Elwood Staffing celebrates grand opening with ribbon-cutting ceremony
Farragut West Knox Chamber of Commerce members welcomed Elwood Staffing as a new business to the Farragut community.
Elwood Staffing, which opened in March at its newest location at 10945 Kingston Pike in StoneCrest shopping center, held a ribbon cutting hosted by the Chamber Tuesday, Aug. 1.
“We’re very excited to be in this area,” Mike Stockard, co-owner and executive vice president, said. He is one of five owners of Elwood, which has corporate headquarters in Columbus, Indiana.
“I’ve got a special affection for staffing agencies because when I got my first real job after college, that is where that job came from,” Julie Blaylock, Chamber president/CEO, said during the event. “[The agencies are] very essential, especially when you are entering the workforce or you have had to re-enter the workforce for whatever reason that may be, so really I appreciate all you do to help people find their way.”
“It’s amazing, when you talk to people who have had that kind of experience working with staffing [agencies],” Stockard said. “That’s how I found my job.
“Every type of skill set walks through our door, and we want to help everyone we can.”
The company’s focus is to place “blue collar workers,” people making from $9 to $16 an hour, in jobs, Stockard said.
“Our goal is to work with companies that need good people,” he added. “We really do a lot to make you feel like we are going to treat people better than anybody in the community.”
Elwood Staffing, a privately owned corporation founded by David L. Elwood, chairman emeritus, in 1980, has more than 250 service locations across the United States, placing potential employees in such jobs as skilled trades, administrative and clerical, customer service, manufacturing, production, warehouse and distribution, automotive, engineering, oil and gas, construction and information technology.
Stockard said he takes applications that were submitted online and the applicants complete the paperwork in the office.
“Elwood Staffing’s owners were drawn to Farragut because it was centrally located for people it was looking to hire,” Stockard said.
“Hopefully, we picked a pretty visible location. We want to be somewhere that’s visible and Kingston Pike seems to be a highly traveled road, and we are looking for ease of access to our offices and good parking,” he added. “We were able to find all that here.
“We didn’t want to be just right in the middle of Knoxville. We wanted to be to the west. Some of the clients we think we will serve will be even west of here. There may be a time down the right we may look at a second office in the Knoxville metro area — maybe the east or north side of town.”
The owners originally talked about coming to the Farragut area a couple of years ago.
“We had some national clients that had locations here,” Stockard said. “Then, we kind of slowed down some of our organic growth offices at that time.
“Then, Komyo is here,” he added, also pointing out that Komyo, one of Elwood Staffing’s clients, services Honda.
“That’s how we originally got here. That’s how Elwood grows a lot of times is by having a national client that would go to a new market and open up,” Stockard said.
“The company has been in Greeneville and Bristol, Tennessee, markets for a while,” he added, “So we’re really trying to grow our presence in East Tennessee.”
Elwood Staffing also is opening a new office in Morristown in a couple weeks, Stockard said.
“This will be our fourth East Tennessee office,” he added.
Elwood Staffing is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
