New York Labor and Employment Law Report : New York Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Bond Schoeneck & King Law Firm : NY Labor Relations, Employee Benefits

Too often employers take for granted that their anti-harassment policies are sufficient to prevent and remedy inappropriate workplace conduct, as well as mitigate legal liability. But failure to regularly update those policies can create significant (and expensive) problems down the road. To limit the risk presented by stale and outdated anti-harassment policies, employers should periodically review them to ensure that they are legally compliant and accurate. When conducting that review, consider in particular three important questions:

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In our August 18, 2009 blog, we provided best practice recommendations for conducting workplace investigations generally. This post follows up on the earlier post by focusing in greater detail on best practices for questioning the employee accused of misconduct.

An internal investigation of employee misconduct serves multiple functions. It fosters compliance with corporate policies by ensuring that alleged instances of misconduct are not ignored. It promotes fairness by ensuring that any disciplinary action is based on fact rather than rumor. And it enhances morale by communicating to the workforce that the employer enforces its policies but takes disciplinary action only after giving the accused employee an opportunity to be heard. Proper questioning of the accused employee is essential to achieving all these purposes. Some best practice suggestions for conducting that questioning are provided below.
 

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Few human resource professionals look forward to workplace discrimination investigations. They can be contentious and uncomfortable, and often reveal the uglier side of individuals and, sometimes, even entire segments of the company.  Of course, allegations of workplace discrimination cannot be ignored. In fact, a proper and complete investigation can be critical to an employer’s defense of such claims, and a poor or incomplete investigation can be almost as harmful as no investigation.  Below are a few tips for conducting good investigations.

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