VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Hello, I’m Bryan Cokeley, with the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson. I’m a labor lawyer here in the Charleston office. If you’re a supervisor or a human resource manager, you may be called upon to do an investigation in your organization. I want to talk with you about some tips on how to do an effective investigation. Before doing that, however, a question – why do internal investigations? I submit that there are three reasons. First, you may have a chance to prevent litigation and head it off. Second, if you do an effective internal investigation you may have a legal defense if you end up in a lawsuit. And, third, it’s just the right thing to do. You can’t let HR issues fester, they only get worse and you need to jump on it.
Tip No. 1 – if you have an employee handbook or postings, and you should have both, then you need to let employees know through the handbook and through those postings, that they have a right to complain, and how they go about complaining, because you won’t be doing timely investigations if your employees don’t know that they have the right to complain, and if they don’t know how to do it.
Tip No. 2 – safety in numbers. If you’re going to be interviewing witnesses, have another supervisor with you – someone who can take notes – someone who can be a witness if there is a dispute about what was said during the interview.
Tip No. 3 –witnesses and documents. During the investigation, identify all of the witnesses and interview them, and identify all of the pertinent documents including electronically stored information, and then, preserve those documents. Keep in mind; most employment lawsuits have two-year statute of limitations.
Tip No. 4 – confidentiality. You can’t promise confidentiality to witnesses or to the complaining party even though you want to keep the investigation as confidential as possible, but you can’t promise confidentiality because you don’t know where the investigation may go. Also keep in mind, that if employees are talking about the event that’s under investigation, even though that may bother you, you may not be able to do anything about it because under the National Labor Relations Act, employees have the right to engage in concerted activity about issues in the workplace, which could include talking about the matter that’s under investigation.
Tip No. 5 – take statements of witnesses. I think it’s a great idea to have the witness write out in their own hand a statement of what happened. Have them sign it and have them date it, and then again hang onto that evidence.
So in summary, be prompt with your investigation, be thorough and be fair, and both you and your organization will be the better for it.
If you have any questions about this topic, or any other topic related to labor or employment law, please give me a call.