The Business of Employer-Employee Matchmaking

Linda Green and Marcy Golbrani met by chance when each was taking their children trick-or-treating one Halloween. The chance meeting turned into a full-on venture: Regal Staffing Services. And like a nurturing mother, the staffing firm takes care of its clients from start to finish. “We don’t just drop off the employee at the client’s doorstep and wait to hear about their placement,” Green notes. “We stay in touch to ensure that the job is proceeding as it should—for both the staffer and the client.”

The Cleburne, Texas-area staffing firm, which specializes in the placement of clerical, technology, professional, and light-industrial workers, opened its doors in 1995, and from the outset, Green and Golbrani wanted their venture to reflect their own high business standards. “When it comes to customer service, honesty is essential,” Green says. “We have been consistently straightforward about what we can and can’t do in terms of our services.”

For instance, she recalls one employee who, despite having relocated out of state, contacted her firm for placement services. “Unfortunately, at the time, we couldn’t do anything for him because our operations were limited to the Fort Worth area,” Green says. However, upon returning to the area, he contacted Green and her associates. “He said that he wanted to work with us because we always carried through on our promises,” she says.

Such practices are a hallmark of Regal Staffing Services’ strong reputation in the placement field. Over the years, it has earned high praise from clients and employees alike for honoring agreements stipulating both quantity and quality of employees for specific projects. Green attributes much of this corporate success to what she calls “transparent accountability.” This unique approach features a progress template customized to meet client needs and expectations.

Common template categories include client policies and goals, the numbers of employees to be hired for each project, and guidelines for rating employee performance. Subsequently, progress reports on employee productivity, along with frequent client interaction, help determine whether placed personnel are measuring up to project objectives. “This has been an invaluable tool,” says Green about the quantifiable approach to tracking employee efforts. “It clearly spells out what both the client and employee can anticipate for any project.”

Green’s firm is also committed to employee advancement. “If a new hire isn’t working out, we make it a point to speak with him or her about what can be done to help them realize success,” she says. “Often, it is just a matter of finding the right job for the right person.”

Perhaps one of the biggest tributes to this winning staffing formula is Regal Staffing Services’ Vendor on Premises (VOP) venture. This initiative was launched last year when, following discussions with a long-time client, Green’s firm was contracted to handle the entire staffing operations for her client’s new Ohio location.

Comprehensive deadlines and procedures for hiring standards, as well as protocols for calculating employee progress and performance, were developed and implemented by Regal Staffing Services’ professionals. “The goal was to complement the client’s hiring practices and policies. In this way, the personnel we brought in were simply an extension of their own staff,” Green says.

By all indications, VOP has represented a major breakthrough for Regal Staffing Services. “It has enabled us to take our accountability and customer-service excellence to the next level—by every measure it has met with unqualified success,” Green notes. Such progress is aptly reflected in the firm’s bottom line—revenues are expected to grow significantly from $20 million last year to more than $33 million this year.

Looking ahead, Regal Staffing Services plans to establish VOP locations on the East Coast and several southern states within the next year. The firm will also expand local operations into the nearby central Dallas region. Even in light of such growth, however, Green remains dedicated to her firm’s core principles. “All things considered,” she says, “it boils down to providing the service that clients and employees want and need. That is what keeps us going and will continue to drive us forward in the years ahead.”