25 Years of Excellence
EHS Partners is proud to celebrate 25 years of excellence in operational performance improvement. Since 1997, EHS has been perfecting its single offering: leading companies through a structured program that generates significant financial impact and sustainable improvements in operating effectiveness.
With an unbroken track record of success, the partners at EHS experience great satisfaction in reflecting on their client-focused achievements. This milestone anniversary represents a history of effective partnership with impressive companies, and the foundation for an exciting future to pursue continued successes with new clients and industries.
EHS continues to deliver highly impactful results in partnership with our clients. Over the last 18 months, we successfully deployed the EHS program at two top-10 US banks and a leading energy provider.
EHS uses its unique approach to engage company employees and management at all levels to rapidly build internal ownership of improvement opportunities and thus gain sustained results. Our clients share with us that our 18-week operational performance improvement program enables them to achieve bigger results, faster and with greater certainty. The key is being able to, in a short period of time, identify, evaluate, and make decisions on numerous opportunities to change the work, spend more efficiently and to drive additional revenue. As the external and competitive environments constantly shift, companies that cannot change nimbly cannot compete effectively.
Utilities continue to face headwinds on reducing rates and delivering profits from external factors such as weather and wildfires to forward looking goals like the desire to transform to more sustainable energy sources. Operational improvements can help alleviate this pressure. Recent energy clients, for example, discovered ways to leverage new technology and tools, including mobile data devices, geo-tracking, and drones, to optimize their planning and ensure crews can take advantage of information to efficiently bundle tasks and avoid rework.
Banks are facing a volatile economic environment with fast changing interest rates and unsteady loan demand. To ensure efficiency in a shifting market, our financial institution clients are taking better advantage of automation, the evolution and streamlining of IT development, and optimization of sales footprint, coordination, and practices to improve speed to market.
We work across industries, from transportation to packaged goods to utilities and financial institutions, helping companies realize both industry-specific and more universal improvement opportunities. Our approach casts a wide net to take advantage of all possible actions, from the tactical to the transformative to deliver sustainable long-term change.
Clients select EHS because we do not employ a consultant-heavy study/recommendation approach like traditional firms. We focus instead on impactful, specific, tactical, and achievable operational performance improvement. We are proud that all of our clients have met or exceeded their goals from their EHS-led programs, ultimately realizing 100%, or greater, of the anticipated impact.
The partners at EHS share some of the key aspects of delivering EHS’ unique performance improvement program for over 25 years.
EHS was founded with a singular focus – to help companies identify and realize the maximum impact from operational improvement opportunities. Our entire approach was developed and has evolved to meet a simple challenge: to span the gap between knowing what might be done, a traditional role of consultants, and maximizing the fullest identification, adoption and implementation of opportunities to yield the greatest degree of financial impact and operational improvement. We constantly strive to do this better and better and believe we do it better than anyone in the world. After 25 years, it is still a truly rewarding process to deploy with our clients, activating the organization to achieve internal ownership of results and benefits that last long after our speedy program is complete.”
– Eric Holder
One of the unique aspects of EHS is that we’re a small firm, and many of us have worked together for a majority of EHS’ 25 years. By curating a dedicated, expert team, averaging over 30 years of business experience in consulting and line management, we quickly become and remain trusted partners and advisors to our clients. We employ a high touch delivery model joining our clients on the ground, or now virtually, to support collaborative, cross-functional, and fact-based decision-making that has consistently exceeded our client’s expectations. We are grateful to have earned enthusiastic support from our client CEOs and leadership teams for over two decades.”
– Ed Dobosz
Our experience has shown us that performance improvement comes in various sizes from small, tactical adjustments to large, transformational ideas. The financial and cultural benefits of pursuing all good improvements, regardless of size, are key to our clients’ ongoing success. Empowering employees to pursue creative solutions at all levels unleashes potential for significant impact and sustainable continuous improvement.”
– Tom Hislop
Over the years, we’ve seen a range of client rationales for pursuing performance improvement. Some companies want to rationalize operations or reinforce a common culture after years of mergers or high growth. Many are facing pressure to increase earnings momentum or need to generate cash to fund an investment. And others are looking to help new leadership develop and implement their operating agenda. Despite their different circumstances, our clients all have in common the full commitment from leadership and transparent communication of expectations and goals. What has been the most fulfilling is bringing to our clients’ unique situations our proven methodology, tools, and team to help them exceed what they thought possible.”
– Jason Soules
The advancements we’ve seen in digital innovation for our clients over the past 25 years have been both interesting and energizing. What was once a stretch to introduce the concept of reducing printed paper copies of materials has leap frogged to robotic process automation, machine learning, drone delivery solutions, and more. Within our own firm, now being able to offer our program virtually, with remote participation from board members to the front line, is a point of pride for us. We remain committed to being at the forefront of digital transformation for ourselves and our clients.”
– David Howe
Speeding Effectively
Speed is a virtue in business. Companies who can outpace their competitors in delivering services set themselves up for great success. But when it comes to strategic performance improvement efforts, going fast can carry perils. Precipitous cuts can have short-lived benefits or be counter-productive. However, companies facing pressure on efficiency and revenue rarely have the luxury for prolonged and detailed study. Here are three elements that might sound time intensive, but can be done rapidly to achieve results that are fast, effective, and sustainable:
Employee Empowerment
Employee engagement is the cornerstone of sustainable company performance improvement. Meaningful bottom-up empowerment means top executives must resist the urge to drive mandates or arbitrary budget goals down through the organization. Forming and communicating a rationale that resonates with employees and invites everyone in (at all levels) to help solve a real company problem, not only will improve the bottom line, but will create an environment for innovative thinking that can exceed expectations. In our experience, marshaling the best ideas from those who do the work leads to far greater improvement than any outside in or top-down approach.
Informed Decision Making
To counteract natural resistance to change, appropriate time must be allocated for a clear and reliable adjudication process that can hold up against opinions based on perception or historical norms. Prolonged analysis or detailed engineering can lead to paralysis that derails decision making. Instead, there must be a swift and thorough identification, evaluation and decision-making approach that is applied consistently to all opportunities with no arbitrary elimination. This methodology enables data-informed decisions that establish credibility and trust in the company and lays the foundation for continuous improvement.
Consensus-building
Ideas for improvement can only come to fruition with the buy-in of those ultimately charged with their implementation. Building consensus around ideas, including allowing those affected by a change to weigh in on its merit, takes time and coordination. A commitment to transparency and developing support for change ensures that good ideas translate into tangible results.
Fortunately, these key elements can be accomplished in a matter of weeks; we have found the sweet spot to be roughly 100 days. EHS Partners has implemented this approach over 25 years, across industries, and with companies of different sizes. We help leaders shift their thinking away from the allure of quick fixes or ideas with immediate results that can deliver unintended consequences or short-lived impact. In our experience, long-term sustainable improvement comes from slowing down slightly to meaningfully engage employees, gathering compelling facts to support informed decisions, and socializing ideas with a laser focus on implementation success to deliver meaningful impact.