Treaty Oak Employers’ Law Blog

Sometimes people that I’m interviewing ask who is paying me. I guess that’s fair, they seem sometimes concerned that because the employer is paying me as an independent third-party investigator, that I am going to be biased in favor of the employer. And I suppose superficially, that makes sense, but

It’s easy if someone doesn’t want to participate in an interview with you. You need to make sure that this is true, but generally it is. When someone doesn’t want to talk to me, doesn’t want to be interviewed, I just say, “Your employer expects you to participate and are

What do you do if you don’t know if you can investigate something? If you ultimately determine that you shouldn’t investigate something, you shouldn’t. The consequences are huge for you and the client. If you’re too busy, something like that, just walk away and say, “I’m too busy. I’m so

What do you do if somebody reports to you that their evidence of discrimination is through a series of microaggressions? At the time of filming this, this most often comes up with folks that have less than ten years of experience in the workforce. Additionally, people who tend to work

What do you do if you don’t find out what happened to the people involved in an investigation when you’re done? Congratulations, you have now been initiated to one of the most frustrating parts of being a workplace investigator, especially as a third-party investigator. Even when I had repeat clients,

What do you do if you don’t know what to charge for an investigation? There’s a couple of issues here. First of all, the attorney code of ethics in your state will have something to say about what to charge, if you are not an expert in the thing that

What do you do when someone tells you they will not disclose the name of their source? Generally, the first thing I say is, “Why don’t you want to disclose that information to me?” Sometimes the answer is because that person is afraid of retaliation for themselves or for that

What do I do to define the scope of an investigation? Sometimes my clients really do need me to do the scope defining and that’s good and great and fine. And sometimes clients need to hear that there might not be investigative value in some of the things that are

How do we define the thing we’re trying to investigate? A reporting party may come to you and say, “I’m being harassed” or “I’m being discriminated against” or “I’m being treated poorly,” or they may use less magic words and say things like “I’m getting pushed around.” And ultimately, it’s

What do you do to collect evidence in an investigation? You just ask for it mostly. So, at the beginning, that’s typically the biggest piece of information gathering when you meet your client contact and they start prepping you up to go off to do your investigation. You’re going to