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La plainte est généralement l’acte originel de toute enquête en milieu de travail. Elle est autrement dit le signal d’alerte qui active une série de mécanismes depuis l’évaluation de son sérieux par l’employeur jusqu’à l’ultime décision sur la manière de l’adresser.
The complaint is typically the originating act of any workplace investigation. It is the “code red” that activates a series of mechanisms, from the assessment of its seriousness by the employer, to the ultimate decision on how to address it.
Writing about credibility is one of the most challenging aspects of workplace investigation reports. As someone who reviews a lot of reports, I find that investigators usually have a good sense of who is credible and who is not, but they can struggle to write about how they assessed credibility. This is especially true of newer investigators.
In the course of a workplace investigation, it is not unusual to encounter a respondent who simply denies the allegations, without offering any further information or explanation. While a simple denial may sometimes be a sufficient response to an allegation, there are instances where there is seemingly more to the story than what the respondent is offering.
It is not out of the ordinary for our firm to conduct workplace investigations involving very senior leaders – presidents, CEOs, senior vice-presidents, partners (in the case of law and accounting firms, for example), school principals, and even board members. While complaints against these individuals may not be the norm, they certainly do exist.
The assessment of credibility and reliability is always a central part of an investigator’s work. My colleague, Chantel Levy, wrote an excellent overview of the considerations a decision maker should bear in mind when making a finding of credibility, including consistency, corroborative evidence, plausibility, and motive.
We have had mandates to investigate allegations of sexual abuse that occurred many years ago. As we point out to clients who wish to retain us, beyond the complexities of every case of this kind, most notably that there is usually no direct evidence of the event having transpired, “historic” cases present unique challenges: Witnesses may no longer be available, documents may have been destroyed, and memories inevitably fade.
In the world of workplace investigations, we often hear of adopting a trauma-informed approach in sexual harassment cases. We especially heard this during the #MeToo movement, and, indeed, it was necessary.
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