Smart Business Magazine, October 2017

40 Smart Business Cleveland October 2017 COVER full time work Lucarelli says Now its probably 80 percent full time and 20 percent We need somebody for four hours Most of our work is not on the spot anymore A lot of our clients are 52 weeks a year and there are a lot of challenges that come with administering a nonskilled workforce The Affordable Care Act signed into law in March 2010 is one of the challenges In the industry we serve light industrial its hard for these companies to administer both a transient workforce and all the compliance that is needed for ACA Lucarelli says That drove a lot of business our way But its hard to find people nowadays at the nonskilled or semiskilled level Coming out of 2008 a lot of those people developed skills that took them out of the nonskilled labor market Despite this difficulty Minute Men has found a way to thrive It has 600 corporate employees and places 60000 employees every week at locations in Ohio Michigan Illinois and now Wisconsin On the corporate side Lucarelli says the company has built much of its staff through existing relationships within the business Its one of those weird things where a friend of a friend needs a job or a family member comes up or somebody gets married and the husband needs a job we bring them in We may not have a specific position so we just let them feel their way around and they gravitate to a position People have often said that when they came here they really didnt know what their job was But they say it in a positive way Over time they filled a role and we let them run with it We look at hiring people as an opportunity When it comes to finding the right people to fill those 60000 positions out in the field every week Lucarelli relies on an ongoing dialogue with clients It helps to ensure that his company is identifying and placing people in positions that give them the best chance to succeed A glimpse at how it all began My dad was a pop driver His route was the inner city factories and he would go in and fill up the pop machines When he was doing that he would grab the foreman and say Are you short any people today The guy would look at him and say What the hell are you talking about He would talk about this little business that he and my grandpa had started and add If you need any workers we can bring them over to you One guy was like Yeah we need two people My dad says Can I borrow your phone He calls my grandpa at the office and says Put two guys in the station wagon and bring them over here My dad couldnt quit his job yet delivering pop so he would just talk to the foremen and it caught on really quick Only took about four months for it to take off Lucarelli on being part of a family business As long as I can remember this is all I ever wanted to do When I was little my dad would bring us to work and I knew the only thing I ever wanted to do was work with my father and my grandfather I would come to work during the summertime and during the school year if we had a day off I wouldnt go with my friends I would come with my dad I loved being around him and seeing how things worked NAME JAY LUCARELLI TITLE PRESIDENT AND CEO COMPANY MINUTE MEN STAFFING HR SERVICES The Lucarelli File MINUTE MEN STAFFING