About

To be selected as the regional legal and compliance lead for a multinational corporation like The Adecco Group before the age of 30 is a significant achievement in itself, but Javier Benavides Muñoz is not resting on his laurels since being appointed as the staffing and recruiting company’s head of legal and compliance and privacy lead for Latin America. Benavides elaborates on the challenges he faced when taking on the role which requires leading 30 in-house lawyers in eight different jurisdictions: ‘As a regional lead, a proper coordination among legal colleagues in the countries is key. The inexistence of my position previously, local inherited habits, different legislations, languages and level of local development and the company’s history in the country, among others, are topics to consider when trying to organise such a huge geographical area’. To overcome this he firstly established periodical, in-person meetings with colleagues to develop closer connections between the team. In addition this helped promote synergies between Adecco’s counsel across Latin America facilitating a culture of developing best practices by utilising previous experiences. As a result, Benavides with the help of his team, has been able to help achieve business goals for Adecco to provide the necessary workforce for leading start-ups within new economic sectors, helping companies with disruptive HR management platforms and, in general, making available to them the necessary tools in order to become efficient organisations. Benavides identifies three traits he has developed over the course of his career, namely, and international mind-set, a multidisciplinary approach and a resilient attitude. Regarding the last the last of these, he says ‘the markets where we operate are constantly changing and evolving. A resilient attitude is fundamental to adapt to different situations. New business lines, new ways of providing a service or new markets, for example, require the legal department to keep constantly working on the best solutions possible for the company, although always making sure there is a clear strategy behind all projects, consistently aligned with the company’s values and purposes’. Before relocating to Chile to take on his current role, Benavides worked in Spain for Adecco between 2014 and 2018. Initially covering labour and data protection law whilst all companies were adapting to GDPR, he gained additional regional legal responsibility for one of Adecco’s main business lines, outsourcing. Highly respected amongst the legal community in Chile, Benavides is expected to continue his impressive career trajectory in the coming years.