T. H. Easter Consulting - Company of the Year

Company: T. H. Easter Consulting, LLC, Washington, DC
Company Description: T. H. Easter Consulting delivers innovative, informed solutions to the toughest organizational and human resource management challenges. We create enduring outcomes for individuals & organizations by offering solutions in our core practice areas: Diversity and Inclusion, Change Management, Leadership Development, Employee Engagement, HR Strategy and Management, Executive Coaching and Recruitment.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Company of the Year - Business & Professional Services - Small

Nomination Title: T. H. Easter Consulting, LLC -- Treating D&I Like the Business Challenge It Is

T. H. Easter Consulting was founded in 2007 to provide innovative and informed solutions to the toughest management and HR challenges. During the course of our history, we have supported our clients in their efforts to create high-performing workplaces with employees who are engaged and fulfilled in the work they do. We believe that an engaged workforce begets superior organizational performance. Our consultants, all former practitioners, bring a real world, boots on the ground perspective to each engagement, as each of us has been there. Our practice is holistic in nature, as it runs the gamut from recruitment and hiring to performance management, to coaching and succession planning to offboarding and career transition support. We pride ourselves as being nimble and agile in responding to what's happening in the real world. Our frameworks, modes and methods, developed over the past 13 years, are the foundation for each and every challenge our clients encounter. We have supported a variety of organizations in varying industries and ranging in size from five to 2,500. Whether we are working with Fortune 500 corporations or small government contractors, we pride ourselves in bringing the same energy, innovation and commitment to collaboration to each engagement.

Both 2019 and 2020 have brought unprecedented social upheaval to the United States. As the Black Lives Matter and MeToo! movements made headlines, it became clear that we were at a cultural tipping point. These issues played out in myriad ways, but were felt most acutely at work. Organizations of all sizes began to look inward to discern if their workplaces were as inclusive and free from bias, discrimination and harassment as they thought them to be. A heightened level of scrutiny began to be imposed upon policies and processes that were previously not given a second thought. This was a moment made for the professionals of T. H. Easter Consulting (THEC). Our proprietary diversity and inclusion strategic planning model and framework has been instrumental in guiding organizations through what is a fraught and difficult process. THEC approaches DE&I and the associated "isms" of sexism, misogynism, racism, et al., as business challenges that are amenable to policy and process re-engineering. We start at the top with leadership readiness informed by employee feedback. This provides a foundation for a holistic D&I strategic planning process, attacking issues of bias and discrimination at their roots -- the supposedly "inocuous" policies and norms that, while facially neutral, perpetuate the second class citizenship or otherness of women and people of color. By examining "how" places work through the lens of equity and inclusive outcomes, we guide organizations through the heavy lift of transformation so that everyone is afforded equal opportunity to aspire and achieve.

The significance and innovation of THEC's approach to diversity and inclusion is in treating it as a business challenge, not as a challenge of changing hearts and minds. Our insight was that organizations cannot control what their employees think, but they can control organizational behavior to achieve desired outcomes, in much the same way they control production lines or identify revenue targets. By scrutinizing existing policies, processes and practices, whether for example, it is setting compensation or choosing who should receive leadership training, we work with clients to identify practices and ways of doing things that are facially equitable, but in practice produce biased outcomes. Diversity training and workshops, while helpful and important, will not magically transform a culture; business policy and process re-engineering can and does. History is replete with huge companies that have hired chief diversity officers and begun huge D&I transformational efforts that have died on the vine within a year. This generally is because they were trying to change people's minds. But as anyone who has attempted to rid themselves of a bad habit knows, it isn't possible without changing behavior. Every workplace has ways of doing things that usually were created organically with little thought to desired outcomes other than business continuity. We gauge our clients' readiness for transformational D&I by challenging their existing ways of working without assigning any fault for previous outcomes. Our approach is not about blame and shame. Rather, it depersonalizes the process by focusing on optimal outcomes for everyone.

THEC had established a track record of taking on the diversity and inclusion conumdrum for a decade prior to the events of 2019 and 2020. We were published thought leaders and sought after speakers on the topic. As as minority-owned business, we are thrilled that our leadership on this topic positioned us to be of real service at this particular point in time. As time passes, the intersectionality of so many of the societal issues we are confronting becomes more apparent, and how these issues present in the workplace will be an issue for everyone. We currently are bringing our consulting expertise to Project Restart -- a cross-discipline consulting effort for companies as they begin to re-board their workforce post-COVID-19. We are especially focused on the outsized negative impact the pandemic has had on communities of color, as well as these communities' natural distrust of the medical profession given their history of neglect by the profession, as well as historical abuse at the hands of governmental scientific research initiatives. T. H. Easter Consulting, again, is ideally positioned for this new wrinkle in workplace engagement and we are proud to be at the forefront of innovation in addressing these issues at work.