A branch manager points at an old desktop monitor while a colleague listens, ring binders on the desk of a Nordic staffing office

AI adoption in staffing is a fit problem, not a training problem

Helge Bjorland, CEO of Globus.ai, on the 20-year-old spreadsheet every agency keeps and what it teaches about rolling out AI in a staffing firm.

Helge Bjorland, CEO of Globus.ai. First shared on LinkedIn.

I sat in on a technology review at a staffing firm, and the branch manager wanted to show me their daily planning tool.

It was a spreadsheet. Built roughly twenty years ago by someone who left long ago. Presented to me with complete sincerity, the way you would hand someone a family heirloom.

On the same machine sat a modern scheduling system the company pays for every month. Unopened.

Every agency has one

Everyone laughs at this story until they go and audit their own branches. The ancient spreadsheet is not an exception. Almost every agency has one, and it has outlived every software purchase that was meant to kill it. Five systems have come and gone. The spreadsheet is still there.

Here is what I have come round to, though. The spreadsheet is not the problem. The spreadsheet is evidence.

Adoption is a fit problem

It survived because somebody shaped it around how the work actually flows, and every replacement was shaped around how a vendor imagined the work flows. Given that choice, people pick the thing that fits, even when it is held together with tape and superstition.

That is the most useful lesson I know for anyone rolling out AI in a staffing firm. Adoption is not a training problem. It is a fit problem. If the agent does not slot into how the desk already works, it becomes system number six, and the spreadsheet will outlive that too.

Want to see what AI agents look like when they are shaped around how your desk already works? Book a conversation.