Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Good day, everyone, and welcome to another edition of let's Be Diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who've supported me through this journey. Those who have left us will always be in our hearts and will never be forgotten. Today we're going to be discussing the behind the scenes of workplace investigations. And I'm sorry, honored and thrilled to have as our guest today, Sarah Higgins Bordeaux. Sarah, welcome to the show. It is great to have you here today.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: You're very, very welcome. How are things with you? What's going on? Give me the tea, give me the deets. What's going on?
[00:00:46] Speaker A: So things are going well with me. It seems like this is about the time that HR consultants get busy. Towards the end of the year, companies start trying to utilize that budget, introduce and implement the things that they want to change for upcoming year. So it has been really good. And on a personal note, things are great. Just got back from a vacation at the beach, so who can beat that?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: You cannot beat the beach, that's for sure. I agree with you 100% on that one. And I was just talking to somebody this past week and I was saying that we don't. We have the new year in January and then when we hit summer, it's kind of like a relaxing stage where we relax.
You're not doing your everyday routine. Then when we hit September, it's. September is almost kind of like a new year. Almost. It's like, okay, well, we need to reset. Here's where we are. Here's how we want to finish the year. So it's interesting how that cycle goes. So as soon as September 1st hit. I don't know if it is for you or for the listeners, but for me it was like, oh, my God, we only have a few months left to go. We gotta, you know, we gotta move.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: That's right. I agree.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Well, before we begin, I always have a fun, thought provoking question that I like to ask my guests to get things going. Are you ready for yours today?
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: So your question today, Sarah, is do you believe in destiny or do you think that life is in our control?
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Okay. I would say a bit of a blend of that. So I, I do believe in God and that he has sort of defined an ultimate destiny, but I think most of the. Or really all of in between, and he gives us free will and all of the in between is really up to us. Right. And I think that we create the future that we want to have based on our daily day to day habits.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: I love your answer. It's almost like you knew the question before.
Great, great answer. That's really, it's really good. I really appreciate your, your insights on that and there's so many different ways that you can look at that question and I just love your, love your insights on it.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: You're very, very welcome. So before we dive into our conversation today, tell us a little bit about your Jo who you are, what you do and what drives you to do the work that you do.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: So I own leadership at HR consultancy called purposed HR which I have started about three and a half years ago and the 15 years before that I was an HR leader in industry, primarily in manufacturing and that started with a drug, then dental manufacturing in Alabama. I was recruited and moved to a very large global company in South Carolina which then moved me to Georgia, which is where I am now. So all over, kind of the southeast of the United States. I had a small stint as a learning and development manager and also a small stint in healthcare. Otherwise it has been mostly HR and manufacturing. To answer the what drives you? You know, as I was considering what to do in my consultancy, like so many during, during COVID I just got burned out in HR leadership. And I looked back on my career and realized what I was most proud of were the people that I supported the most were really those frontline leaders who needed some guidance, needed some help navigating those tough conversations, needed to be equipped with tools from their HR partners. And so when I think about what I do, I support hr, I support leadership of all levels. But it's really the frontline leader that has my heart because I feel like oftentimes they are the least equipped by their organization and have some of the toughest jobs.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: And I love everything that you said there and I love your intro and everything that you're doing. And when you're talking about the frontline leaders, in a lot of cases those leaders are probably first time leaders. They've never been a leader before. They were just good at being an individual contributor to their company and they were just thrown in like, you're really good at your job, we're going to throw you in here. But they had never had the training or the expertise or the knowledge in order to lead people. It's almost like when you become a parent for the first time, you don't know, your first thought is oh my God, I'd never been a parent before. Am I not going to be, I won't be able to do this. How am I going to do this? How am I going to raise this child? And then you learn to talking to people and learning and a lot of people doing, reading and speaking to people who have done it before. So it's a great way to do that is by learning from people who have done it before. When you're talking about a leader, it's the same case.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. In, in hr, no matter where you work, your purpose is to support and really be the harmony between the employees and, and the leadership. And you're supporting people of all levels. And I feel like, at least in my career, that frontline leader is who I supported the most and who I was really comfortable with, who I knew, what their pain points were.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: So, Sarah, let's get into the nut and bolts of this conversation here. What I wanted to know is how should leaders prepare before launching an investigation?
