Organisations are increasingly outsourcing workplace investigations to external and impartial investigators to ensure workplace investigation processes are impartial and robust.
Our specialist team offers organisations the opportunity to use legal experts to undertake workplace investigations, enabling them to demonstrate impartiality at an early stage and that the matter under investigation is being taken extremely seriously.
It is a welcome development, given it is becoming increasingly challenging in some circumstances for organisations to carry out investigations themselves. This is a result of the:
- greater awareness of and increased focus on discrimination issues;
- complexity of legal issues involved;
- amount of skilled resource required to deliver the investigation efficiently; and
- increased risk of public and media scrutiny, particularly “trial by social media”.
The team’s experts have the legal knowledge, skills, and expertise to investigate on an organisation’s behalf and take a flexible, collaborative, and, importantly, practical approach.
There is no risk of the process becoming too ‘legal’, and organisations outsourcing investigations benefit from essential resource not being over-stretched.
How we can help
- Expert Support at all Stages: We will conduct the investigation process from start to finish, interviewing witnesses, producing minutes, writing our report and making recommendations. If requested, we can also take on a more administrative role in facilitating the process. We can be flexible and can conduct meetings remotely where this is appropriate.
- Template Documents: We can provide template documents for use throughout the workplace investigation process or work to the templates that you provide.
- Legal Advice: If you do not require an external investigator, our expert team can provide you with advice and assistance on conducting an investigation process internally, ensuring compliance in a commercially driven way.
- Expert Witness: Where organisations are conducting internal workplace investigations, we can provide expert evidence or opinions on complex legal issues to be used as part of the process.