Kai Nowosel was retiring from procurement transformation. Then The Adecco Group called, with a challenge he couldn’ t resist
OMNEA
Kai Nowosel was retiring from procurement transformation. Then The Adecco Group called, with a challenge he couldn’ t resist
Kai Nowosel had earned his retirement. After a career spanning some of the world’ s most complex procurement functions, including two decades at Accenture, he had stepped away on his own terms. Then The Adecco Group called. Adecco is one of the world’ s largest HR and staffing organisations: a Fortune Global 500 company operating across more than 60 markets, employing over 35,000 people under its brands including Adecco, Akkodis and LHH, with more than US $ 5bn spend. The procurement function serving that business was fragmented across several ERP systems, decentralised teams and a patchwork of processes that varied by country and entity. It was, in short, exactly the kind of challenge Kai had spent his career building the toolkit to solve.
“ After a career overseeing transformation, I was ready for retirement. But then Adecco came to me and the proposition was both serious and attractive. I like to build transformative systems, not manage a running process. It was in an industry, in a company, in a setting where building a new system seemed super interesting to me.”
50 September 2026