For this issue alone, we visited four European cities and got four different views of the €54 billion HRO phenomenon that is transforming business worldwide.

by Jay Whitehead, Harry Feinberg

Chasing HRO across Europe is brutal on my circadian rhythms. In fact, I am writing this column at midnight, sleepless in the snooze seat on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Heathrow to JFK. Even though my chair converts into a full, lay-down bed (a once impossible fantasy), I am still wide awake, electrified either by that last blast from an airport Café Au Lait or HRO’s continuous and steady growth or both.

LONDON
Full-scale HRO was actually born in the U.K. Both British Telecom and British Petroleum pioneered the outsourcing of their HR functions back in 1999. BT chose Accenture, first as a joint venture partner. Later Accenture bought out BT’s part of the JV and transformed a perplexing partnership into a successful client-vendor relationship. Then there was the BAE deal with Xchanging, engineered by Tony McCarthy, who is now running HR at Royal Mail and a featured panelist at HRO World Europe 2006. All these HRO relationships continue to flourish.

London is also home to the past two issues’ cover subjects: Reg Bull of Unilever (he’s a Brit but works out of Unilever’s HQ in Rotterdam) and non-executive board of directors member Bruce Thew. Reg earned his HRO stripes on the job at Unilever. When he saw that his biggest global competitor at P&G was surviving and thriving with its pioneering HRO contract, he got brave enough to try it himself. And Bruce Thew learned his way around a business process outsourcing relationship while heading up international operations for Ceridian. You can read Bruce’s story for yourself in this issue.

London is also home to the Royal Mail’s McCarthy. He joined the 195,000-employee Royal Mail in 2003 after a 25-year stint at BAE. McCarthy is a brave man with big decisions to make. Some time next year, McCarthy could make Royal Mail a top-five, all-time HRO contract. Or not.

PARIS
In HRO, Paris is often where much more is said than done. But if anything is done in French HRO, it probably lands on the desk of Florence Guthfreund-Roland, Paris partner in the outsourcing practice of the law firm Morgan Lewis. Florence’s practice is closely tied to her partners’ BPO practice in America, one of the world’s largest. Florence has fashioned herself nicely as a European HRO expert, working side-by-side with labor and employment partner Francois Vergne and international business law legend Jean Leygonie.

Paris is home to the staffing industry’s most remarkable HRO marketing executive, Adecco’s Roy Broughton (a Brit whose French is better than many natives’). Roy has the same pioneer ethic that enabled Adecco (a merger of Adia and Ecco staffing) to amend France’s restrictive staffing regulations—innovations that made the temp services business possible in the land of Bleu, Blanc, Rouge.

And HRO and Paris cannot reside in the same sentence without Philippe Gluntz, chairman emeritus of ADP Europe and the head of the HRO Association Europe. In many important ways, Philippe was the truly first big-time HRO player in France. The company he founded eventually was sold to ADP and now is the anchor of ADP’s rapidly expanding European presence.

AMSTERDAM
Andy Verstelle is a man of the world. But at the same time, he is the quintessential Dutchman. Earlier this year, he moved from his role as Nordics leader for ARINSO to join Holland’s staffing giant Randstad. As he told me, if you are experienced in HRO and you are a Dutchman, Randstad’s gravitational pull will eventually capture you.

BRUSSELS
My wife, Anne-Sophie, a Frenchwoman who got her MBA in Brussels, describes Brussels as Europe’s head (but not its heart …le Coeur, of course, must reside on French soil). In many ways, HRO’s relationship with Brussels is purely cerebral. HR executives come mostly to Brussels to TALK and THINK about HRO. (Electricity generator Elia is an exception to the rule … they have actually bought the service.) For big-ticket contracts, you will have to go north and west. But Brussels is the home of our lovable friends at the SBPOA and SharedXpertise—partners in our popular HRO World Europe Conference. While Le Coeur may live in the most beautiful country on earth, there is no doubt about one thing. HRO’s growing complexity has us spending more time in airports than ever before.