Carlton Staffing Earns the Best of Staffing 10 Year Diamond Award This year, ClearlyRated has the honor of recognizing our first ever cohort of 10 Year Diamond Award winning firms! This award is the crowning achievement for Best of Staffing firms, earned only by a handful of elite organizations that have won the Best of Staffing designation for 10 consecutive years. Among them is Carlton Staffing, a staffing agency headquartered in Houston, TX, serving clients across the Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth area since 1980. Carlton Staffing has earned the Best of Staffing designation for Client Satisfaction 10 years in a row. We had the opportunity to sit down with Annette Monks, President of Carlton Staffing, to hear her thoughts on the Best of Staffing program and what the 10 Year Diamond Award means to the Carlton Staffing team. Annette Monks, President, Carlton Staffing What does winning the Best of Staffing 10 Year Diamond Award for Client Satisfaction meant to you and the Carlton Staffing team? Annette: Well, to win it one time, the ClearlyRated Best the Staffing, is a big deal. However, if you win it 10 times I think it means that we’re not a one hit wonder. I think for us it’s just such an affirmation that we’re doing things right. What does it take to maintain such a high level of excellence for such a long time? Annette: I think it takes four things. The first thing is obviously the right people internally. They have to be hard working, have personal drive and passion for what they do, love our company, and hold themselves accountable – that’s for sure. The second thing is you got to have great systems in place: a great sales system and a great recruitment operations system, which we have. Then we have a disciplined execution. We track metrics and results, and we make changes where needed, so that’s critical. Number three: we listen – a lot – for opportunities for improvement, whether it’s this survey, internal surveys for our staff, for temporary employees, even our vendors. We listen and we try to improve on the feedback that we get. And then the last thing is, and I think the most important, is we just keep it fun. We celebrate all the victories, and we try to make it fun so people want to stay and work for us. What’s an important lesson that you’ve learned from participating in Best of Staffing for so many years? Annette: So this is very simple, but I think it’s important to keep your information about all your clients up-to-date. I mean honestly, even for back office-personnel, because people move a lot, and it makes it very difficult to reach the response rate. If you’re sending out surveys to people who don’t exist, or are not in that company anymore, it’s not helpful. That’s a big lesson we learned. Were there any surprises along the way? Annette: Yeah, there were good surprises and there were… opportunities, I would say. The good surprises were that the recruiters were surprised about all the Shout Outs that they got from their clients. They didn’t think that they made that kind of difference. I was not surprised at all, but they were surprised and that’s cool. One thing that surprised us, which I kind of mentioned earlier, was that it’s very hard to get the response rate, it really is. You think your clients are going to respond, but they’re busy. And they don’t find it as important as you do, and I think that was a big surprise to us. What advice would you give to someone about to participate in Best of Staffing for the first time? Annette: Ok, a few things. First, I would definitely use the material that you’re given from ClearlyRated regarding communication ahead of time with your clients. If they don’t know what’s coming, and they don’t understand the importance, they probably will not respond. And make sure your contacts that are no longer there are out of the system, so basically: clean database. Then the last one is, I would assign one person should own it from start to finish – on all the aspects – so that everything is properly executed. Otherwise things will go undone. Do you have any exciting plans for showing off your 10 Year Diamond Award? Annette: Well, the good new is that ClearlyRated gives us lots of ideas, and we’re using them all. We do have it on our [email] signature as well, which is really helpful because people ask about it, so that’s pretty cool. We’re going to use everything that you guys have given us and that’s awesome. Is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to share? Annette: The Best of Staffing designation is no joke – it’s an investment in time and money and it’s hard to achieve. The fact is, though, we’ve attracted clients and internal staff as a result of having this, so it really does pay for itself and it’s worth the effort.
