As he celebrates 20 years in business and is on track to achieve a turnover of $1billion by 2030, Marc Meili is well qualified to share some wisdom and life lessons.
“Learn, and learn fast,” the Managing Director of Brisbane-based national workforce provider Protech says.
“When you're not at work, read.
“’Never give up’ is standard advice, but if you don't give up, you're not failing.
“Sometimes, you run into a wall, but as long as you don't give up, you haven't really failed.
“I’ve had my fair share of tough moments with my backside against the wall.
“I was like: ‘Oh, my God, I'm going bust here.’ You learn a lot if you only have one way forward.
“Tough times are never permanent, but the learnings are.
“And, of course, the harder you work, the luckier you get.
“I have the mindset that if I work hard and work through the tough times, I'm going to come out the other side.”
Identifying a gap in the market for reliable and quality labour hire was the impetus for Mr Meili establishing Protech.
At the time, he was managing a high-precision engineering firm in Brisbane with about 120 employees.
“The owner went overseas, and I was able to run the business with minimal input from the board,” Mr Meili, who hails from Switzerland, said.
“I had just finished an MBA, and I had a deep interest in entrepreneurship.
“When the owner returned and wanted to get back into his business, it left me a little bit stranded.
“I was, like: ‘Whoa, what am I going to do?’
“I guess the combination of my international experience, the managerial experience with the MBA and seeing a gap in the market, led to the idea of Protech.”
At the time, some of the 25 or so labour hire people in the factory weren’t meeting Mr Meili’s expectations.
“Even the recruitment firms weren’t top-notch,” he said.
“As a client of the recruitment firms, I expected better.
“I thought: ‘There's something not working very well, because, ultimately, in a service-based business, you should make life easy for the client.
“It was already a fairly mature market at the time, and I had the opportunity to test probably every single labour hire firm in Brisbane.
“That gave me a good market picture, and I thought there was a deficiency in the market.”
“I didn't like to follow what everyone else was doing, so that probably laid the foundation and sparked the desire to start my own business,” Mr Meili said.
Since then, Protech has grown from an idea to 5000 employees in 28 offices around the country.
From the outset, quality was paramount.
“There was no ‘she’ll be right’ or half measures,” Mr Meili said.
“We created a quality management system in our first six months, because I was very clear that if I wanted repeatable outcomes, I needed to have clearly defined processes to train people on.
“If people do the right things and follow the processes, we should have a predictable outcome.
“I was quite pedantic that it had to be done that way. There was no compromise.
“That way, if something wasn't going well, I was able to evaluate where to tweak.”
Mr Meili remains true to the core values that underpin Protech’s foundation.
“Obviously, in business, a lot of things change, but generally it's the tactics that change, not the foundation,” he said.
“Human needs don't really change. If you address the human needs well, in a structured way, you have a solid foundation.
“That's very important to me, because I needed to be able to replicate my service across the nation and internationally, eventually.”
The entire business plan was built on a growth business model.
“We wanted to turn over 15 million in the first three years, which was aggressive,” Mr Meili said.
“Then it went to 50 million; it went to 100; it went to 250; it went to 500, 700.
“Our current goal is 1 billion by 2030.
“We know how we get there; it's clearly planned. I’m a meticulous planner.”
The business has diversified over time, with many workers following Protech from project to project.
The company provides full workforce management; it might manage the entire workforce in a mining company, for example.
“We’ve augmented our rail management services by bringing equipment and supervision into it, and as of last year, we started traffic management, all with the same foundations of quality and safety.
“It fits into the same space: the same industries, the same clients, the same people we talk to.
“It's a bit relentless to work at Protech. If you were to ask my staff who've been with me a long time, they go ‘Oh my God, it's always: what's next?’"
By far, the biggest challenge for Protech is government intervention.
“Our industry has been under attack for a good decade, I would say,” Mr Meili said.
It started with the Skene and Rossato cases v Workpac, which involved the issue of casual and permanent employment.
“We have these regulations as law already in place; after six months, people can ask for permanency, yet we get zero applications.
“We even reach out prior to the day they’re eligible and say: ‘You're entitled to work permanently’, but employees don't want it.
“I guess we operate in the not-low wage industry, because we're in construction, we're in mining, we're in oil and gas, we're in rail.
“Our people have options. They can get a job any day of the week somewhere else if they want to.
“They want the cash in their hand and have the flexibility to take time off whenever they want.
“That's certainly been one of the biggest challenges: the constant fight with some of our parliamentarians who live in this bubble and are fed a particular rhetoric about what's happening on the ground, which is entirely not true.
“Hence, it's super important to work with the likes of Australian Industry Group, which has a voice in that bubble.
“Anything we as a company but also as an industry can contribute to that voice will maximise that effort.”
Is Protech embracing AI?
“Absolutely,” Mr Meili said.
“I've been very clear that AI is the future, and AI is part of what we do.
“For me, it’s a tool for two things. One, it helps with compliance, which is tremendously complex. The awards and the EBAs are nuts.
“So, AI is tremendously valuable for us to make sure we're compliant with all those variations: meal allowance, crib allowance, shift allowance etc.
“AI also makes our people more efficient.
“I'll make sure they’re AI-enabled so they can deal with the AI applications and become more effective. I want them to be part of that journey.
“Back in the day, we had an abacus for maths, then calculators. Then we had laptops and now smart phones do everything. AI is just another tool.”
Protech also has AI-driven medical assessments connected to a database of national doctors as well as neuroscience-based safety behavior assessments.
“That’s given us leadership in safety: fewer people are injured on the job, and the severity of incidents is lower,” Mr Meili said.
“It’s been tremendously successful.”
“I'm an avid learner. I like learning. I like growing. I’m driven to explore the unknown and dealing with it,” Mr Meili, a father of three, said.
He reads a lot and recommends business books by Jim Collins.
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish also provides deep insight for small-to-medium-sized businesses.
He’s active, too.
“I go to the gym twice a week, and I'm on my mountain bike twice a week. I walk.
“I do something every day, and I think that's what keeps me going.
“It can be quite draining sometimes, but if you're fit and have a good diet and you manage your booze, that’s super important.
“When I was younger, I was bulletproof. I had energy galore.
“When I started hitting 50, I was like: ‘Oh, geez, I need a Saturday afternoon nap.'
“You need to combat that with being energetic and having a good diet and good sleep.”
Protech is certainly set to benefit from the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“Anything related to infrastructure is good for us,” Mr Meili said.
He’s always looking ahead.
“We’ve achieved great things, but we're still challenging ourselves every day.
“Everyone in the company is empowered to ask: ‘Is that still the right thing to do, or can we do it better?’
“You have to remain innovative.”
Wendy Larter is Communications Manager at Australian Industry Group.
A former journalist for newspapers and magazines including The Courier-Mail in Brisbane and Metro, the News of the World, The Times and Elle in the UK, she is passionate about giving businesses a voice.
