What do you do to create an investigative report template? I would start with the Association of Workplace Investigators report templates. You do have to be a member to get them, but AWI’s templates are exceptional. At the end of the day, every report is somewhat unique, but very few need substantial deviations from the skeleton that you’ll end up using. My investigative report has my logo, it has a little disclaimer, it has a table of contents. It talks about how and when I became involved, the documents that I reviewed, and the conclusions that I made. There is also an executive summary that is a more elaborate explanation of my initial summary.
I rarely include investigative notes in my reports anymore. It doesn’t seem like people are particularly interested in reading those. I know I don’t like writing them, and nobody wants to pay for them to be written. So I don’t author those unless there is definitely going to be legal action subsequent to the investigation. In that case, I will type up my interview notes. But other than that, the skeleton of my investigation is the same format I’ve been using for 17 years now. And it all kind of started with something that looks very close to what AWI has in its library.
