The past five years have been pretty awful for staffing and training group Adcorp. Relentlessly high unemployment in SA, a bad call on a major Australian deal and persistent management turmoil have combined to knock Adcorp’s shares down 89% over the period. We asked newly installed CEO Phil Roux, former head of Pioneer Foods, what exactly needs fixing now.

PR: It’s always difficult to pronounce too early but there are some glaringly obvious things that have gone wrong. Importantly, structural changes: when [labour] legislation kicked in [it] created havoc in the industry per se and not only here...