Top Small Workplace: Employees can be themselves at Therapia Staffing
Yoga pants on the job. Dogs in the office. Frank conversations about personal and professional matters. And above all, no pressure to fit into pretentious corporate cliques.
Keeping it real. That’s how Therapia Staffing founder Jennifer Goldstein prefers to operate the staffing agency based in Coral Springs, and she encourages her 35-member staff to follow suit — if that works for them.
Voting by Goldstein’s band of self-described misfits earned the company the top spot in the Sun Sentinel’s 2020 Top Small Workplace survey.
The 4-year-old company operates as an contract labor agency, matching qualified healthcare workers and special education teachers with employers across the country.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, about 80% of the company’s volume stemmed from matching special needs professionals, such as speech pathologists, sign language interpreters and behavior analysts with school districts in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona, the Carolinas and Florida.
Placement of health care workers, including registered nurses and physical therapists, to nursing homes and home healthcare providers made up the other 20 percent.
After the pandemic hit last spring, the company shifted its focus to providing health care professionals to hard-hit hospitals, Goldstein said.
When the virus was spreading rapidly through the New York area, the company placed 225 medical professionals in hard-hit hospitals in Long Island and Brooklyn.
“My aunt died of COVID in New York in April,” she said, “so it’s been personal for me.”
As cases have surged in Florida, the company was contracted by the Florida Department of Emergency Management to assign 100 to 150 health care workers to two hospitals in Sebring. They include physicians, paramedics, respiratory therapists, licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants, she said.
Goldstein says she decided five years ago to create a work environment where staff members could feel free to be themselves. At the time, she had spent years working for a large agency that she came to realize didn’t share her values.
“I’ve been in situations where I had to walk on eggshells to follow the crowd even if it might not have been the right decision,” she said. “I wanted to create a workspace where people could agree to disagree and everyone could authentically be themselves — you know, perfectly imperfect.”
That’s an apt description of the company’s sales office in Coral Springs. A welcome sign shaped like a whale hangs on one of the walls. A bookshelf outside Goldstein’s office displays knick-knacks with the messages “Follow Your Own Path” and “Dream.”
Two bright orange bean bag chairs and a pile of dog toys beckon today’s canine residents — a Husky named Sebastian and a Yorkie named Teo. Goldstein urges her employees to bring in their dogs, and the crew likes having them around.
Even still, there’s no question this is a sales office. White boards on the wall track the team’s accomplishments. Spreadsheets fill monitor screens as employees talk into headsets.
The core of the company’s sale force consists of “sourcers” who answer calls and identify job candidates, “recruiters” who help candidates find good fits for their skills and “senior career managers,” who keep track of the placed workers and help solve job-related issues.
Shannon Taylor, who has been with the company since it opened in 2015, started as a sourcer and now supervises recruiters. She finds satisfaction knowing her work helps those who need it most.
“If I have a school nurse who’s working with a child who has a disability who may not have been able to go to school, that means a lot to me," she said.
Goldstein says Therapia is growing fast. It has more than twice as many employees as a year ago and has been hiring even more since moving this summer to a bigger office at the Coral Springs Business Center.
Goldstein says she realizes that the work can be stressful — health and special education are, after all, critical services. That’s a major reason she provides generous benefits and a relaxed workplace.
Each employee qualifies for free health insurance after just 30 days and up to five weeks paid time off each year. During holidays, when circumstances permit, she closes the office and gives everyone time off that doesn’t count against their paid time off.
“It’s just the company saying, ‘Thank you so much for working hard. Go rest your brains and enjoy your time with your people and yourself,’” she said.
Movie nights, happy hour gatherings, bowling outings and fundraising efforts also help strengthen the team, Goldstein said.
Taylor says the work environment at Therapia is strikingly different than at her previous job raising funds for schools. Whereas she once went to work wearing stilettos and skirts, she’s now encouraged to wear whatever makes her comfortable.
“We may be weird and quirky and loud and wear yoga pants some days, but you’re always your authentic self and you’re comfortable and you’re welcome to be like that,” she said.
Russell Maurer, who trains new Therapia hires, says comparable companies enforce unwritten rules for their workers. There’s an expectation, that “you [should] want to fit in with the powers-that-be or with the cliques,” he said. “It’s never overtly said, but you can sense it. I wanted to work for a company with a culture that just lets me be myself."
Who is the real Russell? “I have a lot of energy. I can be loud,” he says. But he insists his “rambunctious” energy gets put to work helping the company meet its sales goals — “the need to hit our numbers every week.”
That’s reality too, and Goldstein recalled times where she’s had to apologize because — in pursuit of her company’s goals — "I had done something unintentionally wrong or I might have said something in a way that hurt someone’s feelings.”
She added, “It’s super neat to be able to say, ‘We’re not perfect, and we’re OK about not being perfect and look at the difference we’re making.‘”
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