Recruiters could face a return to the Middle Ages, according to Denis Pennel, managing director of the European Confederation of Private Employment Agencies (Eurociett).

Speaking to Recruiter, Pennel argued that with many employers finding it difficult to source workers with the right skills, and staffing companies increasingly focused on higher-end niche markets, conditions were right for agencies to take on the roles of medieval guilds. This has been exacerbated by Europe’s ageing population, he said.

“These organisations were in charge of training the workforce, employing and placing them, but also protecting them, fighting for high wages, and the best employment and working conditions,” he told Recruiter. “It could be possible that recruitment companies turn into these types of companies.”

Pennel predicts that in this new world, “more and more the employment relationship will be less with the company or workforce that you are with physically, and more with the guild or staffing company that will assign you to different places”.

Pennel is due to publish a book on what he describes as “the new reality of work” later in the year. “People think ‘let’s wait for the crisis to be over, and everything will return to normal’. Now there will be no more normal. The normal situation will be the abnormal. There is only one thing permanent, which is change,” he said.