Turner Staffing Group, a partner company of Turner Mining Group that provides staffing solutions to the mining industry, acquired a staffing firm this summer that specializes in the recruitment and placement of skilled professionals. To discuss the acquisition, Turner Staffing Group’s Year 1 growth and more, P&Q caught up with Turner Staffing Group president Thomas Haun.
How did Turner Staffing Group and HR Advantages (HRA) ultimately come together?
Turner Staffing has primarily focused where Turner Mining is focused, which is on the heavy equipment side – whether that’s operations or maintenance. Where HRA has focused is really on the geotechnical side of mining.
Obviously, both sides are critical. When you talk about large mine sites, you need those two groups of people working hand in hand – whether it’s a quarry or a gold mine.
We were introduced to HRA and really fell in love with everything they did. We finally made it to the point where we wanted to give this a go and bring them all under one roof under Turner. We’ll now have more than 150 employees staffed across the country.
It’s been a year now since the launch of Turner Staffing Group. How did the company fare in its first year, and what have you learned about your client base?
I would say it has fared quite well. Everybody that is leveraging us as a talent partner is very happy. They’re happy with the delivery service.
I’m actually surprised at how different the needs are. I don’t even mean by role, but different firms think about running their operations differently.
I’ll use aggregates as an example. You’d assume aggregates businesses are all the same kind of business, right? Well, yes and no. They do run quite differently.
We have firms that really leverage us from a seasonal perspective because they have high peaks and valleys. When they need people in the peak, having a talent partner is a perfect solution for them. We have other firms that look at how they plan talent as a whole for their organization, and they have certain roles that they want to be their own employees. And they have certain roles that they want to leverage a talent partner for.
What else did you discover in Year 1 of Turner Staffing Group?
The other category where we’ve seen demand is OEM dealers. Technicians have primarily been the ask of Turner. Some is shop based and some is field based.
We know the need is there, but I didn’t know how quickly those firms would be looking to adopt a talent partner. The companies that own mines are maybe a little more predisposed to it because they have lots of vendors. But if you think of an OEM dealer – or even a contractor – they don’t actually have that many.
The fact that you’re finding dealers with talent needs must reinforce the idea that there’s runway for growth for Turner Staffing Group, right?
Yeah, there is [runway for growth]. There are 10,000-plus mine sites, so we’re barely scratching the surface. When I think about growth, I bet every mine site is short a person in some way, shape or form.
Our focus has been industry level – whether that’s vision, purpose, values or anything like that. Our center of the target is making an impact industrywide, and we have a lot of room to do that.
Featured Photo: izusek/E+/Getty Images