[00:06:03] Speaker A: Absolutely. So first off, from a compliance standpoint, it's really important to know who is permitted to do an investigation. For example, in the US in the state of California, it has to be an attorney, a private investigator that's licensed, or someone internal to the company. It can't be an external third party. So it's important to know your local policies and who is allowed to do an investigation and then what of those brings. Because an attorney is going to be a really different feel than say, someone like me who is an HR consultant and I do a lot of investigations because an attorney automatically may put some employees on guard. They may feel like this is very formal, this feels like court, whereas I can kind of come in and be a neutral third party. Depends on what you're going for in the investigation and what your culture is and how severe it is the issue at hand is. But then from there, after selecting and who, I think the very most important thing is to really think about your why and know your why. Because yes, we want to reduce risk and we want to resolve issues, but why we do that is because we want to reveal truth, we want to care for our people, and we want to be a guardian of our culture. So we do that by providing consistency and a fair, neutral investigation.
And, and then obviously, is this severe enough that it, that it merits an investigation? You know, so have to think about your cultural context and what is important in your, in your culture to guard.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: I think you're bang on there as far as hitting what your culture is, because anybody that's in the Organization is going to understand what the culture is. But if you have to bring in other people, like legal or any other third parties, they're not going to really understand the culture. So if they don't understand the culture, then they're not going to understand the needs or the wants of the individuals in the company or, you know, any organization. Whereas someone who is there full time, they know the people there, they see them every day. So they're going to understand it a little bit better. So I do get that for sure.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. There's really pros and cons to each avenue that you take and you just have to weigh those pros and cons.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: So what exactly happens during a workplace investigation?
[00:08:25] Speaker A: Yeah, really good question. So, you know, let's say it's the internal HR team doing the investigation. First and foremost they need to create a plan, an investigation plan. They need to decide what's a reasonable timeline. And honestly, they need to drop everything else that they can possibly drop to focus on this because this is the most important thing at hand. And, and so, you know, when you let things fester, you're, you're often piling more problems on top of problems. And so that's why it's really important to make sure you have a plan that is timely. And if it's a large scale investigation, you may have to ass roles. Right. Like maybe one, one person is the data gatherer. That may look like camera footage or badge swipes or historical data. Maybe one person's an interviewer and that sort of thing. If you're a department of one, you may need to decide, is this large enough, I need to deploy other qualified help or can I do this in a reasonable timeline myself? So the plan is really important and we don't want a plan to fail, as they say. So I think that's number one is creating a solid plan. Also, you know, there's so many different avenues for a complaint to come in, whether that is by email or whether you have a service that, you know, takes ethical or safety concerns or whether that's someone walking into your office. Right. So, so, you know, it's important to have a system where you log complaints and you can categorize them as ethics or safety or conflict or what have you and kind of provide historical records and status on those. So there's a lot of kind of pre investigation, I think that goes on in the background of, of selecting, you know, all of the who, what, when, where, why, and obviously there's the accepting of the person, for example, came to you and identified them.
I would say the number one thing that, that that is happened is you've just been thrown into an investigation, whether you wanted to be at that moment or not. Someone came to you and complained about something severe with their supervisor, for example, and all of a sudden you, you are starting an investigation.
So you don't have to have the answers right then, right? You just need to receive the complaint and receive the complaint as neutrally as possible. Ask any clarifying questions that you can. You could always schedule more time with that person at another date. But first and foremost, feel they need to feel heard and understood. So I like to always say that empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is simply showing that you, you heard them and that you want all employees to feel respected. And so adding an empathy statement into the conversation, listening well and making them feel heard, is the first step to really keeping things from bubbling further.
