Workplace Investigations
Why Conduct a Workplace Investigation?
Employers conduct workplace investigations when an employee, contractor, intern, or other individual makes a complaint, particularly if there are allegations of illegal harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.
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Investigations are an important step for employers to comply with their legal obligation to prevent/address workplace discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.
What Are the Benefits of a Workplace Investigation?
Conducting a workplace investigation can provide numerous benefits: ​
Investigations help employers understand the facts underlying a workplace dispute, determine whether employment action is warranted, and identify possible resolutions to more effectively resolve conflict and allow employees to work more effectively together.
Investigations allow employers to assess their legal risk and evaluate whether settlement of legal claims is appropriate.
Why is a Quality Investigation Important?
A well-done investigation can help to resolve workplace conflict and reduce the risk of legal liability.
A poorly-done investigation, however, can undermine employee confidence, exacerbate workplace conflict, and expose the employer to legal liability.
Selecting the right investigator is crucial. A good investigator is independent, trained, and experienced. Dowling Law investigators apply the necessary skill to conduct a thorough investigation resulting in a well-founded, thoughtful analysis of the issues.
Why Use an Outside Investigator?
A thorough, independent investigation shows the employer took an employee’s complaint seriously.
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Managers and supervisors are frequently not trained to conduct sophisticated workplace investigations. Given demanding schedules, in-house Human Resources professionals may not have the capacity to be able to conduct a prompt investigation.
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Additionally, using employees can frequently raise questions about bias that may influence the outcome of an investigation.
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Using an outside investigator provides credibility to an investigation and demonstrates an employer's commitment to a fair process.
How Can Dowling Law Help?
Dowling Law provides prompt, thorough, and confidential investigations of a variety of workplace allegations, including:
Workplace discrimination, harassment, or retaliation complaints under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, New York Human Rights Law, Americans with Disabilities Act, and other federal and state laws;
Violations of workplace policies, procedures, or Codes of Conduct; and
other workplace misconduct.
Why Use a Dowling Law Investigator?
As experienced attorneys and trained investigators, we know how to question individuals to get the information we need to help understand tough employee relations challenges. We are trained investigators and proud members of The Association of Workplace Investigators.
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Our investigators focus on making sound factual determinations based on the evidence. We have conducted investigations at all levels of an organization, including President or Executive Director and other high level managers, supervisors, and rank and file employees.
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We take our role as investigators seriously, we respect the parties, and we work to get our analysis right.