Randstad: Demonstrating Success in Learning

International staffing firm Randstad Holding, which connects approximately 250,000 provisional personnel to businesses in 17 countries every day, touts the motto, “We put people to work.” A corollary of that adage might be, “We prepare people for work.” The organization has provided professional learning programs for more than a million temporary employees, as well as 14,000 internal staff members. These externally focused educational offerings are a selling point for the more than 100,000 corporate clients in Randstad’s databases, said Vince Eugenio, Ph.D., chief learning officer of Randstad North America and global head of e-learning for the company.

“Our reach is phenomenal,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I came to Randstad. It’s not only for the internal challenge, but also working on the external challenge. It’s an interesting proposition: How do you provide services to the people you have working, as well as the clients who have these people working at their location? Many of these clients are Fortune 500 companies, but the bulk of them have 500 people or less. They don’t have training departments or the thought leadership around learning and development that the larger companies have, so the opportunity is absolutely huge.”

As a regional CLO and director of Randstad’s worldwide e-learning programs, Eugenio’s responsibilities are segmented into two areas. The first is internal learning and development for Randstad North America, which includes operations and sales training, leadership development, succession management and performance management. On the external side, he handles talent development—the people the company puts to work—and e-learning, which is offered as a value-add to the staffing services provided to corporate customers. “Even though we do make some money on that, it’s not the primary reason why we do it,” Eugenio said. “It’s really built to support a concrete differentiator between us and our competition by providing these learning services.”

Since he came to the company five years ago, Eugenio has worked to drive a more cost-effective and expedient learning and development function for Randstad. One of the things he accomplished was a staff reduction of more than 75 percent. “When I first came to Randstad, we had about 67 people in the training organization,” he said. “I was able to move that 67 down to 14, which is where we are right now. That’s approximately a $3 million savings on salaries, just in driving efficiencies and reduction of staff.”