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I sometimes find it hard to believe that we are already coming up to the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic forcing us to quickly learn to work online. Here at RT, we remember having to rapidly adjust to conducting investigation interviews virtually (meaning by videoconference or telephone). Up to that point, most workplace investigation interviews were conducted in-person.
“If you can’t write out your mandate in a short and simple paragraph, don’t start.”
When delivering our Workplace Investigation Fundamentals sessions, this is how I start the discussion on mandate. Simply put, an investigator’s mandate is the thing (or things) that they are being asked to do, the decision (or decisions) that they are being asked to make.
As a workplace investigator and a team lead for a group of fellow RT investigators, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about reply interviews. Anyone who has conducted an investigation themselves or reviewed an investigator’s report can probably appreciate why: the reply or follow-up interview is a place where the need to balance the fairness, neutrality, thoroughness, and confidentiality of the investigation really comes into focus.
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.
This is the second in a series of blog posts that I will be writing on data and investigations.
To recap, workplace investigations are also an invaluable source of data that organizations can use in a variety of ways – outside of the investigation process – to help their workplaces get into the zone – the optimal workplace that is characterized by respect, civility, tolerance, inclusivity, and no, or few, employment-related legal problems.
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.
Investigators typically follow the same process in every investigation. We gather evidence, usually through interviews, we use that evidence to make factual findings, and we analyse those findings to determine whether a breach of policy has occurred.
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