In the News

CEO Corner

2007.11
Cynthia J. Pasky

In the business world our prime focus is on the bottom line, as it must be for any successful business. If a company is not successful financially, it is not going to be successful in the long run.

But it takes much more than a strong bottom line to make running a business a truly rewarding experience. Financial success, if it is not coupled with a strong commitment to community involvement, can be a very hollow success.

At Strategic Staffing Solutions (S³), we have experienced 16 consecutive years of growth during good economic times and bad, taking our work force from three at the start to more than 1,500 today and our revenues from zero to more than $100 million. Of course, we're proud of that.

But we're equally proud of the fact that each of our 21 offices in the U.S. and Europe adopts at least one local charitable cause to focus on and support in a meaningful way.

The policy started shortly after our beginning when our Detroit branch adopted My Sister's Place, a Detroit affiliate of the Women's Justice Center. My Sister's Place is a shelter that provides emergency placement, counseling, personal support and legal assistance to victims of domestic violence. Through the years, with an annual run on Belle Isle and an annual golf outing, we have raised more than $250,000 to help women and children being served by My Sister's Place.

But we do more than raise money for the shelter and have, in the process, developed a very strong working relationship with the staff at the shelter and those being served. The reward comes from being able to see for ourselves the impact we are having on the lives of some of our most vulnerable residents.

Our community involvement and charitable giving took an inward turn in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina forced the closure of our New Orleans office and left much of our staff temporarily homeless. We immediately began shipping everything from blankets and mattresses to food items to diapers and needed funds to our displaced employees. We even created an interest-free loan fund for them as they rebuilt their lives while never missing a payday for any of them.

Detroit Free Press business columnist Tom Walsh called our actions "a heartening throwback to bygone days when most American companies and workers were loyal to one another."

The author Nathanial Hawthorne once wrote, "Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild good chase and is never attained."

Happiness comes from a commitment beyond ourselves - an emotional, moral and spiritual tie beyond our own inner ego to the community at large - to our fellow humans.

That is why community involvement and charitable giving are such an important part of the S³ corporate culture and why it should be a part of yours, too.