Глава Adecco Дени Машуэль: ИИ меняет работу, а не уничтожает рабочие места

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

What exactly did the head of Adecco say

Machuel described AI's impact as an evolution of professions rather than their disappearance. According to him, the technology is rewriting the content of tasks within jobs faster than it is eliminating the jobs themselves: people will remain, but their responsibilities will change.

«Artificial intelligence carries a colossal evolution in the world of labor», —

Denis Machuel, CEO of Adecco Group.

The statement was made in July 2026 and sounds fundamentally more cautious than alarmist scenarios in which generative AI displaces workers by entire departments. As TheNextWeb reports, the head of the holding company placed emphasis specifically on transformation, not on a reduction in employment.

Why Adecco's opinion deserves trust

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

That is precisely why Machuel's position is not abstract optimism: the head of the staffing giant notes that employers are not yet massively replacing people with algorithms, but are redistributing tasks between employees and systems. For the labor market, this is a firsthand indicator, not a forecast from a consulting presentation.

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

Will AI destroy jobs?

AI will not destroy jobs on a massive scale, but will restructure them — this is what Adecco insists on, and its statement fits into the main debate around the technology. One camp warns of the reduction of entire categories of office work under the pressure of automation; the other, which Machuel has now publicly joined, speaks of a shift in skills within the same professions.

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

Betting on retraining

The main practical conclusion from Machuel's words is that it is more advantageous for employers and workers to invest in retraining than to wait for layoffs. Adecco, as an intermediary between companies and job seekers, is directly interested in candidates learning new skills rather than falling out of the market.

The holding company's logic is simple: if AI takes over part of the operations, the employee's freed-up time flows into tasks where machines are still weak — communication, decision-making, quality control. Such a transition requires training, but preserves employment, and it is precisely this scenario that Adecco is publicly insisting on in July 2026.

What this means

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