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Serious insight for serious situations.

Serious insight for serious situations.

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With a Little Help from my Support Person

July 31, 2019
| By Fiona Lee

For most people, participating in a workplace investigation is an unusual departure from their workplace routine.  Whether they are a complainant or a respondent, it can be a stressful interaction to sit in a room, with a stranger, and be asked about the details of something that happened, say, ten months ago.  One way to address this stress is by allowing a support person to attend the meeting.  Indeed, some institutions specifically contemplate the involvement of a support person in their policies.  But like anything connected to a workplace investigation you need to think about the support person’s attendance at the interview before it happens.

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Sharing the Investigation Results or: How to Stop Worrying and Have the Conversation

July 18, 2019
| By Veronica Howard

Employers sometimes ask us for guidance on how to share the results of a workplace investigation with the parties. It’s not difficult to imagine why.

All parties to an investigation—so long as they are employees of the employer—are entitled to learn the results of the investigation, as noted in the Ministry of Labour’s Code of Practice.

Yet letting a Complainant know that his harassment complaint was not substantiated, or telling a Respondent that he engaged in bullying, is difficult information to deliver. Information like this can be physically and emotionally overwhelming for the parties to hear, and both may experience a variety of emotions in response.

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Health Care and Harassment: Now is the time to address unhealthy habits

July 5, 2019
| By Sarah Hellmann

Grey’s Anatomy – the television show and not the textbook – has been running for more seasons than I care to count.  All I know is that it has spanned several different stages of my educational and professional life and seems to have as strong a following as ever.   Not unlike the legal world, mining the hospital and health care environment for inspiration can yield highly entertaining programming.  One archetypal character that frequently appears in both drama and comedic form is the curmudgeonly demanding senior doctor. 

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How an external investigation actually saved money for an employer

June 24, 2019
| By Cory Boyd

At Rubin Thomlinson we deliver a lot of training on conducting workplace investigations and often the discussion turns to the costs of conducting an investigation, whether it be the monetary costs of an external investigation or the time costs of an internal investigation. These costs are typically balanced with the benefits of conducting an effective investigation, such as allowing employees to be heard, demonstrating a commitment to a respective workplace culture by “walking the talk” of policies, clarifying what actually occurred, and implementing targeted outcomes.

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