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Serious insight for serious situations.

Serious insight for serious situations.

The impact of “cancel culture” on workplace investigations

In our workplace investigation training sessions, we often talk about “the four pillars” of the investigation process — fairness, thoroughness, timeliness, and confidentiality — as the foundation of a solid investigation. Here, I briefly explain how “cancel culture” can impact fairness, thoroughness, and confidentiality.

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Investigations: Our Top 10 of 2020

It has become somewhat of a Rubin Thomlinson tradition to host a webinar at the beginning of each year outlining our top 10 workplace investigation cases from the previous year. On January 14, 2021, we hosted our most well-attended webinar yet: The top 10 cases of 2020. Here are the discussed themes and a very brief summary of the presentation.

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Does “reverse discrimination” exist? According to these cases, probably not.

Attitudes towards equality have evolved rapidly over the past few years, as have the standards by which we measure discrimination. As a result of these shifts, a question has emerged regarding whether the concept of “reverse discrimination” exists – that is, can individuals who have not been historically disadvantaged experience discrimination? This in turn begs the broader question – does discrimination occur anytime there is any difference in treatment?

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Question de langue dans les enquêtes virtuelles | Language issues in virtual investigations

Depuis la mi-mars 2020, la majorité de nos enquêtes en milieu de travail et au sein des institutions postsecondaires se font de façon virtuelle. Donnant suite aux consignes de la santé publique concernant la distanciation sociale, nous rencontrons rarement les parties et témoins d’une enquête en personne, plutôt nous les rencontrons par vidéoconférence. Cette méthode de communication a certaines retombées du point de vue de la langue. Notamment, toute difficulté de compréhension est accrue par voie virtuelle. Il y a toutefois moyen d’atténuer ces difficultés. De plus, les contraintes géographiques disparaissent avec les enquêtes virtuelles.

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Workplace investigation reports: Why plain language is best

As a reviewer of workplace investigation reports, I try to encourage the use of plain language. By this, I mean that I try to make sure that a report can be easily understood by the people who read it. I admit that this is not always easy. I am a lawyer, after all, which means that I was trained to make everything sound more complicated than it really is.

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