Personnel Exec Places Her Faith in Customer Service

It wasn’t until Janice Bryant Howroyd took an economics class in college that she realized how poor she had been, growing up as one of 11 children in a small town in the segregated South.

That’s because despite poverty, Howroyd’s family and community bombarded the young girl with love and instilled self-confidence and respect for education--qualities that have sustained the Tarboro, N.C., native as she built a one-woman personnel agency into a thriving business that rang up more than $50 million in sales last year.

Today, Howroyd, 44, is president of Act 1 Personnel Services, one of the largest women- or minority-owned companies in California, whose client list includes Fortune 500 companies such as Price Waterhouse and Toyota.

Howroyd, a deeply religious woman who says faith plays a large part in her success, gives visitors a big hug when she meets them in Act 1’s corporate headquarters in Torrance. In the hallway hangs a painting inspired by the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown vs. the Board of Education, which outlawed school segregation, because, says Howroyd, “I’m a product of that energy.”

Act 1’s growth has been fueled in large part by the force of Howroyd’s personality, which infuses every aspect of the business, motivating her staff with a zeal more common to the pulpit than the boardroom.

As the economy picks up steam and the high-tech sector explodes, accelerating the need for both temporary and permanent employees, Act 1 has positioned itself as a forward-thinking multimillion-dollar firm that also delivers old-fashioned customer service and satisfaction.

“I’m very impressed with Jan personally and professionally,” says Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., which has used Act 1 for several hires. “She brings a dynamism. There’s an energy you can pick up on. Sometimes you have a hard time getting the right people from a temp agency, but we’ve always been very satisfied.”

Today, Howroyd’s privately held firm, with 37 offices, has expanded beyond the Western U.S. into Michigan, Tennessee and North Carolina, including Tarboro. The company is focusing on light industry and administrative jobs and is moving aggressively into the technical market.

The company has grown about 10% annually since its inception nearly two decades ago, posting $56.8 million in sales in 1996, up from $36 million in 1995. It expects revenue to hit $75 million this year.

Howroyd launched her business in a tiny Beverly Hills office in 1978. The field was wide open for a first-time business owner without a heap of savings or a line of credit, because it worked on a simple premise: If you place an employee, you get paid.

In the beginning, Act 1 was a permanent placement agency. But as companies began laying off workers in the late 1980s, Howroyd moved heavily into temp work. Last year brought a new evolution as Howroyd launched a high-tech recruiting division.

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The idea sprang from her charity work. While touring a disadvantaged school she supports in Los Angeles, Howroyd was struck that high school students were graduating without the computer skills necessary to compete in the marketplace.

“I saw so clearly what the problem was with these students, and I wanted to make sure that the same thing didn’t happen with this company,” Howroyd recalls.

This year, technology placements will account for 30% of business, and by 1998 Howroyd aims to make it a minimum of 60%. That’s because placing one $150,000 computer scientist pays a lot more than finding jobs for 10 assembly line workers.

For instance, a high-tech manufacturing company recently asked Act 1 to find 58 scientists and engineers fluent in Mandarin, Malay and English for new jobs at a plant it was opening in Malaysia. Act 1 executives laughingly call that the “shepherds at midnight” request. But within six weeks, they had filled the request.

A second growth area has been selling “managed services” as corporations seek to outsource tasks formerly handled by their human resources departments. The firms are turning to companies such as Act 1 to hire and manage all their independent contractors and part-timers and to draw up compensation and training packages.

“That’s an extremely smart move; that part of the industry is experiencing tremendous growth,” says John Schneller, an analyst at Little Rock, Ark.-based securities firm Stephens Inc. who follows the personnel industry.

Act 1, which is considered mid-sized, has also succeeded by carving out a niche in an industry dominated by national players such as Manpower Inc., Olsen and Kelly.

Bruce Steinberg, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Temporary and Staffing Services, a trade group based in Alexandria, Va., says Act 1 competes with the giants by offering specially tailored services. However, he adds that its mid-size stature could also work against it.

“Act 1 may not be able to compete successfully for large national contracts because they don’t have a presence throughout the country,” Steinberg says.

But Howroyd, whose prices can range up to 3% more than the nationals, says she wins the business because she personalizes her services to suit the company.

That often means providing extensive education to temps to guarantee that they have the needed skills, customizing software packages for clients and even pre-training employees on a firm’s proprietary computers before they ever report for work.

Nick Di Croce, a business manager in the design and graphics department at Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., is a satisfied customer.

In 1994, Toyota was looking for a personnel agency to take over the management of the 30 freelancers in its design department. Di Croce met with Manpower Inc., Kelly and Act 1.

“They were the only non-national firm we talked with, but we picked them because they were very responsive and aggressive price-wise and gave us a customized deal. They spent time learning about graphics business and setting up training courses for our folks.”

Howroyd says that many of the hurdles she has faced have been of a personal nature. She often feels guilty about her success and struggles against being a perfectionist.

