to then looking to bring people on board. That's a big one. Secondly, we, as Page Outsourcing, have made some strong hires within that 1,000. Our Head of implementation, for example, our Head of Solutions, for example, have over 30 years experience between them in RPO and MSP. They bring people with them. So I think the experienced hires has some knock-on effects as well. Thirdly, let's not lose sight of PageGroup that we are part of, and that has 2 benefits. One, we can move resource internally. In the example I shared during my slides earlier, we needed 3 extra people to go live. The support we had from the local MD meant we could move 3 people internally. So it was great to have that ability, that engine room behind us. And fourthly, as Nick just said a moment ago, the career opportunity. Where recruitment consultancies do lose people, there is a percentage that go in-house or on-site. Page Outsourcing is now a vehicle to offer that. And we've had deployed people to Unilever, to Visa, to BT as some examples that come to mind. There's also, Kean, in certain geographies, places like the U.K. legislation that says where we win from an incumbent or from the client directly, those current TA people move across by law to us. So those are the 4 reasons why I think we are really, really well placed, and 3 of those are pertinent just to Page in comparison to our competitors. So yes, market is challenging for everyone. But within that, I think we are really well placed to help our clients. Second question, if I remember, was the fee rates. I suppose the good news is now the market is focused more on actually bringing people in, the ability to deliver. And we're now having sensible conversations with procurement teams who are focused on our ability to deliver, but simply because the opportunity cost of not having the right people in the end client is actually far greater than a haircut on the actual fees itself. So the good news is there's sensible conversations taking place around the fees. And I think the last question then was around the win rate? Well spotted on the number there. Currently, just a little above 10% was your comment. We have to take into account, one, we are a newer entrant into the market. And obviously, we need to get the examples, the case studies, the credibilities. Two, because of our global footprint, we are going after opportunities all around the world. Therefore, we are stronger in some geographies in some sectors. So that's the average win rate. We will be higher in certain areas, obviously, as a result of that. And as we get more credibility, our bid-no-bid also becomes more ruthless internally. But I would expect to answer the question in the medium term, which I believe you're asking somewhere in the region of 20% would be the medium term there. I think that's all 3, Eamon, unless I've missed anything.

Thanks, Olly. Yes, very good. Well done. Steve, back to you. This is another question from Anvesh to Morgan Stanley. You have the vision of reaching GBP 1 billion of GP -- sorry, GBP 1 billion of GP, GBP 250 million -- GBP 200 million to GBP 250 million of EBITDA and 10,000 headcount in 2018. Any update on this?

Sure, obviously, that's going to be very dependent on the market conditions we have going forward. I suppose the flippant answer would be if we could maintain what we achieved in November as a growth rate, it won't be long. So the reality is we are seeing improved growth rates. The most successful month we've had in terms of percentage growth rate against 2019 was November, which is obviously the month we've just finished. We've got good momentum. I'm sure, there will be some challenges in -- somewhere in our 37 markets next year, but I maintain the diversity geographically that we've got and by discipline that we've got makes us pretty resilient to local issues in certain markets, with others being able to pick up the pace hopefully. So it really is dependent on how much this momentum continues and what sort of market conditions we get next year, but we are, going into next year, in really good shape, I think, with the right strategic investments. So you never know. It could be soon.

Great. Thanks, Steve. A question from Matthew Lloyd on D&I. So coming to you, Sarah. Does D&I help the business grow faster as well as make the business fairer?

Thank you, Eamon. Good afternoon, everyone. Yes, I think it does. I mean, we of course measure and report on the impact of all the programs and initiatives we're rolling out. we focus on attraction, development, support, promotion and ultimately, retention. We've invested heavily both in our continuous listening program and also tapped D&I resources across all our regions. And ultimately, we want it to impact engagement and increase engagement, and that has a direct impact on productivity, performance and retention. Ultimately, it's the -- there are moral, ethical and commercial reasons why this is such an important area as well as it being the right thing to do. So absolutely, yes, I think it does.

Thanks, Sarah. And Nick, I might start with you on this, but maybe Steve and others might want to chip in as well. So this is a question that comes from James Rose at Barclays. What can you do to improve consultant retention, firstly? And secondly, with the technology now available to support productivity, is it easier or more difficult for a star consultant to leave and set up their own boutique?

