Sharpening our focus
Hays is a world-leading specialist in higher-skilled Temporary, Contracting and Permanent recruitment, workforce solutions and workforce services. We work on high-volume, high-service, multi-year outsourcing contracts with many of the largest organisations in the world through to
one-off single placements for small and medium-sized enterprises.
In FY26 we helped over 243,000 higher-skilled candidates secure their next career move, including c.203,000 Temporary & Contracting roles and c.40,000 Permanent placements.
Over the last year, we have focused Hays around participation in countries and country clusters where we will target leadership, plus longer-term investments in large markets with attractive growth potential. We will leverage a network of partners in geographies beyond our chosen footprint to effectively serve our clients requiring multi-geography talent solutions.
Across our business, we have established market-leading positions in long-term structural growth specialisms, such as Technology, Engineering & Construction, and Life Sciences, but individual countries (for example Resources & Mining in ANZ) also reflect their specific labour market composition. We aim for market leadership in every market specialism in which we compete in a given country, supported by five critical sources of competitive advantage: proprietary data & technology; people; brand & reputation; go-to-market approach; and operational excellence.
How we generate fees
We have core expertise across Temporary, Contracting and Permanent recruitment contract forms. In FY26, 64% of our net fees were generated from Temporary & Contracting assignments and 36% from Permanent placements.
Our net fees are driven by two broad variables:
Placement volume – The number of Temporary & Contracting workers paid in a given period, and the number of Permanent placements made.
Placement value – For Temporary & Contracting, we charge clients the candidate pay rate, plus a percentage mark-up, for the number of hours worked. In Permanent, on successful placement of a candidate, we typically charge an agreed percentage of the candidate’s salary.
![]()
How we manage the business
We manage Hays by business line which differentiates by country, specialism and contract form and
acknowledges the differences between, for example, Permanent Technology recruitment in the United States
versus Contract Engineering in Germany.
We closely monitor a range of key performance indicators including:
Monthly net fees per consultant
(also referred to as consultant net fee productivity)
Conversion rate
,
which we define as pre-exceptional operating profit divided by net fees
Forward indicators
including new job interviews in Permanent recruitment and starter volumes in Temporary & Contracting
In contrast to our previously devolved structure in which business units had substantial autonomy,
in the future our centre will play a stronger role as an integrator to drive consistency and adoption.
We are creating greater centralisation and standardisation of shared services, with streamlined,
consistent processes which we will automate wherever possible.
Our global reach
We report our performance through four key operating divisions – Germany, United Kingdom & Ireland (UK&I), Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) and Rest of World (RoW). During FY25 and FY26, the number of countries in the RoW division decreased from 28 to 18 as we seek to increase our penetration of a narrower portfolio of countries with substantial existing professional recruitment and services markets and attractive growth potential.
Key figures
|
Year ended 30 June 2026
|
Germany
|
UK & Ireland
|
Australia &
New Zealand
|
Rest of World
|
Group Total
|
|
Net fees
|
£289.5m
|
£174.0m
|
£113.0m
|
£329.0m
|
£905.5m
|
|
Pre-exceptional operating profit(1)
|
£41.2m
|
£4.0m
|
£8.5m
|
£(5.1)m
|
£48.6m
|
|
Consultants
|
1,368
|
1,080
|
618
|
2,128
|
5,194
|
|
Offices
|
25
|
29
|
23
|
78
|
155
|
|
Share of Group net fees
|
32%
|
19%
|
13%
|
36%
|
100%
|
1. A reconciliation of pre-exceptional and post-exceptional operating profit is provided in note 4 of the Financial Statements.