 Welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Daelyn Yanagida. I'm standing in for Reg Baker today. We are broadcasting live from the Think Tech studios in Piney Plaza, downtown Honolulu. And if you want to tune in, we are live at www.thinktechhawaii.com. If you'd like to subscribe to our program or get on our mailing list, please go to thinktechhawaii.com and sign up. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to bring you stories of businesses and people in Hawaii. Our guests share with us how they were able to build successes in our challenging environment. Today I am pleased to have Chad Higa in the Think Tech studios today. Chad is the owner of Express Employment Professionals. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Why don't we just get started? So why don't you tell me about Express Employment Professionals? Okay. Express Employment Professionals has been around since 1983. So we're 35 years old. It is an international staffing company. In fact, we are the largest staffing agency in the United States with 750 locations and with two of them here in Hawaii. 100% of all of our offices are franchise-owned. So it's not a corporate structure. It's really people local to the area that are in the business working with the company. Nice. That's important to our local economy that, of course, we are supporting local businesses and local communities. Tell me about how you got started in the industry. Oh, I get asked that a lot. My business partner and I, Lisa Daijo, we came from advertising. And after being there for, she was there for 13 years, myself 11, we decided that we wanted to start our own business. But we really didn't know what we wanted to do. We weren't sure if we wanted to go back into advertising. So we figured, look at the franchise model. So Express was one of the companies that we looked at. It didn't stand out to us as something that we originally wanted to do. But when we started doing the research on the company, we really liked the company, the people, the principles, their philosophy on how they do business, how strong a support system that they have because we didn't know what we were doing initially when we started. And that's kind of where we decided we wanted to go. We also wanted to work in a business where we build relationships with customers. We keep working with them. In my previous job with my partner, Lisa, we sold advertising, but we only talked to a client once a year. And every year we had to reestablish that relationship. And a lot of times they forgot who we were. So in this business, we work very closely with our companies regularly in an ongoing basis. Fantastic. I think that it's amazing when people start businesses in Hawaii and they thrive and they exist for a long time. So congratulations on your success. Thanks. We started the business in 2007. So we've been here for 10 years. In 2007, it was fantastic. The staffing agency, the business, was doing really great. And then 2008 and 2009 rolled around and everybody was letting everybody go. So those times are very hard for us, but we learned a lot, got leaner and stronger. And now we kind of made it through, and here we are today. Yeah, referring back to 2009, where our Hawaii's unemployment rate was roughly 7-ish percent, so pretty high. But through the years up to current, now our state unemployment rate is at 2.2, which is all-time low compared to our national unemployment rate of about 4%. How do you see unemployment rates being so low affecting businesses today? Their staffing needs, their labor needs. Right. Well, basically, at around 2%, 2.5%, the pool of people that are available to work is very small. I mean, if you think about it, at 5%, which is where it was more or less, we have 50% less people available just to work. So everybody right now who really wants to be working is working. Businesses have, because the pool is smaller, they have less people to choose from, and they also have less qualified people to choose from. The other thing, too, is the construction industry was just booming like crazy, right? So a lot of high-paying jobs opened up. And so people moved from their $20-an-hour jobs to their $40-an-hour jobs. And the 15 guys went up to 20, and the 12 went up to 15. And on the lower end of things, a lot of times, there weren't people there to take those jobs. So businesses hurt. They had to push themselves harder. They had to do a lot of overtime. They weren't able to help. They're not able to find the people that they need to get the work done. It's tough. It's very tough. You mentioned the construction industry specifically, but are there any other industries that really have a need for staffing? Yeah. The larger the company, a lot of the times, those larger companies are going to be familiar using staffing agencies. So financial institutions, banks, credit unions, utilities, those larger type companies, they already are regularly using staffing agencies. But other industries, such as moving companies, warehousing, distribution, logistics, they are also using a lot of people seasonally, especially. For example, movers, a lot of their work happens during the summertime because people move during the summer because they don't want to take their kids in and out of school. They want to do it during the summertime. So they have a large need that happens during the summer. Military moves and all that kind of stuff happen, too. But as much as you would think that there may be an industry that uses staffing services, have worked with hundreds of businesses and all types, I mean, from little insurance agencies to banks, to medical facilities with licensed clinicians, to little accounting, small little accounting firms, or even a dentist, you might think a dentist would never use a staffing agency, but they