As a black woman, Howroyd has encountered both sexism and racism. Once, after a presentation to a utility company, a director congratulated her on her pitch. Then he said, “If more of your people were like you, we wouldn’t have so many problems.”

Another time, a company executive offered to make her his primary personnel contractor if she would sleep with him. Howroyd says she deflected the proposition by making a joke, but “inside I was seething, I was burning up.”

So how does she cope? “You have to depersonalize it,” Howroyd says. “You have to be forgiving and remember there’s a lot of nice people out there.”

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Faith helps. So does thinking about her mother--Howroyd’s role model--and Madam C.J. Walker, the daughter of slaves who found fame in the early 20th century as America’s first black millionaire, businesswoman and philanthropist.

Howroyd has also reaped benefits from the American Women’s Economic Development Management Program, which helped her reposition Act 1 and move into more profitable areas. (AWED is a private nonprofit organization that has helped more than 3,500 female entrepreneurs in Los Angeles start and expand their businesses.)

Her enthusiasm in the program led Howroyd to sponsor another entrepreneur at AWED. Indeed, Act 1 is active in philanthropy, especially educational causes. The firm has awarded 24 college scholarships to disadvantaged and minority youth from Los Angeles, most of whom attend historically black universities.

Howroyd also gave $10,000 to Crenshaw-based Founders National Bank to start the “Recycling Black Dollars” campaign, and helped organize and back the annual Minority Business Opportu nity Day Trade Fair in Los Angeles.

Cheryl D. Broussard, who profiled Howroyd in her book “Sister CEO, The Black Woman’s Guide to Starting Your Own Business” (Viking), says the Act 1 president impressed her because she is an atypical CEO.

“Here’s someone who’s very successful, making a lot of money and at the same time is very spiritual too, and I think that contributes a lot. You have this family atmosphere and everyone is part of the team. You don’t get that when you work in a big corporation, or even a lot of small ones.”

Indeed, Howroyd is a firm believer in family, both blood and extended. Three of her 21 employees at the corporate office are family members, including Howroyd’s sister Sandy Noonan, an executive administrator, and brother Carlton Bryant, executive vice president. Howroyd even brought her children’s former nanny into the company’s accounting department.

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But hiring family members can be painful if it doesn’t work out. And don’t let her sunny manner fool you. Howroyd is perfectly capable of axing someone, such as a sister-in-law she hired whose husband, Howroyd’s brother, had recently died.

“On paper it was the perfect fit, and I felt confident I could nurture her,” Howroyd says. “But she hadn’t finished grieving. She was pulling down other members of the team.”

The atmosphere at the corporate offices is relaxed but humming with energy. Music plays softly. The lunchroom is outfitted with an oven so Howroyd and others can enjoy homemade biscuits and bacon during conferences or office parties. Children of employees show up from time to time and are put to work stuffing envelopes or filing.

“Many people talk about it, but Jan’s really committed to reinvesting in people. She only cares if I’m getting my job done; if my child’s sick, I can work at home,” says Karen Murakami, Act 1’s director of operations.

Howroyd comes from a long line of entrepreneurs. Her grandparents were famous in Tarboro for a barbecue restaurant they operated out of their dining room. The importance of education was instilled in Howroyd by her father, a factory foreman of Cherokee and Irish extraction, and her housekeeper mother, who was African American.

Howroyd was one of the first black students to attend a local white high school. When a blond boy stood up in history class and made a racist speech, Howroyd bit the inside of her mouth to keep from crying.

At home that night, she told her parents she didn’t want to return. But they persuaded her to go back, hold her head up and be twice as smart and successful to prove everyone else wrong.

And she did. Howroyd won a full college scholarship to North Carolina State Agricultural and Technical College, majored in English, then worked for the American Red Cross and the National Academy of Sciences for two years before coming to Los Angeles to visit older sister Sandy in 1976.

Her sister was married to a key executive at Billboard magazine who got Howroyd a job doing secretarial work. At Billboard, Howroyd realized she had a talent for recruiting employees. She quit to go independent in 1978. Her first paycheck came from placing an acquaintance at Billboard. Howroyd liked the freedom and never looked back.

Ironically, her husband, Bernie Howroyd, runs a competing personnel agency, AppleOne. The two are “fierce competitors,” according to Howroyd, declining to discuss the relationship further. They have two children--daughter Katharyn, 12, and son Brett, 11.

Howroyd sleeps four hours a night--”I get jet-lagged if I get any more than that”--waking up at 4 a.m. to make calls to the East Coast. She usually has breakfast with her children and drives them to school on her way to work. After a full day of meeting with the staff and going over affairs, she heads home to “kiss my babies,” say a prayer with them, then dress for an charity or business function.

Howroyd sits on the boards of the Los Angeles Urban League and the International Visitors Council, and is a member of the Black Business Assn. and the National Assn. of Women Business Owners, to name a few.