Small Business Today Magazine OCT 2014 THE EFFORT COMPANIES | Page 27

By Barbara R. Davis

I

n early 2009, EFFORT Companies founder and President,
Emile “Chuck” Toups began having a conversation with Ashley
Olivier, a new member of his EFFORT corporate team, and
the subject of how difficult it was to find the right personnel
became a topic. Ashley’s commiserated that at his prior organization, the personnel that he kept getting were not of quality, they
weren’t team players, and the company was always having a high
rate of turn over. Chuck, who was contracting out to other firms,
had the same problem. Having a bigger vision in mind regarding the EFFORT brand, Ashley began EFFORT Staffing. As the
President of EFFORT Staffing, Ashley began working out of his
house putting together a company that would demonstrate the
high ethics and be of the same caliber of all of the other divisions
of the EFFORT Companies. He shared, “We all believe in the
importance of having a strong faith, always being true to who we
are, and doing things with integrity, commitment, and excellence.
It’s about the people so doing the right thing is key.”
Primarily supporting WorldPMO, EFFORT’s project and program management services division, the goal of EFFORT Staffing
was to go out and locate those top two per centers then properly match their qualifications, assess them, and put them into the
field for their customers. From the beginning, their purpose was
to attract the right people, identify competencies, and then place
them into the appropriate position; but how to do that? Ashley
had not come from the HR industry; he came from the oils and
lubricants sector of the chemical industry where he was a product line manager. He began his arduous task by spending count-

less hours researching what to do by finding resources in libraries
and book stores, going online to staffing industry analyst sites, and
also visiting a lot of staffing forums. He was determined to find
out the best practices of what the top organizations were doing.
Ashley even got Dunn & Bradstreet reports trying to figure out
who the big players were in the market, what they did, why they
were successful, and what their specialty areas were.
From there, Ashley started looking at how those big companies actually provided candidates and what their processes were.
With EFFORT Staffing, Ashley wanted to do things differently and
provide a better service to their clients, their candidates, and their
people as well. Ashley began developing the foundational requirements to create EFFORT’s own unique model. “It’s our process, our client focus, and our candidate focus that set us apart,”
stated Ashley. “We are very people oriented. We believe that
people are the first blocker to success. If you don’t have the
right people, you are not going to be successful. If we have not
followed our pattern of excellence and not provided the right
people to our clients, we will have failed them. So if we do the
right thing by finding the perfect match with the right people,
they’re going to be successful and as a result we will be successful
at the same time.”
Currently, EFFORT Staffing has 50 to 100 people representing their organization and this year, they are looking to double
their growth. Things have been progressing rapidly for EFFORT
Staffing. Instead of being the HR firm for the EFFORT Compa-

EFFORT Staffing people
deliver! EFFORT Staffing
is comprised of a unique
group of
dedicated and
experienced
professionals whose
goals are to provide the
right people for the right
po