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In my last blog, I wrote about different types of employee misconduct, other than harassment and discrimination, that may warrant an investigation; for example, conflicts of interest, time theft, fraud, and the disclosure of confidential information.
Dans la plupart des juridictions canadiennes, les employeurs sont tenus d’adopter des politiques visant à traiter d’enjeux comme le harcèlement, la discrimination et la violence en milieu de travail. Notre travail d’enquête nous mène à lire beaucoup de ces politiques de « respect au travail » et il appert que la grande majorité d’entre elles sont clairement rédigées dans le but de se conformer aux exigences législatives.
For many years prior to joining Rubin Thomlinson LLP, my work involved the investigation of matters that did not relate to harassment or discrimination. I held in-house roles in the private and public sectors that involved the oversight of whistleblower programs.
Most Canadian jurisdictions require employers to have policies that address issues like workplace harassment, discrimination, and violence. In our investigation practice, we read many of these “respect at work” policies, and the overwhelming majority of them are clearly written to specifically comply with legislative requirements.
Janice Rubin and I recently completed a two-part webinar series on workplace restoration. During the sessions, we received several interesting questions, all of which we did not get the opportunity to answer. The questions were excellent and thought provoking and represent some of the questions that we are frequently asked when engaging in this work.
In most of our workplace investigations, the organization that retains us asks us to measure our findings of fact against one or more of their policies. This means that, once we have made findings of fact, we must decide whether the respondent’s conduct has breached a policy or policies that the organization has asked us to apply.
We often hear horror stories about workplace complaints being handled poorly — instances where employers don’t act, investigators miss the mark, and so on and so forth. I’ll now be the bearer of good news and share what the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (“Tribunal”) recently found to be reasonable handling of a complaint in Salanguit v. Parq Vancouver and another.
A challenging question that employers may face is how to respond to historical complaints of harmful behaviour when such complaints arise and cause conflict in the workplace. It is not unusual for complaints to not be brought forward immediately. At times we see complaints of incidents dating back a few years, sometimes even over a decade.
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