Investigations Best Practices with Meric Bloch

From time to time, an employer will need to investigate—formally or informally—concerns about an employee’s workplace behavior. If your organization has a hotline and other reporting channels to give employees a way to speak up, this is only half of the equation. The other half is thoroughly addressing—and when necessary, fully investigating—allegations once they have been reported.

Investigating and resolving an allegation correctly strengthens and protects your organization. A proper investigation gives management needed information and a factual basis on which to make its decisions. It also reinforces both the fairness of the employee discipline process and your commitment to learning about employee concerns.

The objectives and scope of investigations vary widely, but its overriding purpose is always to find out the relevant facts. Each investigation may be unique and handled differently, following standard techniques can help you investigate in a fair, transparent, and consistent manner.

This webinar with Meric Bloch, Principal at Winter Investigations, discusses the techniques necessary for a successful intake discussion with the employee who makes a complaint about actual or possible misconduct. In this session, viewers will learn about key topics including:
• The role of the employee complaint in a workplace investigation.
• The steps needed to gather additional information from the complainant.
• The listening techniques an investigator needs when interviewing the complainant.
• The additional topics to discuss with the complainant to ensure you have fully understood their concerns.
• The common errors investigators make when trying to learn more about the complaint.

This webinar is episode one of Meric Bloch’s Investigations Best Practices series with Case IQ. Check out the series page to register for the other sessions, too!

Interviews can be one of the toughest tasks for an investigator, especially when you are questioning the employee who's been accused of wrongdoing. You need to make sure they're worth your time, so you want to gather as much useful information as possible, but you also need to avoid biases and coercive interviewing tactics.

In this module, Meric Bloch, Principal at Winter Investigations, will focus on the techniques needed for interviewing the employee under investigation, how to obtain admissions of improper conduct, and what to do when you don’t obtain an admission.

This webinar will cover the following key topics:
• The psychology of employee wrongdoing and how this is rationalized
• How to encourage an employee to admit improper conduct by developing a theme to place the wrongdoing in context
• Techniques to focus on the elements of the policy violation rather than seeking a confession during an interview

After watching this webinar, attendees will be able to:
• Identify the ways an employee rationalizes their misconduct so that they are comfortable with improper conduct
• Understand why empathy and understanding are effective ways to obtain admissions of improper conduct, and that accusatory questions do not achieve the desired results
• Consider what information they need to gather from the interview to prove or disprove the misconduct so that employee interviews are focused and efficient

This webinar is episode two of Meric Bloch’s Investigations Best Practices series with Case IQ. Check out the series page to register for and watch for the other sessions, too!

Investigating a workplace incident or complaint is important to protecting employees and your organization. But if you don't work to prevent retaliation against a reporter, you're allowing another, potentially more damaging, issue to slip by.

In this session, Meric Bloch, Principal at Winter Investigations, explains values, fundamentals, procedural justice, and other standards to ensure that a workplace investigation is conducted ethically. He'll discuss how an investigator can minimize the risks of a retaliation claim, how to assess a retaliation claim, the relevant areas of inquiry to investigate the claim, and identifying perception of retaliation claims.

This webinar covers the following key topics:
• The components of an ethical investigation
• The elements of procedural justice that exist in an ethical investigation
• The duties of an investigator when conducting an ethical investigation
• The entitlements and responsibilities of both the employee under investigation, as well as the employee who made the complaint regarding actual or suspected misconduct

After watching this session, attendees should be able to understand:
• Ethical components of an investigation
• Elements of procedural justice
• Each of an investigator’s duties when conducting a workplace investigation.
• Entitlements and responsibilities of both the employee under investigation, as well as the employee who made the complaint regarding actual or suspected misconduct

This webinar is episode three of Meric Bloch’s Investigations Best Practices series with Case IQ. Check out the series page to watch the other sessions, too!