Changing its focus
Express Personnel Services becomes Express Employment Professionals
Express Personnel Services becomes Express Employment Professionals

By Debbie Blossom

Published: March 1, 2008

With a growing number of office locations here and abroad, and sales in 2007 close to $2 billion, Express Personnel Services said it has changed its name to better reflect its place within the multi-billion-dollar staffing industry.

The privately-held, Oklahoma City-based company's new name — Express Employment Professionals — groups staffing, human resources and payroll services under a single brand and logo, said Bob Funk, founder and chief executive.

The new name more clearly projects the company's increasing emphasis on office services and professional staffing, in addition to the temporary staffing service where the company started in 1983, Funk said.

"This new focus will allow us to improve our offerings to our customers, employees and franchisees by presenting a name that better describes what we do,” Funk said. "Every time we have changed our name, we have exponentially improved our business.”

Express offers clients temporary and flexible staffing, evaluation and direct hire, professional and contract staffing and human resource services, such as risk management, payroll processing and training and development.

But Funk said in many markets Express remains known for supplying temporary staffers to light industry. And that's an image the company wants to change.

"We've made some great strides over the past few years,” he said.

The company has undergone several name changes through the years, and when it became Express Personnel Services in 1993 sales had reached $324.2 million. Fifteen years ago, there were 198 offices in 25 states, a few locations in Russia and Sweden, and fewer than 150,000 employees.

But the office count has jumped to more than 600, with more than 350,000 employees in the United States, Canada, South Africa and Australia. Sales increased 5.5 percent last year, and are on track with sales at this time last year, said Express spokesman Sean Simpson.

The official rebranding will coincide with Express moving into new corporate offices April 15. The company will occupy one floor of a $14 million, 90,000-square-foot building at 9710 Boardwalk Ave., directly behind the current site at 8516 NW Expressway. The two-story structure, designed by Richard R. Brown Associates and built by Wynn Construction, also will be the new home of Claimetrics Management, an affiliate of Express formed in 2004, which handles claims management services for workers' compensation, general and automobile liability and disability. Claimetrics also has operations in Sacramento, Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Portland.

A basement floor will house computer equipment and a workout facility, Simpson said.

Express simply outgrew its corporate surroundings, doubling its staff to 220 in the past five years, he said.

"We foresee having a third and fourth building in this area,” Simpson added.

Express also is trying to entice independent staffing firms to become franchises in markets where Express doesn't have a presence. The goal is 10 offices this year.

Some more recent conversions — in Alaska, Florida and Ontario — already have doubled in size since joining Express, Simpson said.

Suzanne Patrick said becoming an Express franchise in 2004 after operating her own staffing firm in Port Charlotte, Fla., was the best business decision she ever made.

"I was a small business, successful, but I wanted more and I couldn't get it all on my own,” Patrick said in a phone interview. "There's so many benefits, I wish I would have done this 20 years ago.”

Express computerized her office and installed software to address every aspect of the business — from payroll to drafting correspondence to existing and new clients. Patrick also has attended industry conferences — something she said she never got to do before — where she has had the chance to meet other staffing firm owners and win some awards.

During the past two years, Express has opened 130 new offices and plans are for at least 50 new U.S. and Canadian offices by the end of 2008.

Express is ranked the fifth-largest staffing firm in the nation, and is the only privately held among the world's 20 largest, Simpson said.

But Funk's desire is to grow even bigger, with the goal of 900 offices, $4 billion in sales and becoming the No. 1 staffing company in this country.

"The evolution of our business, the growth of our offerings, the direction of our future — these things led to our becoming Express Employment Professionals.”

Comments