Adecco CEO Denis Machuel: AI Is Changing Work, Not Destroying Jobs

Denis Machuel, CEO of Adecco Group, the world's largest staffing company, said in July 2026 that artificial intelligence is radically changing the nature of work but is not leading to mass job destruction or emptying offices.

What exactly the Adecco chief said

Machuel described AI's impact as an evolution of professions, not their disappearance. According to him, the technology is rewriting the content of tasks within jobs faster than it eliminates the jobs themselves: people will stay, but their responsibilities will change.

"Artificial intelligence brings a colossal evolution to the world of work," said

Denis Machuel, CEO of Adecco Group.

The statement came in July 2026 and is markedly more cautious than the alarmist scenarios in which generative AI pushes out workers by entire departments. As The Next Web reports, the head of the company put the emphasis on transformation, not on a reduction in employment.

Why Adecco's view deserves attention

Adecco Group is the world's largest staffing and personnel-placement company, so its CEO's assessment rests on real employer demand rather than theoretical models. The company matches vacancies and candidates every day in dozens of countries, and it is among the first to see which professions are shrinking and which are growing.

That is why Machuel's position is not abstract optimism: the head of a staffing giant observes that employers are not yet replacing people with algorithms en masse but are redistributing tasks between employees and systems. For the labor market, this is a first-hand indicator, not a forecast from a consulting slide deck.

The voice of the staffing industry in this debate is also valuable because HR companies are the first to feel shifts in hiring: slowing vacancies, changing requirements, the emergence of new roles. When a player like this talks about evolution rather than a collapse in employment, it cools panicky forecasts.

Will AI destroy jobs?

AI will not destroy jobs en masse but will restructure them. That is Adecco's position, and its statement slots into the central dispute around the technology. One camp warns of the loss of entire categories of office work under pressure from automation; the other, which Machuel has now publicly joined, talks about a shift in skills within the same professions.

According to the Adecco chief's logic, routine operations will be automated, but demand is growing at the same time for the ability to work with AI, to verify its output, and to take on tasks that require human judgment. The bet is on retraining staff, not on mass layoffs.

The bet on retraining

The main practical takeaway from Machuel's words is that it pays better for employers and workers to invest in retraining than to wait for cuts. Adecco, as an intermediary between companies and job seekers, has a direct interest in candidates learning new skills rather than dropping out of the market.

The company's logic is simple: if AI takes over part of the operations, the freed-up time of the employee flows into tasks where the machine is still weak, such as communication, decision-making, and quality control. That transition requires training but preserves employment, and Adecco publicly insists on exactly this scenario in July 2026.

What this means

When the head of the world's largest staffing company says that AI changes work rather than destroys it, it is a signal to the labor market: an employee's value is shifting toward the ability to work alongside AI, not compete with it. The ones at risk are not those who will be replaced by an algorithm, but those who refuse to learn the new tools. For companies the conclusion is symmetrical: investing in training staff to work with AI will cost less than wholesale replacement of teams and the loss of expertise.