Okay. Well, I'll attempt question 1 maybe and then I think probably a question 2 in terms of technology. There might be some others that might want to comment on that. But certainly, on question 1, I think the key thing that we find is actually listening to our employees. So we've introduced a continuous listening program that we've had in place now for 2 or 3 years, and we get regular feedback. We have an opportunity to temperature check around what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong, what we need to improve, more or less of, et cetera. Then having asked the question, you need to listen. And then having listened, you need to take action. And I think it varies by market. Certain markets that we're in, people want a level of flexibility in working from home, others are looking for us to support mental health, others looking at lifestyle benefits. And this continuing flow of feedback from our employees allows us to address those things and design an organization that they want to be part of. Our employees have always come to us for the opportunity to grow a career and not just have a job in recruitment, and we've always delivered that well. But what we're able to do now is tailor the offering and tweak around the edges. And clearly, technology plays a part of that. I mean you presented on, Eamon, just a moment ago, I mean, we are putting tools in the hands of our consultants that they don't have in other organizations. So it comes back to this question of, "If I decided I want a career in recruitment and this is what I want to do, which organization is best place to give me that?" And I think if you listen to the presentations that we've just run through in terms of technology, in terms of culture, D&I, some of the elements that we already had in terms of internal growth and opportunity to earn is a really attractive cocktail when we go to market.

Great. Maybe I will kind of answer part of the question myself around technology. And it's -- I suppose the -- there is plenty of technology out there that comments to productivity and helping people set their own businesses. But actually, what we do see as a differentiator in terms of the systems that we put in or how we think we're working better than others is that we are working with global leading technology partners. So we're trying to bring the best in from outside recruitment into recruitment. So it's not just standard systems that everybody can have. The differentiation is that -- and hopefully you've seen that from the endorsements we've got from our partners that was in the presentation. And it really is what we're trying to put in place is best-in-class user interface technology, particularly AI and the scale of AI that we can deploy with those technologies. And the key is that we are putting in place global platforms. So it gives us an opportunity for efficiency, so we can kind of test, learn, refine what we do. It's an opportunity for growth. It serves as an incubator where we can kind of test out new technologies, new methods and new models. And actually, we can come and then respond to customer demand and how that evolves. I think you can only do that on those large-scale platforms. If you are just setting up from a piece of technology that's off the shelf per se, you're not going to get those opportunities, whereas we think we've got a platform rather than just buying a standard piece of technology. Okay.

Yes, maybe a couple -- I'll just add some other things as well. I echo everything Nick said and what Eamon just said as well. But even listening to them around what our offices should look like and creating an environment that people want to come into work to enjoy. And clearly, we had Plan B announced yesterday, but -- which will impact things. But it surprises me just how high with the proportion of people coming back to the office has been around the world. And when I talk to a lot of our clients, they're not achieving anywhere near. I was at a D&I investment dinner last night, and they were talking about, "Yes, we've got as high as 50% of our people back in our offices." And well, in ours, it's been as high as 85%, 90%. So if you can make the office and the culture a really good inclusive place to work, then people feel motivated. It's fun. They enjoy it. They've got their tools that they can use, the technology at their fingertips. It's great. And in terms of the question -- or the part of the question that was on the end of that with regards to technology, does it stop people going off and setting up their own boutiques, I think that's a thing of the past. We really don't lose many people to going home and setting up in their living room or something with a computer and cracking on with the database. That was something that was happening a lot 20, 30 years ago. It doesn't really happen now. As Nick said earlier, if we're going to lose someone, it's usually to a big corporate that's offering an attractive brand and attractive salary and everything else to come to work for them. So I'm less worried about them stealing off to set up their own company.

Thanks, Steve. Jo, one for you on ESG. Where will the focus of our efforts be in ESG going forward?

So 2022 is going to be really exciting for us. We're going to build on the success that we had in 2021. We are going to continue our partnerships that we started with our suppliers and our clients to really home in on the social impact work with them. The central team is going to look at the science-based target initiative and work out and roll out that program going forward. Now when I look much longer term, we're going to start looking towards embedding that changing 1 million lives. We've done this social impact work for 20, 30, 40 years. It's always been part of our DNA, but we really need to roll this forward and really bring in articulated targets for each country, each business and make sure that every single 1 of our staff members can roll this out and know that they're part of changing lives going forward.

Brilliant. Thank you, Jo. Steve, a question coming to you from Andy Grobler at Credit Suisse. Historically, internal promotion was seen as a key part of the culture. How do you maintain that culture given the new focus on experienced hires?

