Hays part ways with their global CEO after another underwhelming half year
The world’s sixth-largest staffing company, London-based Hays plc, last Friday announced that Dirk Hahn (pictured, right) had resigned as CEO and as a director, effective immediately, for personal reasons.
In a company that, over its near-six-decade history as a pure-play staffing business, had only two previous CEOs, this is a major shock.
Hahn, who started with Hays Germany as a consultant in 1997, was promoted to global CEO in September 2023, from his role as CEO of Hays CEMEA, and has been a driving force in the rapid expansion of the Hays Germany business since the early noughties.
This growth was powered by the IT and engineering divisions, resulting in a long-term shift in Hays’s business mix. In FY 2008, the IT and engineering specialisms, respectively, generated 14% and 4% of Hays’ global net fees. In FY 2025, the corresponding figures were 25% and 11%, a combined doubling in 17 years.
Hahn’s departure coincided with the 2026 H1 results, which showed another decline in net fees (9% year-on-year) and a further plunge in pre-exceptional operating profit, down 25% (y-o-y) to £20.1 million.
More damaging than the H1 2026 results was the relentless decline in the company’s share price – down to just under 45 pence, a 57% decline from £1.05 on the day Hahn started as CEO, 1 September 2023, and down almost a quarter since early November 2025.
Hays has not been alone in suffering such a slump in market confidence. Its share price has dropped (during Hahn’s tenure as CEO) in line with its direct competitors: Pagegroup plc shares are down 58%, and Robert Walters plc shareholders have suffered an even greater 70% drop over the same period.
More consequential than the disappointing financial results and ongoing slide in the share price appears to have been Hahn’s absence from the business for most of November and all of December last year, when he took extended leave to recover from surgery.
During Hahn’s absence, Hays group chair Michael Findlay assumed the role of executive chair, with a company statement noting he ”….will work closely with the wider Hays management team to ensure continuity and progress on the group’s strategic and commercial priorities.”
Whatever Findlay discovered during his month or so with the Hays management team led him to return to the rest of the board with concerns about the company’s progress under Hahn’s leadership.
Hahn returned to work in the first week of January but was destined to remain with the company for only another six weeks, with his resignation announced on 27 February.
The next day, Hahn, in a LinkedIn post, said, in part, “It has been a genuine honour to be part of Hays for nearly three decades and an even greater privilege to lead the business over the last two and a half years.
I am proud of the many things I have achieved throughout my Hays career and I will always look back on my time here fondly. From joining the business as a sales consultant in 1997, to becoming the Global CEO, it has been an incredibly rewarding journey.”
Hahn wished his successor well, expressed confidence in the company’s future, and said he will “..will remain one of the company’s strongest supporters.”
I thought it odd that Hahn was so slow to respond to last year’s death of the company’s legendary and hugely respected founder Denis Waxman, issuing, in my view, a rather bland statement, more than two weeks after Waxman’s passing, prompted by contact from the UK industry news site Recruiter.co.uk. In hindsight, this misstep was a pointer to the cultural differences between Hays Germany and the rest of the company.
In appointing insider Hahn to succeed outsider Alistair Cox, the board decided that the ultra-successful Hays Germany model was the way forward globally. Hahn’s sudden exit, after two and a half years at the helm, suggests the internal indicators were all flashing amber, forcing the board to act.
If he had turned the company’s financials around, then maybe the board would have given him more time, but continued underwhelming results combined with a share price collapse left them with little choice but to have a difficult conversation with their CEO.
The departure of Hahn hasn’t stopped the share price decline, which is down another 12% since his resignation was announced on Friday morning.
I doubt Hahn’s exit makes any difference to Hays APAC, where Matthew Dickason and his leaders have been able to make progress in the most recent reporting period (July – December 2025), turning profitability around and stopping the half-year net fees decline on a rolling basis (although year-on-year the decline was 3%).
Can Hays recover, or will it be another example of a company with a hugely successful history that is unable to change rapidly enough to remain relevant deep into the twenty-first century?
Chief Digital and Technology Officer Mark Dearnley, who has been at Hays for only seven months and has never worked in the recruitment sector, will serve as interim CEO until a permanent successor is hired.
In response to this news, The Satori Partnership, whose owners and leaders comprise former Hays executives, posted on LinkedIn earlier in the week, “Hays appointing a digital leader to the top job, even on a digital basis signals something significant; the future of recruitment may be shaped by people who didn’t grow up in it.
Fresh perspectives challenge inherited assumptions. They question legacy processes. They accelerate innovation that industry “grandparenting’ often slows down.
For an industry that has operated largely unchanged for 50 years, that change may be long overdue.”
I doubt we will have to wait long to find out.
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I was stunned to see that Page Group and Hays PLC Market Cap are comparable now. Maybe my memory is wrong but 5 – 10 years ago Hays were much much larger. Happy to be told differently.