Strong Culture With a Local Twist Makes Roth a Great Place to Work

As Roth Staffing Companies prepares to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its founding later this year, it’s proud that it still has more than two dozen employees who have been with the firm for more than 20 years.

It’s no surprise that the firm has focused on building a culture that resonates — with internal employees, consultants and customers. This has been the key to retaining employees long-term while also hiring enough new employees to expand the firm to 100 offices in 20 states — and landing on Staffing Industry Analysts’ Best Staffing Firms to Work For list multiple years in a row.

“Our purpose is to make life better for the people that we serve,” says Adam Roth, the firm’s CEO. His father, Ben Roth, founded the company in Newport Beach, California, in 1994 and today is its chairman. “If we go out and impact people’s lives in a positive way, the business excellence will happen. Internally, we want to create a place that’s special and where people want to come to work every day.”

Roth Staffing Companies is a family of staffing firms with different specialties: Ultimate Staffing Services, the original company, which provides office, administrative and clerical staff; Ledgent Finance & Accounting, a finance and accounting staffing and executive search firm; Ledgent Technology, an IT staffing firm; Adams & Martin Group, a legal staffing firm; and About Talent, a managed service provider. It has 650 employees.

Focusing on the firm’s mission has enabled the company’s hiring managers to find and nurture people who have a passion for making a difference in other people’s lives.

Hiring First

Building a strong culture starts with the hiring process — which can be lengthy.

“If we don’t hire people that are able to enliven and champion our culture, there’s going to be a huge disconnect,” Roth says. Candidates who are inspired by the company’s vision “get excited during the interview process — they jump in and talk about how it resonates with them.”

The firm looks at culture at both a macro level — how well the candidate is aligned with the firm’s overall mission and vision – and a micro level. The micro-level culture fit — how well the employee fits in at his or her branch office or corporate department — is critical, Roth says, because the day-to-day experience at work is “why people join the organization and why people stay.”

Although all branches subscribe to the overarching firm culture, “you want your branches to have local personality: How they have fun in the workplace, celebrate success and engage in the recruiting process should take on a local flair,” Roth says.

Hiring managers use a proprietary online assessment to pinpoint areas to discuss during the first interview, which is focused on cultural fit. They are also very forthcoming about the core philosophies of the firm, so that people understand it from the beginning.

“We are very much a performance-driven organization, but we are also very concerned with doing things the right way and doing good things for people,” Roth says.

Training, Development Are Key

Once employees are hired, what makes them want to stay? One key: clearly defined growth and career paths — and the training and support to help employees follow them.

“We are making sure people have the opportunity to take on more and learn new things,” Roth says.

When the firm’s leaders first decided to focus on career paths, they tried to create a standard structure for advancement.

“But as we did that, we realized that growth means such different things to different people,” Roth says. Some may want to move up the ranks into management, others may want to move to a new role — and some may want to get better at their current jobs rather than move to a new position. They decided to focus instead on giving managers the tools to create a growth plan for each employee. Supporting employees on their individual growth paths can involved training — either internal or external — or other opportunities.

The firm also offers perks such as a parental leave program and a recently expanded work-life balance program. They know there is a strong correlation between employee engagement and giving, so they look for opportunities for employees to volunteer together, for example.

Employees have donated thousands of hours of community service. Recently, more than 450 Roth employees and their families took part in the Orange County Heart & Stroke Walk, for example.

“It’s fun to see people come out for these events,” Roth says. “They have a huge sense of pride in the organization.”