“This individual actually delivered results; we didn’t have enough time and credibility to do the work. Executive kept things moving forward in a way that others might not have been able to do.”
In the News
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Executive-level help, STAT
Agency's niche is providing experienced people for interim and project work
St. Paul Pioneer Press - By Julie Forster
When jobs disappear at hospitals and clinics, much of the work remains.
Increasingly, temp service workers are filling in to shore up the ranks and to execute short-term projects.
Experienced Resources, which places temporary health care workers in hospitals and clinics, is the beneficiary of an ugly downturn that hasn't spared the formerly recession-proof health care industry.
Operating out of her Bloomington home, Mary Christensen and her brother Damian Martin launched the company in 2005 with $20,000 from savings. Revenue at Experienced Resources more than doubled between the third and fourth quarters of 2008, and the owners hope to break the $1 million mark this year.
The workers they place have more than 20 years of experience and fill jobs for short-term projects and interim work in areas such as operations, finance, technology, human resources and marketing. They've placed executives with more than 20 organizations, including North Memorial Health Care and Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services.
North Memorial cut 380 jobs late last year in response to a decline in patients and growth in unpaid bills. When the hospital system needed to hire someone to negotiate with health insurers, it turned to Experienced Resources instead of hiring someone for a permanent position.
Martin saw a market niche during a period when he was laid off as vice president of sales and marketing at a manufacturing plant. Much of his career was in banking. Armed with an MBA and years of banking and management experience, he tried to find a job after Sept. 11, 2001, when the economy went into free fall.
"No one was hiring," he said. He tapped traditional temp agencies, but it seemed they were focused on placing people in clerical and administrative positions. "I went to four different temp staffing companies," Martin said. "They talked to me and took my information but I never got one phone call."
At the time, Christensen ran her own human resources consulting business. Martin talked to her about the number of people who must be experienced, yet unemployed and wanting work. They could see a way to pool those resources and make a profit in matching their skills to employer needs.
"Our expertise really is about making the match," Christensen said. They use an assessment tool on each open job to determine what the person hired to fill it needed to deliver. The process is much like the online dating service eHarmony, Christensen said. "We are really making the match," she said. "We're not just throwing bodies out there. It is about matching the expertise to the culture."
Dr. Terril Hart is among the 600 workers in Experienced Resources' pool. He left his job as chief executive of the Indian Health Board in Minneapolis in April 2007. Hart, 69, didn't want to retire but wanted more flexibility in his schedule. Through most of his career he was a pediatrician, moving into management in 1997. Until 2001 he was chief medical officer at Children's Hospitals and Clinics.
He contacted Experienced Resources last year. In September, the firm placed Hart in a contract position as chief operating officer with NOW Medical Centers, walk-in care clinics owned by North Memorial. He was assigned to put in place internal operating systems for the fast-growing company. But when the economy tanked and the hospital system started cutting many of its outside contractors, his job was cut in December.
He's now interim executive director of a community health services program. "The idea is, of course, the executives have a lot of experience so that when we get placed in one of these assignments we can dig right in," he said.
Hart sees the need for more people like himself as employers search for greater flexibility with their work force. Christensen and Martin see an increasing supply of talent as aging baby boomers move to jobs where they have more control over their schedules and the number of assignments they take.
Edith Swiatek, 57, met Christensen after her job at Fairview Health was eliminated in 2005. As a vice president, she had put in long hours and was ready to scale back and take time off to travel.
Since she signed on with Experienced Resources, Swiatek has worked a dozen assignments and is currently a project manager at Minnesota Eye Consultants in Bloomington. "It creates a lot of freedom," she said.
Martin is staking his company's future on the belief that employers coming out of the recession will consider a different work force model, one that draws heavily on temporary workers.
While employers pay a premium hourly rate that includes a markup for Experienced Resources' services, they don't have to shoulder the cost of benefits and they can make cuts more easily.
Experienced Resources started the year profitable, but it has been a long road from launch to profit. "I think if I knew then what I know now, we never would have done it," Martin said. "Now I would never trade it for the world."
Christensen and Martin hired a vice president of talent development in 2006. In November, they added a vice president of business development.
"It's still a rollercoaster," Martin said. "But not nearly what it was ... we have a base of business we can rely on and we're just more confident that we are sustainable."
jforster@pioneerpress.com | 651-228-5189
COMPANY SPECS
Company: Experienced Resources
Business: Provides experienced executives for projects and interim assignments in health care.
Location: Bloomington
Web site: flexgener.com
Founded: 2005
Ownership: Mary Christensen and Damian Martin
Competition: Health care consultants
Employees: Four
Challenge ahead: Educating health care organizations about their business model and the benefits of using experienced executives for short-term assignments.