2020
- Holidays...To Pay or Not to Pay, What is Required
- EEOC Update on COVID-19
- Protection of Employee Health Information
- Civil Rights Win for LGBTQ Employees
- OSHA Recordkeeping Requirements During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- The Line Between At-Will Termination and Wrongful Termination
- Regulating Firearms in the Workplace
- Social Media Use in Hiring
2019
2018
- What Not to Wear
- Vicarious Liability for Unlawful Harrassment
- Employee Surveillance & Union Formation
- A Lesson in Retaliation
- Employers May Sometimes Judge a Book By Its Cover
- Mind Your P’s and Q’s . . . and BFOQs
- Severance Agreements
- U.S. Department of Labor "Paid" Program
- Revisiting Records Retention
- Calculating the Regular Rate
- Independent Contractor or Employee?
2017
- Sexual Orientation Discrimination
- DRI Membership: It’s Personal
- Is Extended Leave a Reasonable Accommodation?
- Parental Leave
- Pay Disparity
- Religious accomodation in the workplace
- Equal pay and prior salary information
- I quit! How to avoid constructive discharge
- You Can't Shred Email
- Navigating Unemployment Claims
- Considering Criminal History in Pre-Employment Decisions
- Defamation Claims from Former Employees
- Mixed Motive Causation
2016
- Requesting Accomodation: Kowitz v. Trinity Health
- Antitrust Law in Human Resources
- An Evolving Standard: Joint-Employment
- What Does At-Will Employment Mean for Employers?
- Let's Talk About Wages
- THE FLSA: CHANGES ARE COMING
- Follow Up: Obesity and the ADA
- The Importance of Social Media Policies
- Is Obesity a Qualifying Disability under the ADA?
- Retaliation on the Rise: The EEOC Responds
- What Motivates You?
2015
- "But I thought ...
- Who’s expecting? And what is he expecting?
- Are You Still Doing Annual Performance Reviews?
- Who is Your Employee?
- The unpaid intern trap Part II
- “We’ve been the victim of a cyber-attack”
- So, a Hasidic Jew, a nun in a habit and a woman wearing a headscarf walk into your office?
- The unpaid intern trap
- Pregnancy in the workplace
- Let's talk about honesty.
- "Did You Know" Series - Part I
- Conducting an Internal Investigation
- What HR can look forward to in 2015!
2014
- The chokehold of workplace technology
- Does your company have trade secrets?
- North Dakota Construction Law Compendium for 2014
- Does the North Dakota baby boom affect you?
- Ban the Box? Why?
- The end of the world as we know it
- Everybody has an opinion
- Changes, Changes, Changes!
- Nick Grant presents at North Dakota Safety Council's 41st Annual Safety and Health Conference
- Email impairment: A potentially harmful condition
- Are Employers Required to Give Stressed-Out Employees Time Off?
2013
- Can you obtain a credit report when investigating employee wrongdoing?
- Can’t we just sidestep the ACA?
- Should Your Employees Telecommute? Part III
- Should Your Employees Telecommute? Part II
- Should Your Employees Telecommute?
- Proper Investigation of Employee Misconduct
- Battles in the Wellness War
- Rules are rules! Aren’t they?
- What's going on in Bismarck
- A glimpse ahead
2012
- Obesity as a disability under the ADA – reweighing the issue
- What’s next for your business under the Affordable Care Act?
- Criminal Background Checks
- Becoming a lawyer is a process, not an event [Section 5 of 5]
- Congress Says Yes To North Slope Energy Jobs Bill
- Test Your Knowledge of Social Media Policies and Employee Discipline
- Becoming a lawyer is a process, not an event [Section 4 of 5]
- What Every Employer Needs to Know About the NLRA
- Will the 2012 Elections Make A Difference
2011
- Where There's Smoke...
- Dress Code Etiquette: Is Casual Friday Becoming Freaky Friday
- The Next Disaster May Be Yours
- Hostile Work Environment Claims
- North Dakota Employment Law Links
- There's An App For That
- Am I a “Business Associate”? Why Should I Care?
- Do You Recognize a Cat's Paw When You See One?
