By Kym Reinstadler | TBL
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MUSKEGON — Chris Gardenour’s future looked bright the three years he had a good-paying job at Lift-Tech International. He could afford anything he needed. He bought a house. He got engaged to be married.

Chris Gardenour, above, enrolled in the GoodTemps program after being laid off from a manufacturing job in Muskegon Heights. He credits the program for helping him secure a better-paying job with benefits and with helping his family learn money management skills.    COURTESY PHOTO

When the hoist and crane manufacturer consolidated operations and closed its Muskegon Heights plant, Gardenour suddenly found himself unemployed in a dismal economy. Filling out applications and sending out resumes for a year failed to shake loose anything promising.

To get back to work, Gardenour enrolled with a new nonprofit temporary staffing agency under the auspices of Goodwill Industries of West Michigan called GoodTemps, which placed him at Engine Power Components.

Gardenour worked hard on second and third shift to prove himself, hoping the Grand Haven company would hire him. He also worked hard to improve himself by meeting with GoodTemps staff to add sparkle to his resume and practice business communication.

J.D. Wallace and Amanda Whitmore worked to create a staffing program that worked for employers’ needs yet also provided workers with the life skills they needed to be successful outside of work. PHOTO: JEFF HAGE

He and his now-wife Amanda also took a 13-week money management course that was offered through GoodTemps. When the couple managed to put away $500, GoodTemps matched it, doubling their savings.

The happy outcome: After eight months, Gardenour landed a permanent, full-time position making $1 more per hour plus benefits, and he says he’s not living paycheck to paycheck.

“It was an important step forward for me because I learned inspection techniques at Engine Power Components that helped me get my current job at Michigan Steel,” said Gardenour, now 29.

Gardenour likes Michigan Steel because it’s a five-block bike ride from his house and he is able to work first shift, which meshes better with Amanda’s schedule as a full-time student at Muskegon Community College.

Whenever he meets someone who needs a job, Gardenour says he sends them to GoodTemps, where they will get more than a job.

“It’s the place you get treated right,” Gardenour said. “They look deeper than a job to help you get what you need.”

“When there are lots of unemployed people and relatively few jobs, anybody can have difficulty finding work,” said Amanda Whitmore, GoodTemps’ caseworker.

GoodTemps exists to remove barriers to employment and give more disadvantaged workers a fair shot, she said.

If you’re thinking GoodTemps sounds like a social services agency, you’d only be half right.

It’s an Alternative Staffing Organization (ASO), a new breed of temp service that incorporates workforce development services funded by grants.

Like traditional temp staffing agencies, ASOs charge employers a fee to match low-skilled workers with low-wage jobs and to handle human resources functions like payroll and taxes.

Unlike traditional temp agencies, an ASO’s primary mission is to find jobs for people who might be locked out of the labor market by their criminal record, tattoos and piercings, physical or learning disability, or because of an extended period of unemployment.

A three-year Charles Stewart Mott Foundation grant funds GoodTemps’ four-session Job Retention class and the 13-week Financial Management Class, both of which also include one-on-one career planning sessions with Whitmore.

Whitmore also serves as a bridge connecting GoodTemps workers to resources in the community that will help keep them employed. She’s helped workers arrange childcare when they couldn’t afford to pay, get a driver’s license, obtain steel-toed shoes and find medical services and low- or no-cost car and furnace repairs.

GoodTemps is among 30 ASOs nationwide affiliated with the Alternative Staffing Alliance of Boston. The alliance serves as a central nervous system, sharing strategies and best practices among similar programs.

Whitmore said her match savings program is closely patterned after one developed by an ASO in Austin, Texas, whose parent organization is also Goodwill Industries.

Goodwill Industries of Mid-Michigan is also preparing to launch an ASO in Flint, believing it to be an effective and sustainable workforce development strategy.

Government funding to support workforce readiness has declined, but the need has not. The ASO model relies on philanthropic dollars to fund services aimed at helping workers get and keep jobs, but it requires businesses to foot the bill for job-brokering services.

“Temporary employment will be a permanent fixture in the economy,” said J.D. Wallace, GoodTemps manager. “Employers, on the whole, are very uncertain about hiring. They rely on temps to see them through peaks and valleys of the production cycle and are increasingly using staffing agencies to fill entry-level positions.”

Some businesses employ temp workers through GoodTemps for 90 days, then hire those they like with no further probationary period, Wallace said. Temp jobs can provide valuable job experiences for disadvantaged workers who have few skills or few networks to find work in a volatile labor market, he added.

Employers, the paying customers, tend to like GoodTemps’ low overhead and stable pricing structure, Wallace said. It is one of a few local staffing services that doesn’t assess a fee from employers who hire workers soon after placement.

GoodTemps served 200 workers and had gross sales of $760,000 in its first year, 2009. Business mushroomed in 2010 to 650 workers and $3 million in sales in 2010.

Eighty percent of GoodTemps’ work orders are in manufacturing, but Wallace said his staff is working hard to diversify into clerical work.

The average GoodTemps worker earns just more than $10 per hour – up a buck from last year. Workers with special skills can earn up to $20 per hour, Wallace said.

GoodTemps has 170 active temps in September. One in five temps landed a full-time position with their GoodTemps assignment in 2010, Wallace said.

GoodTemps’ five-person office operates out of Michigan Works! offices in Muskegon. Wallace hopes to grow services out of Muskegon as far north as Manistee and as far south as Holland. TBL