Treaty Oak Employers’ Law Blog

What do you do if someone you need to talk to is on FMLA? https://youtu.be/s_Uk6Pp8Ric You do what your client tells you to do. So, most investigators are not also FMLA experts. I do realize those both fall under employment law, so some of us are, but most people are

What do you do if somebody brings up other workplace complaints during their interview with you about a separate issue? If it’s a very, very unrelated issue, you can ask the person, “Do you understand how to make a report in your investigation appropriately?” Usually, by the time I’ve gotten

To plan my investigation, unless there are logistical issues, we always do the reporting party first and the accused last. Aside from that, sometimes we’ll interview someone just because we need to learn the subject. So, for example, if I needed to know about an accounting practice or how chemicals

What do you do if you have one really outlying interview or one really outlying witness report? For example, maybe you have eight people say, “Bob stole the truck on Tuesday,” and then you had one person say, “The truck was never stolen. Bob doesn’t work here, but Betty stole

What do you do if somebody is not taking your investigation seriously? That’s sort of not on you unless you’re the reason that they’re not taking it seriously. Sometimes I’ll make a joke or … especially a self-deprecating joke about the investigation to kind of build rapport, to sort of

How do you make sure that nobody is reading your notes? I still take handwritten notes during some in-person interviews because the clicking and the screen are deterrents to building rapport. That said, I don’t want people to see what I’m focusing on while writing notes. If you use two

What do you do if your reporting party does not use magic words? For example, they do not say things like “harassment,” “discrimination,” “hostile work environment,” or “disparate treatment”? Sometimes even the employer misunderstands that they do not need to investigate because their reporting party has not used magic words

What do you do if an interviewee doesn’t remember an important fact or event? Many of us don’t realize something is significant until later. You saw the witness, the accident, this detail, and you never knew that your experience would be the vital thing to report to an investigator. And

What do attorney investigators need to do? Attorney investigators need to give Upjohn warnings, at least. Upjohn is akin to corporate Miranda? So Miranda is, “You have the right to remain silent, ……..” Corporate Miranda is usually regarded as Upjohn because of the case that it stems from. Upjohn’s warnings

What do you do if there’s no policy related to the issue that you’re investigating? People get caught up in this and it doesn’t really concern me one way or the other. If a client has hired me to investigate a thing, I’m going to go investigate that thing. Sometimes,