- Cell Phones Can Cost a Lot, Part II
- Becoming a lawyer is a process, not an event [Section 3 of 5]
- Cell Phones Can Cost a Lot, Part I
- The Economy - What HR Professionals Need To Know
- Becoming a lawyer is a process, not an event [Section 2 of 5]
- Three New Challenges For HR Professionals
2010
May 01, 2013
This article poses questions about your investigatory practices. It is not a test. I’ll provided the answers too.
Q. What do you do when you receive an allegation of employee misconduct?
A. Most HR Professionals will answer, “Well, I investigate it.”
Q. How do you conduct your investigations of alleged misconduct?
A. Again, most HR Professionals will answer, “I find out who the witnesses to the alleged misconduct are. I ask them to give me a statement about what they know. I tell them that their statements to me are confidential. I tell them not to discuss the matter with anyone else.”
Q. What’s wrong with the last answer?
A. In Banner Health Systems, 358 N.L.R.B. No. 93 (2012) the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that, even though you may be acting with good intentions, instructing a witness not to discuss the matter is a violation of law. The National Labor Relations Act’s Section 7 right to engage in “concerted activity” outweighs your care for the integrity of your investigation. In this case, concerted activity is the employee’s right to discuss your investigation with co-workers. The fact that your injunction to keep matters private is founded in good sense – maintaining the fairness of the investigatory process, or protecting the employee from retaliation or pressure – the right to speak to co-workers trumps this “generalized concern.” There is a violation even if there is no threat of punishment if the coworker chooses to ignore the instruction and discusses the investigation.
Q. Your business is not unionized. Does this rule apply to you?
A. You guessed it. The answer is, “Yes.”
Q. Might employer instructions create a risk of discrimination implicating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
A. The answer is “Yes but with a possible difference.” CCH Employment Law Daily reports that Justine Lisser, EEOC Senior Attorney-Advisor and spokesperson, has said: “Because the anti-retaliation provisions of our EEO statutes establish that complaining to anyone (management, coworkers, the media) about employment discrimination is protected activity, an employer policy that disciplines people for discussing employment discrimination allegations that are part of a workplace investigation is likely to violate EEO laws.” Absent from Ms. Lisser’s description of a violation is a mere “suggestion” to maintain silence about an investigation. Suggestions that do not cloak a threat are “less likely to be found to have violated EEO laws.”
What Can HR Professionals Do?
Be careful. Do not take comfort in the semantic differentiation between a direction and a request. It is the employee’s view of your statement, surrounded by objective facts of where, when and how it was delivered, not your intention in making it, that will define whether yours is a request or a direction that your employee remain silent.
Further, the NLRB has hinted that, even if you truly only suggest that the employee not talk to anyone, a policy that permits discipline for violating investigatory confidentiality will convert your suggestion to a threat. Also, the more routinely HR gives the instruction (or even request) not to discuss, the more likely it is to violate the right of speech and association.
Before any suggestion or directive about silence can be imposed, according to the NLRB, HR must affirmatively determine whether the "witnesses needed protection, evidence was in danger of being destroyed, testimony was in danger of being fabricated, or there was a need to prevent a cover up." Take the following steps to bring your company into compliance with this new wrinkle.
Step One: Review your investigatory policies and procedures.
Step Two: Remove any reference to making requests to maintain confidentiality.
Step Three: Remove any discipline for breaching the confidentiality of an investigation
Step Four: Add a requirement to determine whether witnesses discussing the investigation will likely taint it. Clearly, the opportunity for taint, cover up, fabrication of evidence, pressure, retaliation or worse will vary from witness-to-witness and from investigation-to-investigation.
Step Five: Be sure to have some objective reason to fear a loss of a fair and impartial investigation in each investigatory case before you request or instruct an employee to remain silent.
Step Six: Document your findings.
Our interest in serving you
My law firm’s goal is to give understandable information and to foster discussion about real-life issues facing human resource professionals. If we are not achieving that goal or if you would like us to address other employment law issues, please email me at pebeltoft@eskgb.com We promise to take your comments and ideas to heart.
Disclaimers
(Otherwise known as “the fine print”
I make a serious effort to be accurate in my writings. These articles are not exhaustive treatises, though, so do not consider them complete or authoritative. Providing this information to you does not create an attorney-client relationship with my firm or me. Do not act upon the contents of this or of any article on our homepage or consider it a replacement for professional advice.
