Three things to settle first.
You are recommending an outside consultant to a client who is already paying you. How that consultant conducts themselves reflects on your judgment, so these are stated plainly rather than buried.
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We do not practice law and we do not give legal advice
Legal questions come up during these engagements. When they do, we route them back to you. We do not answer them, we do not offer a view, and we do not put our own read on the law into a report. Legal counsel is your role and we treat it that way without exception.
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We do not compete for your client
We do not take over the relationship, and we do not use an engagement as a route into broader consulting work with your client. Employers who come to us directly and need counsel are referred out. We have worked alongside firms across the country on this basis for decades.
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We take direction on scope and documentation
You set how the engagement is structured, how findings are documented, and how the report is delivered. We work inside the structure you set rather than assume one. We do not make privilege claims. Whether a given engagement supports one is your determination, not ours.
Why counsel brings us in.
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Early identification of exposure
Surveys routinely surface supervisor conduct, pay practice complaints, and unreported concerns while they are still internal matters rather than charges or claims.
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An independent factual record
Findings come from a neutral third party rather than from management's account of its own workforce. That distinction matters when the account itself is the thing in question.
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A problem location
One site generating a disproportionate share of complaints, and nobody internally can say why. A survey separates a management problem from a policy problem.
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Post-acquisition assessment
A baseline read on a workforce your client just acquired or reorganized, before decisions get made on someone else's summary of it.
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Follow up after a settlement
Evidence of whether conditions on the ground actually changed, gathered from the people working under them.
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Timing
Concerns surfaced now can be addressed now. Once a formal proceeding is underway, the same corrective steps carry consequences they would not have carried earlier. You know that calendar better than we do.
What a survey actually surfaces.
Employees raise things in a room that never reach a complaint form.
Supervisors who apply rules differently depending on the day. Favoritism in scheduling, overtime, or assignments. Complaints that were reported to someone and went nowhere. Pay practices employees believe are inconsistent. Off the clock expectations nobody put in writing. Safety conditions people stopped mentioning after the second time. Conduct issues that never reached human resources because the employee did not trust the process.
Most of these are inexpensive to resolve while they are still one person's frustration. Most are expensive once they are a pattern with a paper trail.
How an engagement runs.
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A conversation with you first
Before anything is raised with the client, we will talk through the situation, what a survey would and would not tell you, and whether it is the right instrument. If it is not, we will say so.
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Scope set with counsel
Locations, departments, headcount, scheduling, and how the survey is introduced to employees. You decide how the engagement is structured and documented.
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On-site meetings
Small groups, organized by department or shift, away from supervisors. Every survey is conducted in person. One to five days depending on size and number of locations, in English and Spanish where the workforce calls for it.
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Report to ownership
Findings organized by concern, individual manager reviews, a separate facilities and safety list, and recommendations. Delivered to ownership or the C-suite and not distributed further.
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Findings session
We walk the executive team through the report and answer questions. You are welcome in that session, and many firms attend.
How our consultants conduct themselves.
Our team includes former agents of the National Labor Relations Board and former federal mediators. The people running your client's survey understand how a comment made in a discussion group can read two years later, and they write accordingly.
We are careful about what we promise employees and careful about what goes into a report. Findings are attributed to themes and departments rather than individuals. Recommendations stay proportional to what the evidence supports, and we do not pad a report with recommendations the findings do not carry.
Every survey follows the same method. A client with fourteen locations gets the same meeting at all fourteen, and year two is comparable to year one.
Questions we are usually asked.
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Will this create a record my client would rather not have?
A fair question, and the honest answer is that it depends on how the engagement is structured, which is your call. We will follow the approach you set on documentation and delivery. What we will not do is pretend the question does not exist.
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What if the report says something about a manager the client likes?
Then the client has learned something. Manager reviews come from that manager's own employees. We present strengths alongside concerns and our recommendations aim at improvement rather than removal. What the client does with it is their decision.
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Do you meet with supervisors?
Employees meet in groups away from their supervisors, which is what makes the sessions worth running. Managers and supervisors do not receive the report. We recommend that ownership meet with them directly to work through what needs to change, without forwarding the document.
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How quickly can you get on site?
Usually within a few weeks, and faster when the situation calls for it. We work nationwide and in Puerto Rico.
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Can I see a sample report?
Yes. We will walk you through the structure with a redacted example before you raise it with a client.
Before you raise it with the client.
We are glad to talk it through with you first.
If your client is dealing with turnover they cannot explain, a location that behaves differently from the rest, or a pattern of complaints without an obvious source, a survey is often the fastest way to find out what is actually happening.
Call directly and we will make time. No pitch, no obligation, and if a survey is not the right instrument we will tell you that instead.