Global Corporation Finds its Heart

Written by Jan Jaben-Eilon Wednesday, October 26 2011

Snapshot: David Arkless, president, corporate and government affairs, ManpowerGroup
David Arkless, president of corporate and government affairs for ManpowerGroup, is an expert on labor market trends and has widespread experience in helping countries develop their labor market strategies. As well as being a regular adviser to the U.S. Department of State and various European Union departments, Arkless serves as both board member and corporate committee member of the International Confederation of Private Employment Agencies, known as CIETT.

He manages ManpowerGroup’s strategic relationships with high-profile organizations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) where he is one of the founding members of the WEF’s Global Agenda Council on the skills gap. He supports partnerships with the European Policy Centre and the Clinton Global Initiative and is an ambassador for the Centre for Social Justice, an independent think tank based in the United Kingdom.

Arkless has been a campaigner in the fight to end human trafficking and is president of the board of End Human Trafficking Now! He has been at the forefront of ManpowerGroup’s involvement in ninemillion.org, a U.N. initiative to provide education to the nine million young refugees all over the world, as well as the company’s campaign to end human trafficking.

ManpowerGroup was the first company to sign the Athens Ethical Principles, which declare a zero tolerance policy for working with any entity that benefits in any way from human trafficking.

Womenetics: Your company was the first to sign the Athens Ethical Principles accord about human trafficking. Why is that, and what does that accord require your company to do?
David Arkless: There are two reasons we got involved. We were in the midst of rebranding ourselves. We wanted to project a better image and realized we needed to voice and state our vision, strategy, and values. We went to our employees and customers and asked them what our values were and they couldn’t answer. We realized we had a problem: We are in work force development, but we don’t stand for anything global. We decided that if we stand for helping people find a decent income and decent life, then we logically must be against the opposite.

We found three communities that fit: refugees, abused people who are outside the country of their origin against their will, and people who are trafficked and used in the sex trade.

One day I received a call from Queen Rania of Jordan. She asked, as the biggest global employer, what were we doing about human trafficking? I was completely unconscious about this problem and started researching it. I also realized that no one had mobilized the global corporate sector. We checked our supply chains, and we told our customers that it’s against the values of our company for them to hire prostitutes. We put together a set of principles. But I had to convince our board. I had to come up with a business reason to do this.

We measure our employee engagement. We wondered what would happen if we stood up for our values and not just raised money, but started projects with nonprofits and if we involved our employees. We questioned our employees about whether they liked the company, did they know and agree with our values, and whether they planned to stay with the company. We checked the retention calculations and found that people were two times as likely to stay with the company, and that impacts our return on investment. So I went to the board and shareholders and said working against human trafficking is not just the right and humane thing to do, it’s good business. And it saved us $46 million, half of which we will use to work against human trafficking. But I had to show a business case.

Then I became the special envoy from the business community to get other companies involved. I wrote to the top 1,000 companies and most ignored me. But the first day of the Ethical Principles, 10 companies signed up. Last week, after seven years, we have 14,000 companies signed. Once companies sign the principles, they are asked to go to their suppliers to get others to sign. I hope within five to six years, we will have more than two million companies.

Womenetics: Could you please explain the “supply chain” aspect of protecting workers?
Arkless: My company’s core business is to supply workers to other companies. For us, it’s very important to understand that an individual isn’t doing the work against his will. We interact with 18.5 million people a year. We check documentation, and then we had to go back to our suppliers in 90 countries to make sure their workers are not slave workers. We now buy only from companies that have signed the Athens Ethical Principles. Then we did something riskier. We went to our customers and said, “If you want us to bid on your business, sign the Athens Ethical Principles.”

Womenetics: How successful is this fight against human trafficking?
Arkless: We’ve had relative success, but I was stunned by corporate apathy. It’s hard to get driven through the corporate community. You have to give companies the tools to get the job done. But now it’s about to go viral in the corporate community.

Womenetics: Changing the subject for a minute, with the world’s economy under strain and with high employment in the United States, what are the labor market trends that you are seeing? Will the unemployed need to retrain?
Arkless: We have a global paradox involving demographics and where the economy is growing. Because of fertility rates, in the next 15 years, the European Union will lose 50 million workers. We know that will hit us, and we have to become more productive and improve the immigration policies. At the same time, we have 10-percent unemployment in Europe, and two million jobs are open. It’s the same in the United States. We have people without the right skills, so we’re building long-term unemployment. Some countries are doing well, like China and India, but not North and Central America nor Europe.

Jan Jaben-Eilon was a founding staff writer of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Since then, she has been the international editor of Advertising Age magazine and has written for such publications as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Journalism Review, and Consumer Reports. She is the author of soon-to-be-published (There is) Life After Cancer. Jan and her husband have homes in Atlanta and Jerusalem.