So broad question, what happens in investigation? Right? So let's say we take that complaint, we gather data, whether that's footage or what have you, we look at files, historical records, and then maybe we, we need to, to launch interviews, right? And so I often save the accused for last, but I'll take the, the complainant and then I'll take any witnesses, and I try to knock out those interviews as fast as possible. But I also plan those questions. I plan the questions so that I'm not going off script and everything can remain as clear and consistent as possible from interview to interview. Might just have to tweak the wording slightly for who you're interviewing, depending on if they're a witness or an accused. But we're gonna, we're gonna interview. And something that I also do when I'm interviewing, that maybe not something that's just obvious, is I visually identify the person. If the issue at hand has to do with race or age or gender, then I'm going to note how this person, how I've visually identified them, if it is relevant to the case. And I say that because I've had some cases where that is relevant. For example, I had a case that was race based. And so, and then age started creeping in. So everyone that I interviewed, I visually identified their race and their approximate age because the whole case was based on potential race or age discrimination. And so the perspective of each one of those categories was really, really relevant. So at the end of that investigation, when I did my summary, I could say I interviewed this many people of this race, this many people of this age, and I was a neutral third party. And so that's Why I say visually identified, the organization, could verify, but it was relevant. Right. So you wouldn't note that if it's not relevant. So you're going to gather, you're going to gather data, you're going to conduct interviews and essentially then you're going to move to look for patterns, identify policy violations, ethical violations, legal violations.
And then, you know, you're going to summarize in something clear, bullet pointed, and you're going to make recommendations. That is essentially a snapshot of an investigation, if you will.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: And I'm sure that each situation is different. But what I do like about what you had said there and I'm sure, well, I've been in situations in the past where a lot of stuff that you mentioned was not done. And the one thing that really caught my attention is dropping all tasks that you're doing and actually taking what you're, what the person is saying in very serious manner.
Because I feel like if somebody is coming to you with something that's, you know, to them that it feels that it's serious. And if they are having the courage to come and see you or their superior and say what's going on or what's on their mind, I think it took a lot for them to do that. So I think you have to take that into consideration. And I've had leaders who were working on their laptop or computer while I was telling them what was going on. And that is not the way to do that. I think you need the full attention. And you mentioned the word empathy, which I loved. You have to have a full empathy, compassion. And you mentioned you want them to feel seen. So I always talk about feeling seen, heard, valued and understood. And I feel that is key to this structure.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Absolutely. And there's a couple of other things that I teach in that receipt of complaint. So not only empathy, but gratitude. Because you said how difficult it is for them to have taken the steps to come to you. Quite often it is. And so it's so important to say thank you for bringing this concern to me and then say, I'll be investigating this further and I'll follow up with you after. Now, something that at least in the US you have to be careful with is confidentiality. In the US it would be an NLRB violation to say that you have to keep this fully confidential. You can't tell anyone. The reason being is that's their, that's their working environment and they're allowed to talk about their working environment. That's concerted efforts, unionized.
Not all HR people or investigators really understand that. So what I do is I request the confidentiality. And I say it like, you know, I understand that people have witnessed this. There may be talk on the floor. I'm asking you to give me the opportunity to try to squash any rumors and, and not not talk about it in a way that would create rumors, but to give me the opportunity to investigate it before you talk about it too much. I am just requesting your. Your conf during this time so we can have a fair, consistent investigation rather than demanding which could be illegal. And then the other thing is they need to have a proper expectation of, of confidentiality because a lot of times employees will come to you and they don't want you to do anything or say anything. But it's something of a grave manner like sexual harassment. Well, I can't ethically and legally just keep that sexual harassment to myself. Right. And so I have to give them a reasonable expectation that I may have to discuss this with legal. I may. To discuss this with your boss. I may have to discuss this with my boss.
So I need to let them know that I will keep your anonymity and confidentiality only to the extent that is reasonable and possible to uphold our ethics and values. And then the other thing that I always do during the receipt of complaint is a non retaliation statement. If at any point in time you feel retaliated against, please let me know immediately. We have a strict no retaliation policy here and no one should retaliate against you for reporting a complaint or perceiving that you reported a complaint. So, so gratitude, confidentiality on both sides and non retaliation, those are really your. Your for when you receive a complaint to make someone feel heard, valued and understand what to expect.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: So to all the listeners, I think it's pretty common knowledge here that communication is key here, which we're going to continue to talk about. So I think that's super important. And one thing I would probably add to what you're saying is that if you are saying to somebody, give me a chance, let's keep it confidential and give me a chance to do my due diligence to figure this out and figure what's going on and come to a resolution here, that you. That there is a resolution, you know, some sort of resolution comes and that you were communicative to that individual, letting them know what's going on. Because if they are left in the leech and they have no idea what's going on for six months and they have no idea what's happening, it's not fair to them as well. You have to work together for sure. And, and I think if both parties work together, then I think something good will come out of it. For sure.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. And to your point, if your investigation lingers on more than a month, they're probably thinking you are not focusing on it. So my rule of thumb is I try to wrap up investigations in one to two weeks.
