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A complainant files a harassment or discrimination complaint and then quits. A respondent says the allegations are ridiculous and refuses to participate.
What do you do when the individuals who have the most important information refuse to participate in a workplace investigation?
A complainant provides me with an email, a text message or a recollection of an interaction with a respondent and they say that this is a sign of the respondent engaging in harassment. I then ask, “Can you help me understand what aspect or aspects of this information you found to be harassment?”
Most people never think that one day they’ll have to recount for an investigator every time a colleague rolled his eyes or responded sarcastically to a question. However, a recent case from the Alberta Court of Appeal, MacLeod v. Alberta College of Social Workers, illustrates just how important the specifics are.
Recently, in the town of Lorette, Manitoba (Pop. 3,208), which is 25 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, a little inside joke made a very big public splash. The medium? Cake icing. The platform? Snapchat. At a time when employees constantly scroll through their IPhone notifications, mean jokes blasted over social media easily infiltrate the workplace.
Reporting Findings of an Investigation to a Complainant – What is Required?
With the second anniversary of the Bill 132 changes fast approaching (September 2018), my hope is that organizations can use some of this insight to shape future iterations of their own workplace harassment policies which, pursuant to the legislation, must be reviewed on (at least) an annual basis.
The Federal Court of Appeal recently heard an application for judicial review of a decision of the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board (the Board) in which the Board had found that an employer – the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) – failed to provide a harassment-free workplace for one of its employees.
Most workplace investigation decisions focus on the psychological harm to complainants suffered as a result of the alleged misconduct. We have written about this issue before – see our discussion of the importance of a trauma-informed approach for victims of sexual assault here.
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