What are 10 Steps to a Workplace Investigation

What Are 10 Steps To A Workplace Investigation?

If there is a complaint in your company, you may have to consider an investigation process, to determine what happened. Employee wrongdoing is not a small risk, and so doing the right steps of investigation can help you avoid liability. Here are some steps to a successful workplace investigation: 

Determine whether an investigation is necessary? – before anything else, you have to determine whether to conduct an investigation. When employees agree that what happened is minor, or that they all seem to confirm the same story, an investigation may not be required.

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Consider if there is a need for immediate action – sometimes, you will need to perform an immediate action. That is when a situation is so volatile, it can harm your business. Sometimes a case is serious – sexual harassment, theft, etc. That is when you need to act quickly, and prepare to see into the situation.

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Decide who will investigate? – it is important to get an investigator, who is experienced with investigation protocol and can follow the necessary steps to complete an investigation.

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Plan out the investigation – at this stage, you have to gather all of the information about the issue and use it as a guide to determine what the next steps should be. What interviews need to be conducted? What additional documents will the investigator need to fill?

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Conducting interviews – one of the best ways to gather the necessary information is to ask people certain questions. At a minimum, the investigator needs to question the employee who filed the complaint and the employee that is accused of any wrongdoing. Usually, there will be interviews for witnesses. The goal is to gather as much useful information as possible.

Gather evidence and documents – every investigation needs documents, which can be used for essential information – emails, messages, personnel files, etc.

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Evidence evaluation – once all-important evidence is on hand, the evaluation of it can begin. This is what experts consider to be one of the most important parts of an investigation. The investigator needs to decide what evidence is important, and what conclusions they can draw from it. They must also consider if the evidence gathered throughout the investigation is enough to come up with a conclusion.

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Taking action – once the investigator knows what happened, they must take action. If there has been serious wrongdoing, they may need to take disciplinary action against the person who did it. To handle this, it is important to look at company policy and what it says about such a code of conduct. It is important to point out that sometimes there are also legal actions the company must comply with.

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Documenting the investigation – as the investigation concludes, the company needs to complete a report, which lists all of the details. From why the investigation occurs in the first place, to how it was conducted and what its findings were. The goal of such documentation is to provide the company

with some shield against potential lawsuits and create a record in case of misconduct in the future. 

Follow-up – finally, the last step of a workplace investigation is to follow up with all employees involved in the situation that caused the investigation. At this time, the company should take extra steps to ensure that all employees are familiarized with codes of misconduct and any policies that may be implemented to prevent any more issues like this one. If there are any systematic workplace problems, the company may need to do some training courses.

© Tell Jane