Firm that invented temporary workers turns 60

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2011 (5402 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In addition to K-Tel records, the Nip and canola, another invention Winnipeg can lay claim to is the concept of temporary staffing.

The latter was the brainchild of a couple of young Winnipeg entrepreneurs in the early ’50s, Bill Pollock and Jim Shore.

Shore died in a plane crash in the late ’60s but Pollock, now 82, still owns and runs the business that was originally called Office Overload, but is now known around the world as Drake International.

The privately owned enterprise is celebrating its 60th year in business this year.

In an interview from the company’s North American headquarters in Toronto, Pollock said he spends his time travelling from his home base in Monaco to the company’s far-flung operations in the United States, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines and South Africa.

Pollock maintains a busy pace and remains chairman of the company he founded and owns. A senior management team runs the various national operations.

Pollock, who has no children, has no plans for slowing down.

“The world grows up with the objective to retire, I think that’s just the wrong objective for everybody,” he said.

It’s a fitting philosophy for someone whose business is built around finding temporary work for people who likely do not have pension or retirement benefits of their own.

When Pollock first started his business in the postwar years in Winnipeg, the Hudson’s Bay Co. was the first client.

Originally, Office Overload had its own employees doing the temporary work for its clients.

But then the clients wanted Office Overload’s people to come into their workplaces. According to company history, that was the birth of the temporary worker.

Drake now has close to 1,500 employees in nine countries. Its footprint in Canada is a small portion of that, probably less than 200.

Its Winnipeg its presence is down to a small office at Portage and Notre Dame avenues.

Probably the only evidence left that the large international enterprise was actually founded in Winnipeg is the Drake Centre — the University of Manitoba building that opened in 1987 housing the Asper School of Business.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca