51.5 F
Laguna Hills
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

People Mover

Santa Ana-based Alar Staffing Corp. has started a subsidiary that offers affordable transportation to its temporary workers and their employers.

The new business, Griffin Transit Express, offers bus rides to and from work sites for Alar’s pool of 800 temporary workers in Orange County.

Alar generates more than $25 million in yearly sales staffing industrial and office workers at companies such as Foothill Ranch’s Oakley Inc., Rip Curl Inc. of Costa Mesa and Cypress-based Vans Inc.

The company employs 14 workers in Tustin and five others who are onsite at clients’ offices to fill empty positions.

All of Alar’s permanent employees are bilingual, which helps the company communicate with many of its temporary workers who are Spanish-speaking immigrants seeking jobs in warehouses. The company screens employees to make sure they’re eligible to work here and also offers English lessons and job training.

Competitors include Irvine-based Kimco Staffing Services Inc. and San Jose-based Protrades Connection’s Santa Ana office, among others.

Alar opted to start Griffin Transit earlier this year to solve its employees’ problems with transportation, according to Chief Executive Pati Cinkle.






Cinkle: “long-term goal is to have a whole fleet”

Most of Alar’s temporary workers don’t own cars, according to Cinkle. They rely on public buses to get to and from their temporary jobs, which makes it difficult for some workers to be on time, she said.

“It was glaringly obvious that people needed help getting to and from work,” Cinkle said. “We had to come up with a solution that’s consistent and reliable.”

Cinkle leased an 800-square-foot office for Griffin Transit in Santa Ana, close to many temporary employees’ homes, with a large parking lot near Alar’s headquarters.

The company bought two used buses that can hold nearly 70 passengers each and hired two professional bus drivers and a dispatcher to monitor bus schedules.

More than 300 of Alar’s temporary workers have signed up for rides, Cinkle said.

“The response has been overwhelming,” she said.

Griffin Transit’s buses make six to eight trips a day to and from job sites around the county from its Santa Ana office.

Riders pay a weekly fee of $25 to use the bus system. That’s about twice as much as fares for Orange County Transportation Authority buses, which are slower and less reliable, the company said.

Alar and its corporate clients also pay fees to support the program, Cinkle said.

Oakley, part of Italy’s Luxottica Group SPA, will be one of the first companies to use Griffin Transit’s program, she said.

Griffin Transit expects to have some 20 buses in circulation by the end of next year.

The company plans to buy a small group of sport utility vehicles or vans that will be used to transport the few workers who have to venture to remote areas outside OC for work, Cinkle said.

“The long-term goal is to have a whole fleet,” she said.

Alar isn’t the only staffing company that has had issues with transportation.

It’s a pressure that’s felt by staffing agencies nationwide, according to Bill Stoller, chairman of the American Staffing Association in Virginia.

“Traditionally it’s been a challenge for temporary workers to find reliable transportation,” Stoller said.

Temporary workers who have trouble getting to and from their jobs often contribute to higher turnover rates and downswings in productivity, which hurt staffing companies and employers that have already invested time and money into training the workers, he said.

More staffing companies in Southern California could end up offering transportation by forming bus companies or tapping third-party providers to alleviate their workers’ transportation problems, he said.

Griffin Transit isn’t expecting to make money from the bus service, Cinkle said.

The goal is to make Alar’s workers more reliable, which in turn could generate more inquiries and referrals for staffing services, according to Cinkle.

“We’re not making any money off of this, but we’re hoping it will get us more referrals on the staffing side (of the business),” she said.

Want more from the best local business newspaper in the country?

Sign-up for our FREE Daily eNews update to get the latest Orange County news delivered right to your inbox!

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-