Gi Group Brand Guidelines: Générale Industrielle, Milan 1998 & a 2026 Rebrand Called Beyond

A new kind of Italian agency.

Gi Group began in 1998 under the name Générale Industrielle, entering the Italian staffing market as it opened up after the liberalisation of the country’s labour market, according to English and Italian Wikipedia. The company was founded by the entrepreneur Stefano Colli-Lanzi: the investment bank Lincoln International, describing a deal it advised on, called him the founder, chief executive and majority shareholder of a privately owned group, and in July 2020 the Bergamo news site BergamoNews described Gi Group as the multinational “founded and led” by him. In July 2019 the Corriere della Sera called it the first Italian multinational in the sector.

The first big step came at home. In 2004 the company acquired Worknet, the employment agency of the Fiat group, which Wikipedia says widened its presence across Italy. In 2005 it added outplacement, training, HR consulting and payroll outsourcing to its staffing work.

The name used today followed. Wikipedia says the Gi Group brand was officially introduced in 2006, keeping the two initials of the original company name. When the business launched its holding company in April 2022, Colli-Lanzi, then its chief executive, dated the organisation’s growth “since our founding in 1998,” the Milan news site Affaritaliani reported.

Gi Group’s head office is in Milan. The group’s own website says it now has a direct presence in 37 countries across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas, works with 25,000 client companies and is the 19th largest staffing firm in the world; those are company figures. Its services run from temporary, permanent and professional staffing to management search, business-process outsourcing, training and outplacement.

From Italy into Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Gi Group began to expand abroad in 2007, with acquisitions in Europe, Asia and South America, Wikipedia says. In the United Kingdom it bought right4staff, a provider of industrial and commercial temporary workers founded in 1987, a deal Lincoln International advised on for the sellers; Wikipedia says the purchase gave the group a stronger focus on on-site staffing. In 2015 it acquired Holomatica, a business-process outsourcing firm based in Brazil.

Germany came next. In July 2019 the Corriere della Sera reported that Gi Group was buying OnTime Group, a German temporary and permanent staffing firm founded in 2003 that traded as House of Jobs, taking its German network past 60 branches. A year later, BergamoNews reported, Gi Group closed an asset deal on 30 June 2020 for the outplacement business of the Californian company CareerArc, which Colli-Lanzi called the group’s first entry into the United States.

Technology deals followed: the digital platform myGiGroup for clients, candidates and workers in 2016, and in 2021 the purchase of Jobtome, a job-advertising platform built around automated posting, according to Wikipedia.

The largest transaction in its history, according to Wikipedia, came in 2024. On 2 November 2023 Gi Group Holding announced a definitive agreement to buy the European staffing business of Kelly, covering 14 countries, and described it as the 51st acquisition in the company’s history since 1998. Il Sole 24 Ore reported the closing on 4 January 2024, and said the deal extended the group into Belgium, Luxembourg and Norway and strengthened its work in life sciences, white-collar temporary staffing and recruitment-process outsourcing. The same article placed Gi Group third in Italy, after Adecco and Randstad, and, citing Staffing Industry Analysts, eighth in Europe and 15th in the world.

How staffing firms present themselves.

Executive search and staffing firms sell judgement about people, so their public material leans on people too. Spencer Stuart’s website points visitors to a directory where they can find an expert and to a list of global locations, while Egon Zehnder’s invites them to meet its consultants and find its offices. Consultant profiles and office pages, rather than products, carry most of the visual weight, and the photography on them is whatever each firm chooses to publish.

Candidate-facing design is one of the points this guide compares across the category: the job boards and application portals of staffing companies on one side, and on the other the careers pages, alumni network and client log-in that Spencer Stuart lists in its own site menus. Each site is described as the company presents it, without judging how well it works.

Thought leadership supplies much of the category’s printed and digital output. Spencer Stuart says it published its first US Board Index in 1987 and now produces more than 20 Board Indexes a year, and in October 2026 it released a survey of more than 1,400 board chairs, directors and CEOs. Egon Zehnder publishes CEO studies, a podcast and HBR Executive, a partnership with Harvard Business Review. Report covers, chart styles and survey branding therefore do much of the work that packaging does in consumer categories.

Ownership is part of the story, and each firm states it differently. Spencer Stuart says its founder offered his whole shareholding to a group of employees in 1974, and German Wikipedia says Egon Zehnder’s international partners own that firm in equal stakes. For listed staffing groups, investor and stock-listing pages form a further part of the corporate presentation this guide looks at. This guide sets out who founded each firm, who owns it and what it says about itself, and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A holding company, several brands and a 2026 rebrand.

In April 2022 the company reorganised under Gi Group Holding, which Affaritaliani described at the launch as a global multibrand ecosystem of HR services, based in Milan, with more than 6,000 employees and a presence in 30 countries. Six global brands sat under the new corporate brand: Gi Group for temporary, permanent and professional staffing; Gi BPO for outsourcing; INTOO for outplacement and career advice; Wyser for middle and senior management search; and Grafton and Tack TMI for specialist recruitment and training. After the Kelly deal, the 2023 announcement counted seven complementary brands.

Gi Group itself became the core business unit of the holding, and the staffing brand got a new look four years later. On 12 May 2026 the marketing trade site Media Key reported that Gi Group had presented a new positioning and a renewed brand identity, together with a global campaign called “Beyond.” The campaign starts from an everyday question, “What do you do for a living?”, and argues that a job title says little about how a person works or supports others; it focuses on what the company calls human skills and gives voice to operational workers.

Media Key said the campaign runs on digital channels and in print internationally and extends to a digital platform where people can explore their own skills and find matching jobs. The rebrand was a joint project of Gi Group Holding’s Italian and global marketing teams, with the creative studio Subsense, the production company Dude and the media agency Kotton. Gi Group Holding’s marketing director for Italy told the site that the company had changed faster than its brand had been telling people.

For a design guide, Gi Group shows how a staffing firm can keep a short set of initials while its parent adds brands for each service and its campaigns shift from services to the workers themselves. Compare Synergie, a French staffing group that also expanded by acquisition, and Kelly Services, whose European staffing arm it bought. For this guide we use ink, terracotta and stone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Gi Group’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.