So all-in-all, I would say we think this is playing out as we would normally expect during a cycle but with the post-pandemic anomaly of a slow motion move of a cooling labor market. But the overall trend with the evolution of technology is always moving towards a higher skilled workforce and expectations then of increasing productivity levels of that higher skilled workforce. And I think that’s a general trend that we’ve seen over a number of years and now it’s not really any different.
Mark Marcon: Great, and then, Jonas, you’ve talked about your AI initiatives. Can you talk just a little bit more about like, what’s — now that we’ve, you know, had — basically a year anniversary in terms of ChatGPT, and exploring it. When you think out two years to three years, how much more efficient can your operations become, not just in terms of the shared-services, but also in the field from a recruiting, placement matching perspective?
Jonas Prising: Oh, that is actually one of the things we are quite excited about, because as you know, we’ve been on a multi-year journey of digital transformation, and although I’m certainly not an expert in AI, I’m learning as much as I can. And what I have learned is that you cannot apply AI unless you have a modern technology infrastructure. And we believe that we have a very modern technology infrastructure that we’ve implemented and continue to implement in this year as well, that is able to leverage not only back office and shared-services efficiencies using automation for repetitive tasks. But also providing our recruiters and our salespeople with the best tools that they need to do their jobs better, as well as providing superior candidate experiences to the people that we’re recruiting in Manpower, people we’re recruiting in Experis, or in talent solutions.
So we think the impact of AI can be quite substantial. I would say, it’s early days yet, and despite everything that we read in the papers, the actual effects of AI are yet to manifest themselves in a business environment. As an anecdote, the highest level of recruitment of AI skills, counterintuitively maybe, but maybe not, is coming from the financial services sector, which of course is a massive user of technology and continuing to make significant investments. So AI will give us great opportunities and we think we in particular are extremely well-placed because we are the only company or industry that is leveraging global platforms across all of our major geographies, one instance platforms. So once we have AI applied to a particular geography, we can quickly transfer those learnings into other geographies because we’re all operating in the same system.
Mark Marcon: Appreciate the answers. Thank you.
Jonas Prising: Thanks, Mark.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Josh Chan with UBS. Your line is open.
Josh Chan: Hi. Good morning, Jonas and Jack. Thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned that there’s no restructuring charge in the quarter, which I think is the first time in a while. And so is that timing related? Or should we read that to suggest that you’re satisfied with your organizational structure for the first time in a number of quarters? Thank you.
Jack McGinnis: Thanks, Josh. Yeah, I’d be happy to give a little more color on that. No — we weren’t pleased not to have restructuring charges. We look at restructuring charges very seriously. And when we do restructuring charges, they have to have sustainable permanent savings as part of the business case for those actions. And following 2023, we talked a lot about that and certainly we’ve taken significant actions in 2023. And at this stage, really I think we feel like we’ve got the right balance. I think, as we reflect on activity levels, you’ve heard us talk a lot about stability, we’re not seeing further dramatic step-downs in any of our major markets. And so with that, I think we feel like we have made appropriate adjustments based on these current trends, and we’ll continue to monitor that going forward.
So if the environment changes significantly, then of course we will take action and we’ll do what we need to do to preserve margin. But we are very, very focused on being ready for the upturn and I think we feel that we’ve made the appropriate adjustments and I think we’ve balanced that. We’re very focused on ensuring we have the right sales capabilities in the markets currently and that will be the way we continue to look at this going forward. So you know and I think the other item in terms of what we did [ring fence] (ph) was Proservia Germany. You know, as we said, that actually is going in line with our expectations slightly better actually in the first quarter, a little bit lower than we anticipated in terms of those charges. And you can see in the second quarter we’re estimating actually a lower impact on that run-off, as we go into the second quarter, and then it’ll be completed.
So that will be, and you can see that in the GP margin trend that I gave as well, but the benefits starting to come through as that business fully exits. And so I’d say, that’s a way to think about restructuring in some of the one-off items that we’ve talked about.
Josh Chan: Perfect, yeah, that’s encouraging. Thank you, Jack. And then I just wanted to ask about your confidence behind the improving rate of decline in the U.S. I guess, how much does that depend on Experis recognizing that there were some projects in Q1 perhaps but just wanted to get some color in terms of your confidence around trends continuing to get better in the U.S. Thank you.
Jonas Prising: Overall we think the market appears to be stabilizing not only in Experis, but across all of our brands. So the same for Manpower and in Talent Solutions, we’ve seen RPO stabilize at a lower level. We’ve seen our TAPFIN MSP business in Talent Solutions actually improved a bit. And of course, Right Management with our placement is tracking well, although not accelerating. So that gives us an idea that as an industry and from our perspective looking at where we’re positioned that if things stay the way they are, the trends should remain stable, and that’s what we’ve guided to in the second quarter.
Josh Chan: Great. Thank you, Jonas, and thank you both for your time. Good luck in the second quarter.
Jonas Prising: Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Your line is open.
