Atlanta-based Mom Corps Inc. will franchise its business this year as part of the placement firm's plan to expand as companies seek experienced employees without paying for permanent staffers.
The staffing company, which Allison O'Kelly founded in July 2005, has grown from $500,000 in 2006 revenue to $2.5 million in 2008.
Its roster has grown to more than 30,000 candidates nationally seeking flexible work schedules, and its client base has expanded to several hundred companies, including Fortune 500 firms in
The franchises, which will allow Mom Corps to expand beyond its current five markets -
"They will go out and will be the ones to hire people and recruit companies and recruit candidates in their markets," said O'Kelly, the company's CEO.
The franchise plan is a response to changes in the economy as well, with O'Kelly citing the lack of available credit to grow as a business.
"I didn't want to give half of my company away to a venture capital firm," she said. "It takes care of the capital issues. Even more importantly than that, it takes people who are going to be business owners [as franchisees] and are going to have different levels of motivation than an employee might have to really grow the business."
O'Kelly, a CPA and mother of two boys, started the company in an effort to provide flexible work schedules to professional females. Some of its franchisees will come from what Mom Corps clients are seeing - women who haven't been in the workforce but are looking to reenter due to uncertainty about a spouse's job.
"I think that companies, of course, need to be cautious, so I think a strategy like using contractors, not hiring people, that's hugely helpful," she said. "But they also need to grow. They're not going to get anywhere if they just stop operating because they're scared."
New year, more growth
O'Kelly and her team weren't scared in mid-2008 when "all of a sudden it was like nobody was around," she said. "It was very difficult. We were very concerned."
They determined that companies were trying to avoid layoffs, and during that period, which lasted a couple of months for Mom Corps, the businesses weren't spending money on additional help. Chief operating officer Maria Goldsholl described it as companies being "frozen in limbo."
During that time, Mom Corps increased its viral marketing efforts and continued to attend speaking engagements to explain the Mom Corps philosophy and its edge in the staffing marketplace. Once companies went through with layoffs and figured out their budgets, Mom
Corps saw demand increase, O'Kelly said.
"They said, 'Now, we still need to get the work done, even if we don't have these employees,'" O'Kelly said. The holidays didn't slow down, either. The company received calls up to Christmas Day.
The way companies use the firm has shifted, Goldsholl said. The contractor (ranging from a few days to six months or more) and part-time jobs have increased from 70 percent to 85 percent to 90 percent, with few requests now to fill permanent positions.
"I think that really will continue even as we recover from our economic crisis," Goldsholl said. "People will just not want to re-incur all that overhead in their organizations."
The uncertainty in the economy is making firms reluctant to hire permanent employees, said Robert T. Sumichrast, dean of the Terry College of Business at The University of Georgia, whose alumni board includes O'Kelly.
"That adds to the demand for temporary and part-time positions," he said. "Companies, I think, are increasingly relying on these staffing firms."
Sumichrast said professional and technical workers will be sought after, as well as those in the health-care industry. Temporary agencies may be among the first to benefit when the economy recovers, according to an economic forecast by the Terry College of Business Selig Center for Economic Growth. The report says, "In the second half of 2009,
Sumichrast added that because unemployment is expected to continue to rise, there will be a larger pool of workers willing to accept temporary and part-time positions. Mom Corps also is considering partnering with outplacement firms, which would offer Mom Corps as an option when assisting laid-off workers, Goldsholl said.
Mom Corps
Headquarters:
Full-time employees: 20
2006 revenue: $500,000
2007 revenue: $1.7 million
2008 revenue: $2.5 million
Locations:
What they do: Staffing company specializing in getting professional females back in the workplace
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