Our Tools

Evergreen Solutions, LLC has several tools which we use to plan and manage our projects. These tools include:

• School District Performance Review Procedures
• School District Best Practices Database
• Survey Instruments
• K-12 Survey Benchmark Database
• Interview Guides/Questionnaires
• Compensation and Classification Tools
• Performance Management Tools
• Local Government Management Evaluation Procedures
• JobForce Manager

Each of these will be described separately below.

• School District Performance Review Procedures – Evergreen Solutions has a 100-page document entitled “Procedures for Conducting School District Management and Performance Reviews”.

  The procedures contained in the manual were derived from many sources, including guidelines used by the states of Florida, Oklahoma, and Virginia for their state school performance review programs; the knowledge and expertise of Evergreen Solutions consultants who have conducted over 100 school district management and performance reviews in many different states; and best practices and benchmarking techniques used by exemplary school districts throughout the country.

• School District Best Practices Database – Evergreen Solutions, LLC has several best practices databases – not only our own, but also those used by accrediting associations and professional associations (i.e., Superintendents’ associations, school boards’ associations, guidance counselors associations, International Society for Technology in Education etc.). These databases are electronic and will be available to all our consulting team members. Evergreen Solutions, LLC has benchmarking techniques that will be used as part of this study with comparison school districts as well as private sector business organizations. Our network of contacts throughout the country will facilitate our use of these techniques.

• Survey Tools – Evergreen Solutions has a library of survey instruments for use across clients for a wide variety of needs.  These include:

  • Perception surveys for central office administrators, principals, and teachers
  • Employee satisfaction
  • Client/customer satisfaction
  • Performance management
  • Salary and benefit analysis
  • Diagnostic efficiency

  Each of our models can be specifically tailored to our clients and used to benchmark against a database of responses.

• K-12 Survey Benchmark Database – Evergreen Solutions maintains a database of responses of central office administrators, principals, and teachers where similar survey items have been used. Therefore, Evergreen Solutions offers to our clients a comparison of the perceptions of these three groups of employees in the school district under review to the average score of the perceptions in other school districts where similar survey items have been used.

• Interview Guides/Questionnaires – Evergreen Solutions has interview guides for its review of all operations in a school district.  These were developed from the Evergreen guidelines and procedures used for conducting performance reviews of school districts.

• Compensation and Classification Tools – In the context of our work, we have developed hundreds of different compensation and classification plans for clients-we bring comprehensive tools to this arena that include employee participation mechanisms, salary analysis instruments, compensation analysis models, and implementation tools that can assist our local government clients and deliver real value to each organization.

• Performance Management Tools – We have completed dozens of studies involving the effective development and deployment of meaningful performance evaluation programs, including the development of tailored performance evaluation instruments, specific scoring methodologies and evaluation criteria, and competency based models for merit/performance pay programs. We bring those tools to each of our clients as well as the experience in what is effective, feasible, and valuable for each client.

• Local Government Management Evaluation Procedures – Evergreen Solutions has developed a comprehensive guidebook to conduct Management Evaluations and Efficiency Reviews for local governments throughout the United States. This guidebook offers a plethora of evaluation factors for each major category/department that could potentially come under review, including, but not limited to:

  • Administrative Leadership
  • Finance
  • Human Resources
  • Facilities
  • Public Safety
  • Utilities
  • Public Works

• JobForce Manager – Based on client needs and industry best practices, Evergreen has developed a compensation and classification maintenance tool to assist our clients with implementing, managing, and updating the solutions: JobForce Manager. This tool allows our clients to estimate future pay plan changes, update market information, make determinations on reclassifications, and create new jobs. By automating these tasks, JobForce Manager allows our clients to not only streamline, but also increase the fairness and transparency of regular compensation and classifications tasks after solution implementation.

  

  Exhibit 1 displays the interface from JobForce Manager for determining a positions pay grade; additional features include a job scoring tabulation sheet, market survey results database and summary report, pay plan report, and employee salary calculators for modeling fiscal impacts of compensation changes at the employee level. All data and reports are downloadable and printable, so they can be provided to key decision makers.