By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Nationwide, the staffing industry experienced an 8 percent decline for the first three quarters of 2008. But West Michigan-based EmploymentGroup set a trend of its own with 10 percent sales growth and the placement of 780 workers in full-time employment.
“Our employee turnover is 13 percent, compared to an American Staffing Association report that the staffing industry turnover is 24 percent,” says Mark Lancaster, CEO. “Our sales grew to $41.5 million compared to $37.8 million for the same period last year. We’re placing manufacturing workers and administrative temporary help week in and week out.”
The reason for the company’s success is due in large part to its expansion of SuccessCheck, an online software application that screens applicants and scores them according to attitude, skills and cognitive abilities.
“Our goal is to select the right person for the right job,” Lancaster says. “Some workers scored well on one part of the test, but weren’t a good overall fit for that job.”
EmploymentGroup is lean certified through the University of Michigan and asked its “lean team” to analyze and improve the way the company used the SuccessCheck test scores.
“We were looking at an aggregate score of the cognitive abilities, skills and attitude tests,” Lancaster notes. “We found that if we looked at those separately we could better determine the fit for an employee and a particular job.”
EmploymentGroup serves over 200 clients and has 17 offices in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois.
Source: Mark Lancaster, EmploymentGroup; Patrick Kane, Lambert, Edwards & Associates
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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