Our technology strategy is primarily one of simplification, modernisation, resilience and efficiency in order to enable Hays’ growth strategy and future ambitions. We have strong foundations in technology and data, with long-term expertise.
Our vision is to become the global leader in recruitment and workforce solutions, recognised for powering progress through people and market-leading technology. Given rapid advances in technology and Generative AI, we believe now is the optimal time to enhance our overall digitalisation, technology infrastructure and stack of applications.
We anticipate many benefits as we transform our technology over the next few years:
–More consistent delivery of exceptional service to clients and candidates
–Improved productivity and job satisfaction as we provide our consultants with best-in-class tools
–More effective leverage of our extensive, high-quality, relevant data to provide customers with powerful, valuable and individualised insights
–Improved effectiveness and efficiency in our back office functional areas
“We have embarked on a significant transformation to provide the technology services, support, and innovation required to enable Hays’ growth strategy and future ambitions.
With new delivery capability foundations and ways of working in place, through our strategic partnership with Cognizant the focus over the next few years will be on driving the transformation of the technology landscape. This will ultimately deliver simple, modern, safe and secure technology solutions aligned with business needs that will enable our customers and our people to succeed.”
Mark Dearnley
Chief Digital & Technology Officer
Our Technology Transformation programme
Establishing capabilities for the future
During the year we embarked on a global transformation programme to provide the technology services, support, and innovation required to enable Hays’ growth strategy and future ambitions.
In November 2024, we outsourced the support of our ‘run’ environment including service desk support, IT infrastructure
and operations, application support and engineering services, and security operations to Cognizant. This substituted variable for fixed cost, unlocked savings by migrating technology capabilities to lower-cost fulfilment centres and transitioned from a mostly in-house development model to best-in-class external capability. In future, we intend to drive further efficiencies, embed a culture of continuous improvement, and leverage Cognizant’s deep expertise and capabilities to support us in our transformation journey.
At the same time, we implemented a new simplified global operating structure in Technology, designed to balance global and local business needs, ensure predictable execution, and to lead the implementation of a simplified and safe technology environment. Reflecting our new global approach, a Infrastructure transformation programme has been initiated to ensure global consistency across our infrastructure estate with a particular focus on cyber security, resilience, and efficiency.
Defining the future state technology landscape
At the heart of our technology transformation our objective is to enable profitable growth through differentiated client and candidate experiences and industry-leading efficient and effective operations. This vision is being realised through an enterprise architecture approach that harmonises people, process, technology and data.
Guided by the principles of Simple, Flexible and Secure, we are envisioning and architecting a technology ecosystem that is not only robust and scalable but also AI and agentic-ready and designed to empower intelligent automation, adaptive decision-making, and proactive service delivery across our global operations.
–Simplicity: We are aiming to streamline our technology stack to eliminate complexity, reduce technical debt, and enhance user experience. By consolidating platforms and standardising processes, we will create a technology landscape that is simpler to operate, change and enhance where innovation and more intuitive interactions will be allowed to flourish for our clients, candidates, and colleagues.
–Flexibility: Our architecture is being designed for agility and is targeting a modular, API-first, and cloud-native approach that will ensure we can rapidly respond to market shifts, regulatory changes, and emerging opportunities. This flexibility will support our global footprint while allowing for local customisation and responsiveness.
–Security: In an era of increasing cyber threats and data privacy concerns, security will be embedded by design. Our future state landscape incorporates multi-layered defence, zero-trust principles, continuous monitoring, and resilient data governance frameworks to protect our stakeholders and maintain integrity.