OperationsInc

OperationsInc

Location: 992 High Ridge Road, Stamford, CT

Number of employees: 33

Number of years in business: 11

What they do: OperationsInc is a human resources outsourcing and consulting firm.

Why they are great: When it comes to having a good company culture, businesses need to practice what they preach, especially when they’re in HR. That’s part of what makes OperationsInc, a Stamford-based human resources outsourcing and consulting firm, such a great place to work.

“Probably greater than 70 percent of our workforce is here because of work/life balance issues,” says founder and CEO David Lewis. Of the more than 30 OperationsInc employees, only about 13 work traditional, full-time hours. The rest work between 10 and 30 hours a week, starting and ending anywhere between 5am and 9pm. “How they get to their total number of hours that they’re working each week is up to them, so long as they’re meeting or exceeding the needs of their clients,” says Lewis.

“The way we support our employee population as a whole is somewhat unique, in that there’s not a lot of options that these people initially found when they looked for an HR job, where they could do 25 hours a week, or take Fridays off, or be home with a sick child,” he says. “When we bring people on board under the terms that really give them that optimal flexibility, it raises their level of loyalty and commitment.”

Although many of their employees don’t work traditional office hours, Lewis ensures that their clients’ needs never take a backseat by implementing a multi-level infrastructure of management. “That gives them someone to call always,” he says, “including me.” The company also gives their junior employees many opportunities to take a higher level of responsibility. Depending on the client, OperationsInc can set up a two-person team consisting of a senior employee and a junior employee, where the junior employee will take on approximately 70 percent of the workload (mainly consisting of administrative and support-oriented duties), whereas the rest will be handled by the senior employee. Some clients, such as non-profits, can choose to have a more junior employee work on their account (under a senior employee’s direction) for a lower fee. “It’s worked out phenomenally well,” says Lewis. “We have been able to take people and move them two, three, four rungs up the ladder.”

Because of the more unusual hours of their employees, OperationsInc offers a wider range of benefits than the traditional health insurance and 401(k). “A lot of the benefits we’ve established are set up in such a way where they’re attainable for the part-time worker,” says Lewis. Some of the company’s benefits include short-term disability, long-term disability, life insurance, AD&D, as well as discount programs with partnered stores and banks. And OperationsInc doesn’t overlook the little things, either— all employees also have a lunch allowance through Seamless. “We’ve done that since the days when we were working out of my house,” says Lewis.

These days, OperationsInc has a base of over 600 clients in 47 industries. From the end of 2010 to the end of 2011, the company was up 40 percent in sales, and is trending to be up 30 percent for 2012. The company also recently acquired AllCountyJobs.com, the northeast’s largest regional job board network. In the last 18 months, OperationsInc has hired 14 employees and nearly doubled in size. “We promote an environment that I think sets a really good example for our clients,” says Lewis. “And it makes it, I think, that much of a better place to work for all of our people in the process.”