About

One of the most impressive things about multinational service provider ISS is that in spite of its size – revenues in 2016 were 79bn Danish Kroner, or around $12bn – few people have heard of it. Services tend to be invisible, at least until they are not provided effectively, and it takes an awful lot of front-line staff to keep them that way. Unlike most large service providers, ISS employs its own staff rather than working with sub-contractors. In the Latin America region alone it employs around 40,000 people, this in spite of a recent downsizing in Brazil, its largest regional market, from around 18,000 to just under 10,000 employees. With that many employees, labour issues are inevitably at the forefront for ISS’s regional legal officer, Rune Riegels Christensen. ‘Globally, the challenge we and many others in the sector face is not only that we have a large workforce’ says Christensen, ‘but a large and churn-prone workforce. In Brazil, for example, we have around a thousand people coming and going every month. The HR machinery involved in sustaining that it is enormous and absorbs a huge amount of time.’ And in a market like Brazil, where on average around 10-15% of employees file a labour claim upon leaving a job – with the burden of proof falling on the employer – the churn in headcount can be hugely expensive. Forming a strategy to deal with these issues has occupied a lot of Christensen’s time. ‘Previously, we would be reluctant to pay anything unless the courts said we had to. That strategy was about building a reputation as a company that will not be intimidated by frivolous claims. We have since refined that strategy and focused on ensuring that we [have] the right documentation, but the bigger challenge is finding ways to collect and retain documentation, especially in an extremely decentralized business like ISS. In the Brazilian labour system, it is not enough to do things right – if you cannot document that you did things right you will still lose in court. In almost all instances the problem we face is not that we as an employer have failed to pay correctly or on time, but rather that we cannot conveniently locate complete sets of time slips or all receipts duly singed by the employee to counter the claim. I have worked hard to make sure site managers are checking the relevant documents are signed, collected and sent to our central offices on time. That way, when a claim comes in we are immediately in a position to refute it.’ The complex nature of ISS’ service contracts means Christensen is frequently involved in negotiations with commercial counterparties. Christensen comments: ‘The ISS integrated facilities services contracts are highly complex documents that essentially look after all aspects of a company’s facilities, whether that’s security outside, the people sitting in the reception area, cleaning, maintenance or making sure the coffee machines work and are fully stocked. Many companies, even some blue chip clients, are not yet quite prepared for that degree of sophistication in facility services contracts, and at times there is an element of having to educate the customers on how the commercial and legal models work.’ For the Danish-trained Christensen, working in the LatAm region has come as a welcome surprise. ‘A big trepidation when going to law school was that law is an inherently national skill, and by educating myself to be a Danish lawyer I was concerned that I would limit my ability to work internationally. But the red thread through all of my career has been M&A, and that is a great thing to specialise in if you want to work internationally.’ Indeed, Christensen’s first exposure to the Latin American market came while working for his previous employer, Denmark-based rescue and safety services operator Falck. ‘The company was very keen to complete an acquisition in Brazil’, he recalls, ‘but they were also nervous enough to want a Danish person to sit closer to the deal. I ended up initially in Rio de Janeiro in early 2011, during which time the company was negotiating an acquisition in Colombia for a regional player with operations in six countries, which led to my moving to Medellin, Colombia later in 2011.’ Unfortunately for Christensen’s wanderlust, Falck wanted him to return to Copenhagen and take up a management position, which he respectfully turned down in order to continue his travels with ISS. There have been downsides, however. Now based in Miami, he spends over 150 days a year away from his family conducting country visits. This, he says, has been a professional hardship as much as a personal one: ‘The big weakness to sitting isolated in an office in Miami is that I don’t accidentally happen upon something happening, so to speak. I am completely dependent on people telling me what’s going on. There is a risk that you only hear it if people want to tell you. The best way to overcome that is to pick a team you can trust and treat them fairly to ensure that your trust is returned. As with so much in ISS, it comes back to managing a labour force!’