Risk & Business Magazine Hardenbergh Magazine Fall 2019 | Page 4

ACCU STAFFING
ACCU STAFFING SPOTLIGHT
N
early everyone knows what
a staffing agency is, whether
they know it by that name, as
a “temp” agency, or simply by
what they do and not by any
specific name at all. Over the years, many
of these companies have gotten a bad
reputation simply because of the way they
operate, how they treat their employees,
or a slew of other reasons. Many of them
. . . but not all of them. The ones who treat
their employees better and who spend time
to find the best ways to handle customers
stand above the rest. ACCU Staffing is one
of those shining lights.
ACCU Staffing Services was founded by
Doris Damm in 1979 after she recognized
a market for temporary employment in the
early days of downsizing. She was working
at a firm which did employee headhunting
placements and, upon coming home one
day, told her husband, Ed, that she wanted
to start a staffing company of her own. At
the time, these companies were called
temporary service companies rather than
staffing companies. Just as important as
matching employees with employers, Doris
wanted her firm to be located where people
would find them. Not hidden away in back
4
alleys, not up in a high-rise building, but
on the streets where people would see their
branding on a consistent basis.
From her first small office in Cherry
Hill, Doris built her company into one
consisting of 13 regional offices in the
Delaware Valley. She handles planned
staffing, permanent placements, corporate
outplacement services, and on-site
management functions. A large part of
ACCU’s success was due to strategic office
placement on main thoroughfares and in
the areas that needed staffing the most.
Success, in jobs or in placement, comes
from being close to where the work is.
The struggle at the time was the same one
that exists today. HR departments want
to know how to get the right employees
into the door and employees want to know
how to get their foot in the door as well.
What ACCU Staffing set out to do was to
connect these two. Whether for part-time,
full-time, or specific positions, ACCU aims
to connect the right people to the right
positions so that everyone wins.
ACCU Staffing not only places people in
positions but they also handle a good deal
of the training that will help employees
be successful in those positions. With
respect to call centers, office support, and
professional support, many customers
require specific skills of their new hires. If
someone comes in and does not have those
skills, each office has a resource called the
career center which offers special training
free of charge at any point in time.
If someone comes in and needs multiple
types of required training for their position,
they can come into an office and get that
type of training. This training means
a lot for companies that need help in
commercial packaging or manufacturing.
A lot of this work entails not only learning
the systems that are in place but also
pretraining to make sure employees can
handle what will be expected of them. That
could be anything from moving items
around to food packing to temperature
fluctuations at the worksite.
ACCU also has what’s called a mobile
recruiter. Back in the 1990s, Ed was
driving down Route 73 and saw an old
mobile home. He had the idea to convert
it, make it a bit more professional, and
then take it to areas where ACCU didn’t
have an office so they could advertise and