lose a receptionist or they lose an office person and they turn to us to help find somebody to help them do the work. Let's back up a little bit for perhaps our viewers that don't understand what a staffing agency is. So what is a staffing agency? Staffing agency, employment agency, we help businesses find people. And we also, on the other hand, we also help people find work. We're kind of that conduit in between. We have a business that needs to find qualified people, and we have qualified people that are looking for work, and we act as the in-between to get these two together. The nice thing about utilizing a staffing agency for a business is that we're doing all of the pre-qualification, the advertising, the recruiting, all of the search that's being done, and qualification we're doing for them. So they very quickly can find somebody that's qualified for their requirements to do those types of jobs. Otherwise, a lot of it is doing it themselves, and it really is a lot of work for business to do. On the other hand, for the person looking for the job, when we meet them, we're talking to them, we're interviewing them, we're bringing them through the process, once we've brought them into our pool, into our company, now we can have them being sent out to many different businesses, or open up opportunities to them where they never thought existed. So it's, basically that's what it is. We get the employee and the employer together quickly. Nice, it sounds like a beautiful partnership. So when people come to you because they are looking for jobs, what kind of training do you provide them, or do you provide any training? For us, we're not doing the training. We're looking for people who are already qualified to do the work. And there are a lot of people out there that are skilled. It's just that, for example, if a business were to, well, if a person were to be looking in the paper, or online, on ads for whatever position, and they maybe see a great customer service person, you have a business over here that needs someone, but never advertised it anywhere. So that person would never find out about the business. That business would never find that person, right? So how do you qualify these candidates? Okay, so every person that we bring in to our company, however it be, we do a lot of advertising, we do a lot of networking, a lot of recruiting, and just through the years of us being in business, we have our database of people. Every single person goes through the same process where we interview them, we bring them in, we talk to them, we thoroughly try and figure out what they did, what they want to do, and then we do evaluations on them. We test them, like if, for example, you needed someone that would use Excel, we would test them to make sure that they understand how to use Excel, typing their speeds or 10 key data entry for the speed as well as accuracy, or whatever other program that you would need to have them be proficient in, we would test them for those things. And after the interview, we will also do the employment verifications from previous employers so we can kind of get an idea of what they were like working in the previous place and what would be a good fit for them in the future. So there's a lot that goes through in order to just find one person that we're able to help. So going back to our low unemployment rate, are you having challenges finding qualified candidates? Yeah. Everybody is having a hard time. If you're, right now, there are so many open jobs that if somebody wanted to find, if you didn't, if you weren't happy with where you were and you were an excellent employee, a lot of times people are going to just say, hey, you know what so-and-so is looking or what about over here? You have a lot of options so you may not even look in the paper, you may not even go online, it just may happen organically. But with just a small pool of people looking right now, it's hard for us to get our hands on people. It's not like I can just order more people. I got to go out and be more aggressive with my advertising, with the networking, with the recruiting to find one. But do people walk into your office and say, hey, I'm looking for a job? Yeah. A lot of times people have used staffing agencies in the past and so they're familiar with the process, they understand that it does work or maybe they moved from the mainland and they worked with an express office there, wherever they were. They come in and they want to do the same thing here. It's starting to be very normal for people to utilize staffing agencies. In the past, you know, you could directly go to the companies but then as it's become more, people are more aware of the type of work that we do, the service that we provide, more and more people come to us with the understanding of what we can do for them. Nice. Very nice. We're going to go to a short break. So we'll see you back here shortly. This is Business in Hoi. She said, What are you doing? Research says reading from birth accelerates our baby's brain development. Push! Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child, every parent, every day. