Adecco Group North America, Jacksonville’s newest headquarters, already is hiring for the 185 corporate jobs it pledged to add in return for an economic incentives package approved Tuesday night by City Council.
The jobs are posted at adeccocorporatecareers.com. Adecco Group North America is moving its headquarters from Melville, N.Y., to Jacksonville, where 354 headquarters jobs already operate in the suburban Deerwood South office park.
Most of the new Jacksonville jobs are in accounting and finance, “from bookkeeping to CPAs,” said Tyra Tutor, Adecco Group North America senior vice president of corporate development. Adecco also will hire lawyers, human resources executives and IT, procurement and real estate positions.
Council approved the incentives 17-0 with no discussion or public comment.
The $2 million in incentives, or $10,800 a job, are based on job creation. The city would be responsible for $407,000 and the state would pick up the remaining $1.59 million.
The Qualified Target Industry Tax Refund program, which is a repayment of taxes, is a large component of the incentives package for the headquarters move.
The incentives comprise $407,000, consisting of $222,000, or 20 percent, of the QTI refund, and a $185,000 Countywide Economic Development Fund Grant.
The state pays $1,591,000, consisting of $888,000, or 80 percent, of the QTI refund; a $370,000 Governor’s Quick Action Closing Fund based on the jobs; $333,000 from the Quick Response Training Program, also based on the jobs.
The city’s funds are equal to $2,200 per job, while the state’s funding works out to $8,600 per job.
In return, Adecco Group would pay a salary and benefits package averaging $85,969 per new job. Adecco Group also will retain the 354 existing Adecco jobs, which pay an average $45,600 plus benefits.
Another next step is signing a lease for another 30,000 square feet of office space. Adecco Group leases about 80,000 square feet at the Deerwood South office park and will take another 25,000 square feet in that building, Tutor said.
“We hope to sign a lease within a few weeks,” Tutor said of the additional 30,000 square feet of space. She declined to say where the company is looking but confirmed again that Riverplace Tower on the Downtown Southbank was one of the locations in review.
The space would accommodate headquarters executives in 15,000 square feet and the staffing company’s Pontoon division in the other 15,000 square feet. Headquarters staff also would remain in the 10151 Deerwood Park Blvd., No. 200, offices, which will be the company’s official address.
“Most of the headquarters will remain at Deerwood Park,” Tutor said.
More than 100 people would occupy the additional space, she said.
That collective primary space adds up to 135,000 square feet. Tutor said the leases at Deerwood South and the new location would expire in seven years, which means the company will be considering its space needs in about five years.
That space doesn’t include all of the divisions that rent more space in Southside.
Adecco is considered the world's leading provider of human resources and staffing solutions. It bought Jacksonville-based MPS Group in January 2010 and operates businesses in Jacksonville and the state that include Accounting Principals, Ajilon Professional, Beeline, Pontoon, Entegee, Lee Hecht Harrison, Modis, Parker and Lynch, Soliant Health and Special Counsel.
Tutor said the area corporate headquarters and division jobs will total more than 660 employees and that the company has more than 300 temporary workers, adding up to more than 1,000 employees in Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties.
Two of the divisions — Parker and Lynch and Modis — are handling the headquarters hiring.
Tutor said she and JAXUSA Partnership Vice President of Business Development Cathy Chambers plan to fly to Melville on Thursday to make formal presentations to the employees whose jobs are moving to Jacksonville and she also will be available Thursday afternoon and Friday morning there for one-on-one requests.
Tutor said several of the Melville executives are interested in Jacksonville jobs. Asked if executives there will move, she said the company hopes so. “But it’s hard to expect people with families to pick up and move,” she said.
Adecco subsidiary Lee Hecht Harrison, an outplacement firm, will work with those employees who choose not to move to Jacksonville, she said.
Adecco Group North America will keep a presence in Melville with some back-office functions and as a disaster-recovery location, she said. It will sell the building it owns there and lease 50,000 square feet at a nearby site.
The 130,000-square-foot building in Melville was the headquarters of Olsten Staffing until 2000, when Adecco bought its Melville-based rival in a $1.6 billion deal.
In 2010, Adecco acquired Jacksonville-based MPS Group Inc. for $1.3 billion. It promoted former MPS executive Bob Crouch as CEO of Adecco Group North America two years ago. Crouch continued to be based in Jacksonville and maintained his home here.
MPS was based in what is now the Wells Fargo Center Downtown before Adecco moved the company to Southside. The Modis name was on the Downtown tower. Modis remains a major division of Adecco.
A lease in Riverplace Tower would return some of the headquarters Downtown.
A Melville economic development executive, Anthony Manetta, executive director of the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency, had said in a Newsday report that the company had not talked to him about the move.
Tutor acknowledged the company had not talked to officials there, but declined to discuss the situation. She said more than 250 employees will remain in Melville.
Tutor said about 215 positions are impacted by the move. The company pledged to the city to hire 185 for the Jacksonville headquarters, but might hire more. A schedule shows that 150 jobs must be created by Dec. 31, 2015, and the remaining 35 a year later.
That means that the additional 30 positions may or may not be replaced.
After the council vote, city Office of Economic Development CEO Ted Carter and deputy director Paul Crawford congratulated Tutor and Chief Human Resources Officer Rich Thompson.
Headquarters are a targeted industry by the city and state because they include a company’s highest-paying jobs, employ the top executives who can make community decisions and support nonprofits and philanthropic organizations.
Adecco S.A., which is based in Zurich, Switzerland, employs more than 31,000 full-time workers around the world. It provides temporary and permanent staffing services in more than 60 countries and territories.
The North American group is a significant part of Adecco’s operations, producing about $5 billion in revenue last year. Adecco’s total global revenue was about 19.5 billion euros, equivalent to about $27 billion.
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