Treaty Oak Employers’ Law Blog

What do you do if your investigation gets public attention or the issue shows up in the media? You need to acknowledge that most investigators do not also make good PR reps. Your job is to be accountable to your client to conduct a reasonable workplace investigation that will stand

What should I do if I need to investigate or do some research on the people I’m interviewing? There’s a lot to that. So if you’re investigating them because you have safety concerns and want to see if they have a police report, that are public records. Maybe if their

What do you do if somebody hands you something, a piece of evidence, during an investigation? It depends on what it is, of course. If they give you a stack of reproducible reports, I’m going to ask if I can have a soft copy of it. “Hey, can you email

What do I do if I have an issue around discrimination or harassment, but I’m a super small employer? In the state of Texas, in particular, you go investigate that because as of September 1st of 2021 employers with even one employee, per state law need to investigate sexual harassment

What do you do if you have a concern about scope creep? Scope creep is dangerous. It’s the concept that you started out investigating this thing, and as the investigation has gone, the scope of the investigation has crept outwards. It can be an issue for a lot of reasons

Okay. What do you do if you are interviewing somebody you genuinely dislike? That can be a natural thing. I’ve interviewed rapists, people who have said mean and nasty things about me or even to me. Those people are not the kind of people I tend to like, but at

What do you do about recording your interviews? I do not, as a practice, record my interviews unless my client tells me that it is their practice to record interviews. Generally speaking, in the pre-pandemic era, a recording meant an audio recording; these days, we would do that with an

What do I do to investigate slut-shaming? So, it’s been my experience that people who are experiencing slut-shaming… First of all, you need to of course get the reporting party to define what they mean by that. But generally, the idea that somebody’s sexual activities are not in align with

What do you do if you suspect someone secretly recording your investigation? First, you should always assume that people are secretly recording your investigation. Every single one that you’ve ever done, you should assume it’s secretly being recorded. I also do this in my initial admonishments where I say, “Hey,