Reflecting on 20 Years of Collaboration with EMC Labor Partners

EMC’s ability to achieve industry leadership over the last 20 years is largely the result of our highly successful collaboration with our nationwide network of labor partners. On this journey together, we’ve developed a distinct brand exemplified by our unique delivery methods and shared goal of excellence.

Our customers recognize the EMC difference. From lighting retrofits to LED retrofits to reLEDs to smart building controls, EV charging and more, they keep coming back.

It’s not just EMC employees who have driven this success. As our partners and “boots on the ground,” you have often been the face of our offerings and organization. There is a great deal of responsibility in the work you do—be it the installation work itself, or the way you represent our brand.

A unique industry approach

If you were to believe the press clippings when we first started this journey, it wasn’t possible for a company who was not self-performing to realize the same level of quality and success as those who were self-performing.

I remember writing an article for a trade magazine almost 10 years ago that spoke to the idea of organizations who only self-performed being as elusive as the Loch Ness Monster. The reality was self-performers faced challenges in scaling costs effectively to meet national demands. The industry also suffered from the misperception that high quality performance could only be achieved if a partner was self-performing.

What most did not realize, or were unwilling to accept, is the idea that a group of people, regardless of individual affiliation, could leverage core skills, become a strong team and realize great success together.

We’ve accomplished this by being deliberate.

Caring about the work performed and being motivated to work with all parties involved in a project have been key traits we’ve looked for when identifying and onboarding labor partners. It is critical to our collective success that our values and a commitment to partnership through good and bad times is there.

We are also committed to the ongoing development of the EMC Labor Partner Network and its members. We encourage you to reach out to us if you are ready to expand so that we can continue to build on our success together.

We also want to hear from you when you see opportunities for us to improve what we are doing together. We know that you all bring valuable experience and expertise to the table, and we all benefit when improvements can be made…no matter the source of the idea.

Shared accomplishments

Reflecting on 20 years of working together, I leave you with three statistics:

1. In two decades, EMC’s network of active partners has grown to nearly 500 for both projects and service. This is what enables us to deliver projects large and small, in cities and towns across the country.
2. EMC’s top partners’ performance consistently achieves ratings over 90%, and they are rewarded for their good work with over 90% of awarded business from our customers.
3. EMC’s labor partners have helped our customers save over 16.5 billion kWh to date. With an impressive three billion kWh added in just the past 12 months, we are well on track to reach the aggressive savings goal of 25 billion kWh by 2025.

We are growing, and we want you to grow with us. It isn’t always an easy path we put ourselves on, but together we have and will continue to achieve great things.

Thank you for your dedication to our customers and to EMC.

John Loheit is EMC's Director of Labor Partner Development. In this role he oversees the Labor Partner Network and Field Quality Assurance. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, MN.