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii. Today we're talking with Chad Higa, owner of Express Employment Professionals here in Hawaii. So Chad, we've been talking about the partnership that you have with businesses, but also the partnership you have with candidates looking for work. Tell me about the types of positions that Express Employment Professionals fills. Okay. We've broken our business up into three components. One component would be our labor and skilled labor, basically labor. The other component is office. Customer service, admin, accounting, the office more professional side of the staffing. And the third part that we do is medical and IT staffing. So registered nurses, licensed nurses, CNAs, MAs in medical facilities, home care and hospitals. But the business is, so much of our business kind of crosses over because a lot of times when you have a labor company, like say for example, a moving company, that moving company will have an administrative portion of it, right? So that's where we decided that we wanted to help, we wanted to help both sides of the business, but we needed to have different parts of our business working on the office side and the labor side. We recently in the last year started doing a lot more medical. And so our company is Joint Commission Certified, which is really great. It's a system of a credential that allows us to work with these home health care providers and hospitals that it's very thorough with the credentialing process. So for us it's important that we're making sure that we're following all the rules for all the health care placements. Congratulations on acquiring that certification. In our conversation earlier, you were saying that it's quite a prestigious certification for a staffing agency to have. Yeah, it is. It's a lot of work to get it and it's a lot of work to keep it. But our clients understand that because they themselves are certified or they're looking for certified providers as well. It ensures that all of the checks were being done on their references, their licenses are up to date, their any sort of vaccinations, as well as even requiring them to have a minimum amount of time worked in that field before we can even place them. So it is a higher standard, but I think it's better to keep us safe, keep our clients safe, keep the patients safe as well. Nice. So from a business perspective, business owners, operators, hear about all the different resources out there today about how to obtain help in recruiting and staffing. So you have a staffing agency and you have a PEO and they're headhunters, recruiters. So where does Express stand out or stand separate from a PEO? Express is not a PEO. A PEO, essentially, you have a business, you take all of your employees and you put them on the PEO's payroll system. With that, the PEO is taking care of all of the taxes, the filings, FICA, FUDA, SUDA, all of the medical, the insurance, the workers comp, they're all handling that for you and because of just the large number of people that they have on the payroll, they can leverage for better rates from the carriers. So you're passing off that duty to them to do for you, to maintain all the HR components, the records, and getting potentially better pricing. That's not what Express does. That's a great model for certain businesses that need that, but we do staffing. We do staffing where we are getting employees or people in touch with the businesses. So a business will call us and ask for, say, I need an accounts receivable person in my accounting department and we will find a candidate, qualify that they have the skills. Sometimes the business wants to just start them immediately, no interview. Sometimes they want to put that person through an interview. Every business is a little different, but it's essentially we are loaning an employee to that business, an employee that can start immediately plug in and start doing the work. And a lot of times it could turn into a permanent position. They bring the person on temporarily. They like the person. The person likes the job. Everybody's happy after a certain amount of time. That person may transfer over to the company because they feel like it's a good fit. Another time or a company might just be busy for a couple of weeks needing a few people here and there. So they'll ask us, Chad, can you help us? We need five people for, say, two weeks. Kind of like renting a car almost, right? Where you rent the car, it's loaded with what it needs. You use it for what purposes you need and then you return it. Now, the great thing for the employee is that they get a chance to meet businesses, different businesses, learn about different types of work. And throughout that, they make a connection and it may become a permanent position. So how long do people stay in a temporary situation? Or do people make a career out of being a temp worker? Yeah. There are some people who really like the flexibility of being a temporary worker. So they will go from a job to job to job. And maybe they like traveling. So they'll be gone for a couple of months. Then they'll come back and they'll work. And that's just their lifestyle. And sometimes it's very quick where a person transfers over to the company. Sometimes a company might not have the available head count that they can add to it. So they leave the person on in a temporary status for a while, three months, six months, sometimes even years. It's really different for every company, but it's great because of the flexibility that the company has utilizing a staffing company. Essentially, it's like a light. You turn it on when you need it and when you don't, you can turn it off. How does that work out on a person's resume? So say, for example, someone does temp assignments for long term. What goes on to their resume? Is it express employment professionals? Is it the company they work for and the work that they did? How do people handle that? I've seen it both ways where they list, say, the staffing agency that they're with. And through that staffing agency from a certain amount of time, they worked at these companies. Or they might just put the company's name through express or whatever. But a staffing agency will send a person out to do work again and again and again if they're really great. If I know that this person is really strong and I have a temporary job and it's a fit, I'd like to send the best one that I have to do that job. And when that job ends, I have the person back