I understand that's not always possible, depending on the, the setting, but it should be the goal. Right? An investigation should never go, so six months, unless like there's police involved or something.
For sure.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: So that's a good segue into our next question. So what I wanted to know from you is what happens when an investigation finds no wrongdoing?
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Yeah, great question.
So once you have gathered all your testimony, created your summary and all of that, you know something that I start to look for is, is there, were there any policies violated, were there any laws violated, were there any ethics violated? All of those things. And if not, could there have been a perception of. And could there have been misunderstandings? Could this be a bad faith, Not a complaint not made in good faith, you know, but rather a witch hunt. And so you've got to, you've got to evaluate all of those things and make sure there was no ill intention and that everything was in good faith. And really your next step are basically, they're quite subjective. Right. Because if it's a misunderstanding, how can you bridge the understanding? So most of the time, if they're, if it's a good faith and complaint and I can't corroborate it and it's against an accused, what I might do is put that accused through extra training.
Okay, so there's been a complaint of sexual harassment. We were unable to corroborate it because there were no witnesses. However, I'm not saying that you did this. If you did any next violations or complaints would be an immediate termination. You through additional training, I'm going to have you resign the policy. Again, this is not an admission of guilt. It is making sure that this doesn't happen again.
So that's one way to handle it. I usually will always involve training in some way or another if it fits. And then a resigning of policies is a great way and just letting them know we couldn't corroborate this. We don't know if it's true or not. But if it is, here's what next next steps would look like.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: I love the training aspect of it because throughout my career things have changed and people have changed and things that were said way, way back.
You can't say those things in today's world or things, people look at things differently or.
So I think the training aspect is fantastic because it's not like you said, an admission of guilt, but it's just a way to say, hey, you know, let's, let's look into this stuff and maybe that'll make them think a little bit more like, okay, well maybe I didn't do that, but maybe something I said might have been misconstrued or they might have thought of it in the wrong vein and that was not my way of saying it or that was not my intention. So I love that aspect of the training part. I think that's really great.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is that many, many companies will tell the accused that we're going to put you through training and then it gets pushed and pushed and pushed because they didn't do the research yet on who can train and when can. And I would just say do something very quickly because if something else does occur and you haven't, you don't have any good faith efforts to show, then it looks like neglect. Right? It looks like negligence. Showing that you went through good faith efforts is your best defense in court. So let's say there was a sexual harassment that occurred, you could not corroborate it, but then it happens again in a month and you said you were going to do training and you didn't, you know, so that's why a resigning of policies is a very quick fix and the training should be done in within a week or two.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: You talked earlier about people talk. I mean, people are going to talk at the coffee machine, at the water cooler, in the lunchroom. People are going to talk. So you're absolutely right. The longer that it goes, people are going to find out about it or they're going to ask questions and then that's when rumors start happening. And then if something was to happen again, then, then people will be like, okay, well they didn't do any about it before, now it's four weeks later, it's happened again. So you're absolutely right on that one. It's trying to nip it in a bud as soon as you can and trying to find there is no wrongdoing, but at least trying to find some sort of way to, to, to, to make good and, and make everybody feel a little bit more comfortable again. We got to go there every day. We don't want anybody worrying about waking up in the morning and going, oh my God, I got to go to that place again tomorrow. Like, I really feel like it's super important to have a safe work environment.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. We want to create the psychological safety, and also we want to protect the organization. Right. And so, again, you know, if something ended up in court and you could and you looked negligent, that wouldn't be good. Yep.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: So how do workplace investigations impact company culture? I know we talked about culture a little bit there, but how does it impact it?
