Global Investigations: A Six-Step Process
Effectively Managing Complaints Can Help Keep Your Organization Out of Court
In multinational companies, addressing complaints of employee misconduct or policy violation(s) are complex and involve different country customs, laws, and processes that must be understood and followed. If employees channel their reports of misconduct or policy violation(s) correctly within the company, this can help resolve many of these issues within the company and reduce the number of costly employment lawsuits. There are six-steps in this process that can help the human resources manager effectively enhance or refine the companies’ incident management program.
Step 1: The first step is to have an incident management program that includes a reporting process, a non-retaliation policy, and a policy to speak up if employees encounter misconduct or policy violations.
Step 2: The second step is to use a standard process to review and filter information to develop an initial response plan. Consider the following questions: severity (Are high-level employees involved? What is the potential impact on the victims?), complexity (Analyze the number and types of issues. Are there multiple areas of law and jurisdictions involved?), urgency (Is the safety of the employee or a witness a concern? Should the company call the police?), credibility (Is the source of the complaint known or not? Can the facts be easily verified), attorney-client privilege (Should this investigation be subject to attorney-client privilege?). These answers will help to determine your plan of action and the members of your investigation team.
Step 3: The third step is to form an investigation team. Depending on the issues, a representative may come from HR, legal, security, and compliance. The investigation team will determine the need for privilege, necessary steps to discover and preserve evidence, and the employee’s rights and obligations under foreign law. Identify key stakeholders such as general counsel and senior management for guidance, oversight, and further planning.
Step 4: The fourth step is to determine the procedures to follow. Each investigation is unique, and the facts and circumstances of the investigation will dictate the procedures to follow.
Conduct data and document review. Depending on the facts, you may need to consult with legal counsel before conducting data and document review.
Develop a fact pattern. Tell the story of who, what, where, when and how. As facts develop, you may need to consult with legal counsel.
There should be more aggressive and strict policies in cases like sexual harassment because it causes lots of trauma to the victim and as in this case the complaint was filed way later than the actual violation committed. There should be more supportive ways for all the individuals in an organization to report such cases with utmost confidentiality.
Step 3: Take into consideration factors that relate to the situation and generate alternatives for resolving the dilemma.
The Attorney General gives authorization for investigation in three levels, "assessment, preliminary investigation, and full investigation. For a preliminary inv...
An employee found to have participated in any type of unlawful harassment or who knowingly and falsely accuses another of harassment will be subject to appropriate disciplinary/corrective action up to and including
In order for our organization to address arising issues with our employees, these issues must be addressed ...
During an investigation there are number of important roles, methods, and a few other things
In order to address the above components, five decision making steps have to be put in place, these are; being attentive, being intelligent, being reasonable, being responsible, and being reflective. The first step, being attentive, involves evaluating the whole situation and coming up with the data and information about the problem at hand. In so doing the following questions are viewed; what facts to bear in mind, what direction to take so as to get the expected solution, and what is the main issue to work on. In the second step, being intelligent, the information is clearly studied to determine whether the collected data is revealing the correct details concerning the problem. Determine the stakeholde...
Which allows employees that have observed any illegal acts or acts that raise concern to be able to report to a company hotline that allows that individual to report with the secrecy of the act without fear of retaliation from the company. Generally, whistleblowers are employees that are dedicated to the company and is a model employee. They do not have any intentions of hurting the company, but rather to improve the company. By having an anonymous reporting method of any situations allows employees to feel that the company values their opinions and actually care what is happening within the company. Another reason that this is a plus is because this keeps everybody honest, since there is an open door policy of reporting any illegal acts. The best way to implement this protocol is to educate employees on what the purpose of the program is. Then train the employees on the simple reporting procedures and certify that everything is clearly written and efficiently understood. When the complaint has reported an Ombudsperson or manager will report the matter to upper management to conduct an internal investigation. When all is done and the complaint is true, then actions will be done to correct the problems. In this case of the secretary being fired for refusal to prepare false expense reports for her boss, there is no need for her to be terminated instead this allows the creation of the whistle-blowing hotline for the company to investigate any illegal acts within the
Prevention of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace and Educational Settings (2006) offers many recommendations to help prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Some examples of these suggestions include ensuring that every complaint is taken seriously and followed up, encouraging those in a power of position to be a positive role model, implementing education to avoid such behaviour, and having a written procedure known to all for a resolution. In addition, taking every complaint seriously and allowing the complainant to remain confidential. This could potentially encourage more women to report their
Management has a system in effect that will monitor the claims process and keep it working collectively for all employees. Each quarter, management will review the existing policies and procedures for ethics training and reporting and suggest areas for improvement. The use of the website for reporting claims of misconduct can also be used as a suggestion box. A link has been provided so that employees can anonymously make suggestions for the improvement of the ethics training system. Any reasonable suggestions will be given the utmost consideration and will be implemented upon the unanimous agreement of management. Programs found to be ineffective will be removed. The removal or implementation of programs will be discussed in training sessions so that trainee feedback can be taken into account, as well.
Whistle-blowers face ethical dilemmas in decision-making about reporting organizational misconducts. Manager’s disapproval of whistleblowing hinders employee’s willingness to report internal wrong doing. High rank managers are not to empathic to whistle-blowers because this
Step 4: Seek a Resolution – What should happen to resolve the ethical issues identified in Step 3? Give reasons or arguments to justify your resolution by using theories or principles of ethics. (250 words or
Once the investigation is confirmed as legit the investigator then determines the elements of the crime. The investigator will ask questions...
In order for attorneys to effectively represent their clients rules govern how and what information is gathered, used, and stored or destroyed. The unit three seminar discusses the rules that regulate these things during and after the representation of a client. There are several systems in place that protect clients and their confidential information from being misused by those who are involved in their cases and legal matters. The duty of confidentiality, attorney/client privilege, and the work product privilege are the topics discussed during this seminar for the purpose of teaching the differences between them all as well as how each works and for what purpose.
When there is a criminal case, are a set of guidelines a criminal investigator should follow when conducting a preliminary inquiry. These guidelines consist of arriving to a crime scene in a timely manner just in case the suspect may still be at or near the scene (Hess, K.M & Orthmann, C.H., 2013). They will need to take care of any injured person or people that may need emergency care. Check to see if there are any witness seen what had happen. Make sure the crime scene is safe and secured. Once the crime scene became secured that will be the time to start questioning the victims, witness and or the suspects. This would also be the time for some officers to conduct a neighborhood canvass (Hess, K.M & Orthmann, C.H., 2013). Measuring, taking photograph, videotape and sketching the scene just in case the weather is bad that day. Search for evidence,