Vale R.W “Bill” Pollock, the founder of the global staffing industry
Bill Pollock, the founder of Drake International, passed away peacefully last week at his home in Monaco, at the age of 97. Born Robert William Pollock in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1928, the youngest of nine children of Austrian and Polish immigrants, Pollock grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As a teen, he took a job mowing lawns, but when the man he worked for didn’t pay him, he and a friend launched their own lawn-mowing service. By their second year in business, they employed 22 people, demonstrating the entrepreneurial drive that marked Pollock’s life.
While selling bookkeeping and accounting machines for IBM and NCR, Pollock witnessed companies overstaffing for peak periods but losing productivity once the workload fell, giving him a business idea.
In 1951, alongside co-founder Jim Shore, the then-23-year-old Pollock launched Office Overload. It was a simple concept: helping businesses manage fluctuating workloads with temporary workers, which effectively laid the foundation for the recruitment and staffing industry we have today.
Renamed Drake International, Pollock grew the business to operate in 14 countries with a partner network spanning 128 more. Drake entered the Australian market in 1963 when Pollock opened a Drake office in Melbourne.
Pollock’s vision of a global business community seems unremarkable these days. However, as one of Young Presidents Organization’s earliest members and its longest-tenured, Pollock helped shape the YPO into a global, inclusive and peer-powered force. A pioneer in international expansion, he was one of the first to imagine YPO as a global community; convinced that business success and peace alike required leaders to reach across borders.
In the middle of last century, Pollock saw the future as a closely connected world, investing in global communication tools like PictureTalk, an early predecessor to video conferencing, and the email system known as The Coordinator. He saw a connected world long before it became a fashionable topic.
Pollack invested in many businesses with global ambitions underpinned by the Internet. Successes like Laureate Education, from which Pollock’s modest investment produced a USD$183 million return when the company was sold for $US3.4 billion in 2007, were not uncommon.
He was remarkably ahead of his time regarding social progress as well. Decades before diversity and inclusion became corporate mandates, like the godfather of the Australian recruitment industry V. John Plummer, Pollock was a fierce advocate for women in leadership. Today, nearly 80 percent of Drake International’s global leadership team is women, a testament to his belief that talent and character should always come first.
Pollock also had a close connection to Australia and not just through Drake ANZ. Pollock was a regular visitor to Australia, proud to have attended 30 consecutive Melbourne Cups. Pollock was also a mentor to Hungry Jack’s founder, Jack Cowin, and was an early shareholder in Cowin’s business, Competitive Foods Australia, which became the largest shareholder in global pizza chain Domino’s. Cowin’s niece, Karen Meredith succeeded Pollock as Drake’s Global CEO in 2024.
As Pollack told the AFR in 2021, “Work every day of your life. It will keep you sharp and will extend your lifespan. I have not taken a day’s vacation in the past five years. If you retire early, the odds are that you will die young.”
He was a highly hands-on founder who remained active in his business long after most founders had sold to enjoy their wealth in retirement. The then-95-year-old Pollock announced his retirement from the Drake board in 2024 after 73 years as a director, having remained the company’s CEO throughout his tenure.
Glenn Agro, Chair of the Drake International Board of Trustees, in announcing Pollock’s passing said, “He built Drake International to outlast any one person — including himself. It was the plan, pursued with the same clarity and discipline he brought to everything he created. The strength of this organisation today is Bill’s greatest achievement.”
But despite his global success, those close to him say Pollock remained humble, often stating his only goal was “making it a better world.”
Bill Pollock leaves behind a legacy of tens of millions of jobs created and the status as a pioneer and legend of the global staffing industry.
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