Sure. And I think that's still the case. We've clearly bought some people in like Olly, who have unique experience we didn't have internally and therefore, really couldn't have promoted somebody into that role. It was expertise we needed to import. We still promote people on a meritocratic basis. And the majority of the promotions will be people that have been here a number of years. And in fact, just earlier today, we provided a managing director in Belgium to be responsible for our Page Personnel business. And I rang him to congratulate him after 16 years in the group, something he'd always strived for. So that's not going to change. I mean we'll be predominantly organically grown. I think the one thing that we don't have to do as much these days, and that's probably fortunate with COVID in our background. And that is we were, as we were trying to create the footprint that we wanted around the world, we were having to export a lot of people to markets around the world. It's expensive to do that, obviously, and it's very disruptive personally to a lot of people's lives. But what we're intending to do or our long-term intention in all of these markets is to have local people managing them. So Chinese Managing Directors in China and so on. And we're really now starting to hit that target everywhere. We promoted several ladies in China, which make up the larger proportion of the workforce there now to managing director, because we've been in Mainland China over 10 years. We've done the same in India. So a lot of our markets are reaching that level of maturity where people have been around long enough and are being promoted up through the business to become the leaders of those countries. So I think that's a real advantage as well, like I said, particularly with COVID in the background.

Right. Thanks. One more, [ because we have the currencies ] of a question to myself. So does your data allow you to see where demand is changing for skill sets? And can you use that to keep your business exposed to the areas with the best demand and supply? And that comes from Matthew Lloyd at HSBC. So in short terms, yes. So we have a couple of products that are built in the Page Insights platform. One is market insights. One is client insights. We can actually see those -- the data that's coming from our own systems, but also from a number of key external sources that gives us market trend. We can match those 2 together and understand where there are opportunities for us to grow, where there are opportunities for us to expand our capabilities. It also puts in the hands of our Page leaders as well as some -- and our consultants what they can share with our clients and how they can talk to the clients about how demand will drive the capability of us to fill their recruitment needs and what we do and actually just to kind of measure where we're best to deploy our resources for best return. So yes, Page Insights, we do see as being a very powerful tool that is good for us in terms of market planning, but also good in terms of market differentiation for our consultants in front of our clients. Okay. And we're just coming towards the end now. So one final question for you, Steve, which is on high potential disciplines. And the question is simple. How large do you think they could become? And are there any others that could be classified as such going forward?

I mean, first to say is we've just classified 3 in effect because, I think, Health Care and Life Sciences is certainly more than 1. There was an SIA report that was sent to me this morning on technology recruitment in the professional arena around the world. It's the biggest discipline there is in the world, markets like Japan and the U.S. and then the U.K. absolutely massive, and we're scraping the surface. And although it's our second biggest discipline at Page, it should be our biggest and it should be a lot bigger than it is. So I really think we've got a lot to do in that arena. I'm not too concerned about the next 5 or 10 years in terms of getting anywhere near what we should be achieving. We have less than 1% of the world's market, and it's worth literally hundreds of billions. So particularly when you talk about contracting rather than just perm. So right now and probably for the medium term, the disciplines that we've identified already are more than enough. Healthcare and Life Sciences, if you combine the 2, is the second biggest discipline in the professional arena. So I think we've got plenty to do, and I want to continue just to focus on those.

Right. We've actually got one question that's just snuck in under the wire from Andy Grobler at Credit Suisse. Kelvin, I'm going to push this 1 towards you, if I can. How much of the productivity gains generated in the past 2 years could be sustained through cycle? Is it cyclical or structural?

Well, I think certainly fee rates have an element of cyclicality to them, as I mentioned earlier. And so they tend to move up and down by around 20%. I think there's an element of our strategy, which is structural in so far that, I think Steve alluded earlier or mentioned earlier, our large high potential markets generally have higher fee rates than the group average. So if I was to look at certainly Greater China, Southeast Asia, Germany and the U.S., the fee rates in those would all be above the group average. And so our structural move into those large high potential markets, despite cyclicality, would drive up the overall group rate. I believe the move into video interviewing and therefore, the speed to hire, I think that's structural. I don't think we've seen that come through and hold. I think there will always be an element of wage inflation that comes in at times of candidate shortages. But I also see that over the last -- at least the last 10 years, there's been a greater and greater specialization of roles. And the more specialized roles get, the more specialist people you need, the more those people are going to be in demand, and that is going to drive wage inflation in those specific areas. I think it plays very well to what we've talked about with Healthcare and Life Sciences, with Technology more broadly out into data and digital. And so I think structurally, this is going to increase, particularly in the white collar qualified specialist roles, which is where we largely play around the world. And we talk about development. Contracting has become a bigger thing. And we have the first contracting license from Mainland China for multinationals, and we're looking to expand there. So there's a number of different areas where I think structurally, the group can maintain this. But fundamentally, we will need some macro help along the way.

Thank you, Kelvin, and thank you to everyone else. As there are no more questions, I'm going to hand back to you, Steve, to conclude.

Excellent. Thank you, Eamon, and thank you, team. And then thank you, everybody that dialed into the call. I hope you found it informative and insightful. We've tried to keep it under the wire of 2 hours, which we've now done. So I'd finally like to take the opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and probably a well-earned break. So we'll talk to you all in the New Year. Thank you.