Reprinted with permission from an article submitted for publication in the May, 2013 Southwest Area Human Resource Association newsletter.
Proper Investigation of Employee Misconduct
By: Paul EbeltoftThis article poses questions about your investigatory practices. It is not a test. I’ll provided the answers too.
Q. What do you do when you receive an allegation of employee misconduct?
A. Most HR Professionals will answer, “Well, I investigate it.”
Q. How do you conduct your investigations of alleged misconduct?
A. Again, most HR Professionals will answer, “I find out who the witnesses to the alleged misconduct are. I ask them to give me a statement about what they know. I tell them that their statements to me are confidential. I tell them not to discuss the matter with anyone else.”
Q. What’s wrong with the last answer?
A. In Banner Health Systems, 358 N.L.R.B. No. 93 (2012) the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that, even though you may be acting with good intentions, instructing a witness not to discuss the matter is a violation of law. The National Labor Relations Act’s Section 7 right to engage in “concerted activity” outweighs your care for the integrity of your investigation. In this case, concerted activity is the employee’s right to discuss your investigation with co-workers. The fact that your injunction to keep matters private is founded in good sense – maintaining the fairness of the investigatory process, or protecting the employee from retaliation or pressure – the right to speak to co-workers trumps this “generalized concern.” There is a violation even if there is no threat of punishment if the coworker chooses to ignore the instruction and discusses the investigation.
Q. Your business is not unionized. Does this rule apply to you?
A. You guessed it. The answer is, “Yes.”
Q. Might employer instructions create a risk of discrimination implicating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
A. The answer is “Yes but with a possible difference.” CCH Employment Law Daily reports that Justine Lisser, EEOC Senior Attorney-Advisor and spokesperson, has said: “Because the anti-retaliation provisions of our EEO statutes establish that complaining to anyone (management, coworkers, the media) about employment discrimination is protected activity, an employer policy that disciplines people for discussing employment discrimination allegations that are part of a workplace investigation is likely to violate EEO laws.” Absent from Ms. Lisser’s description of a violation is a mere “suggestion” to maintain silence about an investigation. Suggestions that do not cloak a threat are “less likely to be found to have violated EEO laws.”
What Can HR Professionals Do?
Be careful. Do not take comfort in the semantic differentiation between a direction and a request. It is the employee’s view of your statement, surrounded by objective facts of where, when and how it was delivered, not your intention in making it, that will define whether yours is a request or a direction that your employee remain silent.
Further, the NLRB has hinted that, even if you truly only suggest that the employee not talk to anyone, a policy that permits discipline for violating investigatory confidentiality will convert your suggestion to a threat. Also, the more routinely HR gives the instruction (or even request) not to discuss, the more likely it is to violate the right of speech and association.
Before any suggestion or directive about silence can be imposed, according to the NLRB, HR must affirmatively determine whether the "witnesses needed protection, evidence was in danger of being destroyed, testimony was in danger of being fabricated, or there was a need to prevent a cover up." Take the following steps to bring your company into compliance with this new wrinkle.
Step One: Review your investigatory policies and procedures.
Step Two: Remove any reference to making requests to maintain confidentiality.
Step Three: Remove any discipline for breaching the confidentiality of an investigation
Step Four: Add a requirement to determine whether witnesses discussing the investigation will likely taint it. Clearly, the opportunity for taint, cover up, fabrication of evidence, pressure, retaliation or worse will vary from witness-to-witness and from investigation-to-investigation.
Step Five: Be sure to have some objective reason to fear a loss of a fair and impartial investigation in each investigatory case before you request or instruct an employee to remain silent.
Step Six: Document your findings.
Our interest in serving you
My law firm’s goal is to give understandable information and to foster discussion about real-life issues facing human resource professionals. If we are not achieving that goal or if you would like us to address other employment law issues, please email me at pebeltoft@eskgb.com We promise to take your comments and ideas to heart.
Disclaimers
(Otherwise known as “the fine print”
I make a serious effort to be accurate in my writings. These articles are not exhaustive treatises, though, so do not consider them complete or authoritative. Providing this information to you does not create an attorney-client relationship with my firm or me. Do not act upon the contents of this or of any article on our homepage or consider it a replacement for professional advice.
Reprinted with permission from an article submitted for publication in the May, 2013 Southwest Area Human Resource Association newsletter.