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it shows that we're. We're interested in being fair and consistent.
It shows that we care for our people, that we want to find truth. You know, I think that, you know, quite often you can't always share the details of a case with the employees. You can't always share the outcome. But also, quite often it's obvious they know that someone's been fired when they know they were accused and they're no longer here. Right. So people often are going to come to whether. Whether right or not, they're going to come to their own assumptions. And so the more transparent that you can be, the better. The more they see you always seeking truth, the better. Right. Because quite, quite often in employee surveys, transparency is the thing that is really the lowest, that breaks trust with. With leadership. So it's hard to be transparent. But whatever you can share, you know, share whatever you can use in, in future examples, do that. If you have a culture playbook. This is, this is what good looks like, and this is what bad looks like, and this is what we won't tolerate and things like that. So, you know, again, I like to say we're guardians of our culture and we have to guard the truth. We have to care for our people. We have to show that that consistency is important to us and that we treat everyone the same.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: I love that. Guardians of our culture. That just says it exactly how it should be. And I love that you talked about the fact that we can't always share the outcome. And I think that leaders have to understand a little bit more that people are getting a little bit more understanding as far as what goes on in a company, and they understand that there's certain things that you can say and certain things that you can't. They get it. So if you, if you're gonna hold back, if you're gonna keep your door closed and if you're not gonna tell anybody and you're gonna, like we talked about earlier, if you're gonna let it go for a long period of time and not figure anything out or just sweep it under the Rug, people are gonna talk about that and people are gonna remember that. And it just creates such a, such a culture of distrust and the organization. And we don't want that.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's really what it boils down to, is trust. And you just can't build culture without the element of trust.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: You certainly can't. So as we wrap up here today, Sarah, what is one key takeaway? You'd like the listeners to walk away from this conversation.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Honestly, what we just said is that, you know, you have to guard the culture. And then one thing I also want to say is when you're, when you're coming to recommendations for how to deal with something that was corroborated, it's really important to think through the filters of, you know, what would this look like if we just did a write up and nothing else? What would this look like in a court of law? How would the other employees perceive it if we did, you know, write up plus training, if we terminated, would I want this going in the newspaper, how we handled it? It's really important to think about all the different filters of how would this look to the public in court, to our employees, because perception is important and then precedent. What have we done in the past and what do we want to do going forward? So I think how you wrap up the case and how quickly you wrap up the case is very important because let's say we're going to walk away with discipline or termination. We can't let that sit and fester either. Right? We've got to act on it. It so often it's like, oh, let's wait for this person who should be present because they're sick and let's wait for this person. And it's like, no, you just need to make the plan to get it done because time really is of the essence. So I would say how you close the case is another really important takeaway. But first and foremost is that if you're trying to build culture, if you want to maintain a good culture, how you handle investigations, from complaint all the way to how you wrap it up, is so very important. And you can do it with kindness and neutrality along the way.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Way. A good example of what you just said, which is something that I do when I go out to have a meal in a restaurant, is if something happens, whether the food gets sent to us cold or whatever, something goes wrong, you know, you want to tell the superior what's, what's happened, but in your mind, you also want to see how they're going to react to it. And not that you're looking for for a freebie or anything like that, but you just want to see do they actually really care? People in organization want to see how the organization cares about them. People want to see if you actually really care that I've taken the time to come to your establishment and have a meal. So it's the same thing. And you want to see what they're going to do. And I think we have to remember that. Yeah.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Good point. In other words, HR is customer service.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: Is it? Certainly, yes.
Sarah, I want to take the time to thank you for coming on today. First of all, I want to say, like share and follow this episode. Sarah, I just admire your commitment to working together, your curiosity in people, your and your ability to empower people around you. I want to take the time to thank you for again for coming on today and for showing us all what it means to thrive.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Thank you very much and thanks for having me and leading a great discussion.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: You're welcome. Welcome. On behalf of myself and Sarah, I'd like to thank you all for listening today. And until next time, be safe. And remember everyone, that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything you.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Have been listening to. Let's Be Diverse with Andrew Stout to stay up to date with future content. Hit Subscribe.
