One of my favorite activities is visiting a client or prospective client’s workplace.

There’s nothing like face-to-face contact and on-site experience to help me better understand a client’s concerns and needs.  Moreover, most business owners and operators (maybe even all owners and operators) love to showoff their business.

It was during my tenure in labor and employee relations for the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) that I started visiting worksites as part of my job.  I noticed that many CPS principals and administrators would complain about how many of the central office employees made decisions directly impacting their schools without any regard for them.  In other words, they complained about the same thing many employees complain about, top down management with little effort to understand their jobs or obtain their buy in concerning workplace initiatives.

Plus, when dealing with multiple union and employee grievances, or employee conduct issues, from a single school or location, it was unproductive to drag the parties to my office for hours of grievance hearings, meetings and travel when I could just as easily take the hearings and meetings to the schools, save everyone a lot of time and money, and learn much more about the issues at hand.

I carried this practice over to other salaried jobs that I held and found my colleagues equally appreciative and welcome.  Later, when I started my own law practice, I decided that I would continue holding as many meetings as possible at the client’s site to make it easier on them and improve my understanding of their concerns.

This doesn’t work for all clients and situations though.  In order to facilitate openness and directness during negotiations or other proceedings, sometimes the parties must meet off-site or at a neutral location.