and another company says, hey, I got an opening. This guy I already know or girl is great. I'm going to send that person there. So as an employer, if you have seen a person go to many assignments from an agency, it kind of tells you that this person has been reliable and the company, the agency, has wanted to use them over and over and over. And so it just kind of depends. So do businesses use you solely to fill, to feel hard to fill positions? So they'll say, hey, Chad, you know, I'm looking for, say, an accounts payable clerk but I'd eventually like to hire them. So do companies use you as that source? Yes. A lot of times our clients won't even advertise. They'll just call us, Chad, I need another X or whatever and we'll start working on it. They, I mean, everybody's busy but we've built a relationship where we understand their business, we understand their culture, we understand what type of skills and what type of environment that they have. So it's like we're an extension of their business. We're like the staffing part of their business but we're just not in the same office. We're down on limits. So some of them use us exclusively to do all of it for them. But then you also have other companies who are adding us to help to supplement what they're already doing. They're advertising, they're trying to look out to find their own people but they want to find the best person that can be found not necessarily the best person that they can find. So they open it up to an agency and say, hey, we're looking for this, we're looking on our own but if you guys have somebody, please let us know because we would like to find the best person that we can. So it's great that it just offers a lot of flexibility. So even if an organization has a human resources department and traditionally human resources department staff, they recruit, they interview, they hire folks. So even though they have a fully functioning human resources department, they would still call upon a staffing agency like Express? Yeah, well, yes and no. Some of them don't because they say, I can do this myself, I have people. But some of them say, hey, yes, we will utilize that outside source because as much as, like I said earlier, they're looking for the best people that they can find, period. Not the best people that their staffing department in their HR can find. So they're okay with opening it up. And I think it's good. I think businesses always should be thinking about hiring because you never know who's going to leave or what's going to happen. But when you utilize an agency, once you get used to them and they get used to you, you build that trust and it's like another set of eyes looking out for what you're typically looking for. There are some cost efficiencies for businesses to engage a staffing agency to help them fill open positions. Yeah, if an agent, well, if you have a company and let's just say they needed to hire back to our accounts payable person. And there's so much that goes into hiring. There's the advertising and then there's the interview and then there's a follow-up and there's all these things that make the business stop, go, stop, go, stop, go. All the while, there's no one doing that work. It's somebody else doing the work. It's somebody doing overtime to do that work. It's somebody else now having to pick up that spot's duty and making a whole bunch of mistakes because this is not what they usually do. So all of these things are happening and yeah, you might find a person but you might not find the right person or that person might feel like this is not the right job for them and then you have to do it again and again and again. Now ideally you'd like to do it once. We would like to do it once too but when you have that portion taken off your plate so you can go ahead and do your job. If you're the plumber, you're doing your plumbing or if you're the dentist, you're doing your dentistry, we do it all day. All the agency does is constantly look for people, look for people, look for people and qualify so we usually can bring a person in a lot more quickly than a company can just buy themselves. I also understand that express employment professionals guarantees placement to a certain extent. Tell me about that guarantee. In terms of the... Guaranteeing the placement? So certain types of placements when a company will pay a fee for us to find that individual. They'll pay us a fee and for 90 days we will guarantee that that person stays into that position otherwise we will do a one-time replacement and refill it for them because you never know what could happen and if something does happen where the person falls out in 90 days, we'll go ahead and go through the process again to help that company refill that spot for them too. I would love it if it always happened the first time but sometimes it takes a couple of times. Fantastic. We were running low on time but just a quick question. How do you enjoy being a business owner in the industry? You know, I like this business a lot. It's really neat to me to see how we help people. It's great because we have clients and they're the ones that pay our bills and we help them do their jobs but the part where we're helping people find work work that maybe they never thought existed or turned their eyes onto a career that they didn't think that they possibly could have and they start doing well and they thrive it is very rewarding like that for us so we really like it. Nice. We are out of time but I want to thank you Chad for spending time with us today and a big thank you to the great production staff here in the studio. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 o'clock. The Business in Hawaii show will be dark next week for the holiday. We're wishing you and yours a very happy holiday. Thanks for joining us.