Reed Specialist Recruitment is listed in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league of Britain's largest private companies.

[6][7] Its headquarters and the majority of its operations are in the UK, alongside offices in the Middle East, Asia and continental Europe.

[8][9][10] The company has three main divisions: Reed Specialist Recruitment provides employment services for permanent, contract, temporary and outsourced jobs, as well as IT and HR consultancy.

Industry specialisms include accountancy, banking and finance, office support, education, health and care, HR, management procurement, science, technology, hospitality and leisure.

It also claims a database of 12 million jobseekers worldwide, gathered through online registrations and the Reed office network.

Launched in July 2023, the project is establishing a number of Energy Academies across the UK by 2025, providing essential skills training for assessors and installers of net-zero technologies, such as solar power, electric vehicles, and heat pumps.

Copying the example of rival Alfred Marks, Reed began moving his offices to ground floor locations on main shopping streets.

Reed Employment floated on the London Stock Exchange on 13 January 1971, at an offer price of 12s 6d, a price/earnings ratio of 13.1 and a yield of 4.4%.

Reed also experimented with publishing during this time, including Roundabout magazine, designed to be given away free to young women at Tube stations.

[23] During this period the firm became one of the first two private sector companies implementing the Blair government's Welfare-to-Work programme, christened by Labour as "The New Deal".

[24] Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson contacted Alec Reed in 1997 with a proposal to outsource some of the work of traditional job centres.

As Alec Reed later wrote: "That would not have happened had he walked into the local branch, so it opened my eyes to the internet’s potential".

Reed sites collectively received 199 million visits in 2017; as of 2019 it hosts approximately 250,000 job applications per day.

The judging panel has included Jaime Winstone, Eugene Simon, Stuart Cosgrove, Roger Chapman, Paul Weiland and Nicola Reed.

The company's TV and online advertising is presented under the Love Mondays slogan, which aims to change the way employees perceive the start of a new workweek after the weekend.

Campaign content includes motivational quotes, career tips, and success stories, and often features James Reed.

From 2008 to 2018 the company ran a nationwide advertising campaign fronted by actor and comedian Rufus Jones, who played James Reed as a caricature of a comic book superhero.

Alongside 26 other businesses and industry figures, such as Sir Alan Sugar, Lord Bamford, Luke Johnson and James Timpson, Reed called upon CEOs to protect jobs by sacrificing management salaries and company profits; Reed declined his own salary from the family business during the pandemic.

Shortly after demerger, the firm began a programme of expansion by acquisition led by Chief Executive Christa Echtle and finance director Desmond Doyle.

Some financial commentators, such as Patience Wheatcroft of Management Today, criticised the firings and called for better corporate governance from Reed's board.

[37] The Big Give is a Reed Foundation initiative to introduce donors to charitable projects in their field of interest.

It is to fund innovative solutions supporting young people with poor mental health to secure and sustain employment.

[43] In 1989 Alec Reed founded Ethiopiaid, a charity that works in Ethiopia to mitigate poverty, ill health, and poor education.

[44] Reed is a signatory to the Armed Forces Covenant, in support of current and former service personnel in their transition away from the military.

James Reed was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to business and charity.

[45] Reed was ranked #28 in Glassdoor's Top 50 Best Places to Work 2019, the highest placement for a recruitment company in the list.