Evergreen Solutions LLC’s Biography
Evergreen Solutions, LLC divides its consulting work across four public sector markets and maintains a distinct practice area for each one: K-12 education, local government, state government, and higher education. The firm is based in Tallahassee, Florida, and it is a management consulting practice serving public sector and mission-driven organizations on the human resources and management questions that shape how those organizations serve the people who depend on them.
Within those markets, the domain that carries the most weight is compensation and classification. Studies here are market-aligned and equity-driven, and Evergreen Solutions constructs them to support recruitment, retention, and fiscal accountability. Four elements make up the process: position analysis, salary benchmarking, review under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and stakeholder engagement. What the firm aims to deliver is a pay structure that is fair and stays sustainable over time.
A separate domain covers performance management. Evergreen Solutions LLC designs systems in this area to connect employee performance to organizational goals. Transparency, continuous feedback, and professional development are the qualities the design promotes, and the systems are meant to stay straightforward enough that a client can implement and maintain them.
Workforce planning forms its own domain, oriented toward staffing needs a client has not yet met. Succession and workforce planning services help clients anticipate those needs, identify leadership pipelines, and develop succession strategies. Demographic analysis and strategic forecasting drive the work, which Evergreen Solutions LLC pursues in the interest of workforce continuity and readiness for organizational change.
Organizational structure is the concern of a fourth domain. Organizational design studies assess and redesign structures to improve efficiency, clarify roles and responsibilities, and support strategic alignment, with an emphasis on strengthening collaboration and promoting agility. Departmental operations reviews belong to the same domain. They examine internal workflows in order to identify inefficiencies, process bottlenecks, and improvement opportunities, and the findings are then translated into actionable recommendations.
Operational analysis makes up the last of the management consulting services. Efficiency and staffing studies apply data-driven analysis to staffing levels, workload distribution, and resource utilization, identifying optimization opportunities so that clients can reduce costs, increase productivity, and align staffing with operational demand.
Technology is a domain of its own at Evergreen Solutions LLC, running alongside the consulting engagements. The firm develops and maintains a suite of web applications for human resources management, delivered through a platform it calls egsHR. Three tools make up the suite. The Job Assessment Tool, or JAT, is survey-based and is used to understand the key responsibilities and requirements of a role from the perspective of the employees who hold it, and the insights it produces inform job descriptions as well as compensation and classification recommendations. Job Force Manager, or JFM, is aimed at organizations managing their compensation systems and lets them view, adjust, and track pay plans, pay grade assignments, and market data. Job Performance Tracker, or JPT, is competency-based and evaluates employee performance through self-assessments and supervisor evaluations, so employees can gauge their strengths, development areas, and goals while supervisors assess progress, provide feedback, and identify developmental needs. Evergreen Solutions offers Job Performance Tracker to clients seeking an automated performance management tool.
The client roster across these domains is wide. Evergreen Solutions LLC works with cities, counties, school districts, institutions of higher education, and state agencies. Over more than two decades of operation, the firm has partnered with public sector clients in 47 states and completed more than 1,800 engagements.
Individual engagements show the range. Missouri is represented by a compensation study for the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court. In Washington, the City of Colville received a salary survey comparison study and equity analysis, and the Port of Bellingham received a compensation study for non-represented employees. Texas is represented by wage and compensation consulting services provided to the City of Helotes, and Colorado by compensation consulting services provided to the Town of Vail. In California, the City of Berkeley received classification and compensation studies with desk audits for select departments.
Staffing at the firm stands at 25. The consultants who do this work come from backgrounds in public administration, human resources, education, economics, and finance, and several hold professional certifications including Certified Compensation Professional, SHRM-SCP, IPMA-SCP, and Project Management Professional. Their earlier careers were spent in state agencies, county and municipal government, school districts, and university systems, and that experience informs how Evergreen Solutions LLC approaches the operational realities its clients describe.
Leadership of the firm rests with Dr. Jeffrey Ling, who founded Evergreen Solutions LLC in 2005 with Dr. Linda Recio. Dr. Recio served as its first President and became President Emeritus in 2020, having previously led the education practice for another consulting firm, overseen reviews of Florida school districts for the Florida Department of Education, and directed planning and policy development for Leon County Schools. Dr. Ling served in various roles in private industry, consulting, and higher education before becoming President, including as Evergreen's Executive Vice President. Over the last 30 years he has worked with more than 2,500 organizations to improve outcomes in human resource management, operations, and change management. He is a Certified Compensation Professional and holds an Advanced Certificate for Executives in Management, Innovation, and Technology.
Beyond the practice areas, the firm names four commitments as its own: continuous learning, partnering with clients, innovation, and support for individual career paths. Evergreen Solutions LLC and its staff also support multiple charitable organizations that assist with the well-being of animals, children, cancer patients, and communities.
More than twenty years into its public sector work, Evergreen Solutions LLC continues to operate from Tallahassee, Florida, applying customized, data-informed analysis to the organizational questions facing government agencies, school systems, and public institutions across the country. The purpose of the firm is to partner with public sector clients to effect positive change, giving those organizations practical, results-oriented strategies to operate more effectively and prepare for what comes next.