ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Twelve St. Lucie County organizations are being recognized today as Best Places to Work in 2009 by the St. Lucie County Human Resource Association and Workforce Solutions, formerly Workforce Development Board of the Treasure Coast.

Among companies with 50 or fewer employees, R.K. Davis Construction Corp. took home their third award and Early Learning Coalition of St. Lucie County took home their second, with Treasure and Space Coast Radio and Manpower Services being recognized for the first time this year.

Of employers in the 51 to 250 employee category, Miller Legg Associates has earned their third award and Gulfstream Business Bank is taking their fourth award, including two for the St. Lucie County branch and two for the Martin County branch from past years’ Martin County awards. Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Company and New Horizon’s of the Treasure Coast Inc. have both won for the first time.

City of Port St. Lucie won for the eighth year in a row among employers with 251 or more employees. The city has taken home an award every year since the awards began. The City of Fort Pierce took home their first award this year. Rounding out this category were other multi-year winners including three-time winners, the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office and Children’s Services Council of St. Lucie County.

The “Best Places to Work” award program, which won a Pinnacle Award from the Society for Human Resource Management and which is used by Human Resource Associations nationwide, was developed by Gerry Hoeffner, a human resource consultant and president of Personnel Dynamics Consulting in Fort Pierce.

Participating employers filled out an online survey that compared 2008 turnover, compensation, benefits, employee development and training, employee promotion rates and other measures to local employment trends and data specific to St. Lucie County. Highest-ranking employers received awards and all participants received confidential reports.

Two standouts in this economy are first time-winners 76-employee Orchid Island Juice Company in Fort Pierce, which grew 20 percent, and Treasure and Space Coast Radio in Port St. Lucie, with 19 employees and 38.5 percent growth.

Justin Tabas, marketing and promotions manager for the radio stations 97.1 Ocean FM-WOSN; 93.7 The Breeze FM-WGYL; and 99.7 Jack FM-WJKD said Treasure and Space Coast Radio is willing to take risks for future growth opportunities.

“Our management recognizes the need to continue to search for employees that can positively affect the bottom line,” he said. “We have [also] come up with innovative ways to attract new sales and programming numbers including the increased utilization of the Internet and social media services that are labor intensive but have minimal input cost.”

Orchid Island has grown by finding new markets, said Lisa Rymer, marketing director. “While we have lost retail volume in stores, we have picked up a number of new customers,” she said. “We’re expanding internationally. And we are the private-label juice producer for 40 percent of the top high-end grocers.”

Best Places to Work awards also are scheduled for Martin and Indian River counties later this year.

Shelley Owens

Tags: businesses, employer, employment, workforce, Workforce Solutions

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Economy, St. Lucie County, Treasure Coast business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.