Investigating a Complaint in the Workplace
ArLyne Diamond, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized Leadership, Management, Professional Development, and Organizational Development (O-D) consultant specializing in people and processes in the workplace. Multifaceted, Dr. Diamond has extensive experience in a wide range of disciplines (business, education, management, marketing, business ownership, psychology – and some economics and law as well). This enables her to see things from a variety of angles and to cleave to the essence of a problem quickly, offering her clients creative and practical solutions. As the President and Founder of her consulting firm, Diamond Associates, which was established in 1981, Dr. Diamond’s clients range from boards of directors and upper management to support staff in many industries, both public and private. This includes small business and professional practices, corporations, associations, service/charity organizations, and government agencies (including police and fire). She works with individuals, teams, and large groups. Dr. Diamond trains Boards of Directors and teaches several courses to board members and those striving for board appointments.
She is well known for her skill in large and small group process, including workshops in strategic planning, change management, conflict resolution, system streamlining, communication, management of people and projects, as well as a board of directors development, committee, and team training. Her executive consulting/coaching and mentoring of individuals includes helping new CEOs grow into their position and learn how to create and work with executive teams, stakeholders, and others in their organization. Dr. Diamond teaches a wide range of MBA university courses in Business, Organizational Development, Quality, Change Management, Persuasion/Negotiation, Marketing, and Leadership.
Born into a family and culture of service to others, ArLyne has been involved with many associations, service, and charity organizations. A listing is available here. She is currently active in politics, Rotary, and ProMatch, an organization dedicated to helping those out of work, where she offers workshops and a weekly drop-in helping people with finding themselves, resumes, interview skills, and landing the job. A prolific writer, she has published hundreds of articles and four books. (A listing of published articles can best be found by either on her Google+ page or searching on the internet.) In addition, Dr. Diamond publishes a monthly newsletter, “Diamonds to You” and is a guest writer for several newspapers.
- Taught Psychological Testing – Evaluations
- Was a forensic expert – testified in courts approx.. 100 times
- Asked by many C-level executives to conduct investigations of harassment for them – and/or to second opinion someone else’s evaluation
- Taught how to conduct investigations as well as ADR
- One of six published books: Conducting Workplace Investigations: Designated Investigator
This webinar has been approved for 1.00 HR (General) recertification credit hours toward aPHR™, aPHRi™, PHR®, PHRca®, SPHR®, GPHR®, PHRi™, and SPHRi™recertification through HR Certification Institute® (HRCI®). Please make note of the activity ID number on your recertification application form. For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HR Certification Institute website at www.hrci.org.
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In this course, you will first be given examples of sexual harassment and the outcomes based on how the complaint was handled. In one case, for example, ignoring the complaint by management led to the murder (massacre) of many people. In another case, a man falsely accused almost lost his job. This will be followed by a brief summary of the laws pertaining to harassment and discrimination. Some information on biases (there is another course devoted exclusively to Bias) will help you look at your own.
Finally, we will focus on how to conduct a neutral, fair, and comprehensive evaluation. We hope you will come away with a new understanding of the importance of taking a complaint seriously – offering whatever help is necessary – and recognizing that the person being accused has the right to due process: Facing his accuser and knowing the when what and where of the complaint. We all operate from our own biases, and it is important to know what they are so we can get out of our own way in order to provide a neutral and objective evaluation.
Areas Covered
- Introduction with examples of situations handled badly
- Policy
- Types of complaints
- Understanding Harassment 7 Discrimination
- Investigating a Complaint: The Initial Stage
- Starting the Investigation
- Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
- The Report
- Management’s Response
- Summary and Conclusion
Course Level - All levels will benefit from this
Who Should Attend
- Investors
- C-Level Executives
- Managers
- HR
- Staff
- All Employees
Why Should You Attend
If you want to be fair you should want to learn how to conduct neutral and fair investigations. Too, it is critically important that we each examine our own blind-spots and biases. For example, we are all biased to believe the first person complaining. This makes it very easy for someone to deliberately seek to get another person in trouble. Are you – as a manager or an HR professional sure you won’t have your own biases stand in the way of being neutral. Are you the correct person to be doing this type of investigation, or should you turn it over to someone else?
Are you afraid you might over-react to the tears of the complaining person? Are you concerned that you will make the wrong decision and will be sued – and have your company sued as well? What about all the other people in the firm? Have they taken sides? Do you have to manage their concerns as well? For all these, and more – this course will give you lots of aid and information to enable you to do a much better job.
In summary: The importance of taking a complaint seriously – offering whatever help is necessary and recognizing that the person being accused has the right to due process. We all operate from our own biases, and it is important to know what they are so that w can get out of the way of them in order to provide neutral and objective evaluations.
Topic Background
Years ago, when children complained of being sexually abused, they were disbelieved and ignored. When in the eighties professionals realized that many of these allegations were true. Trying to protect children they coined the phrase: “Children Don’t Lie, Or if they do, they don’t lie about this.” Thus all complaints were accepted as true even if the allegation was that the abuse had happened more than ten years prior to the complaint. Fast forward to now. Thanks to some of the people involved in the #Metoo Movement we are now demanding that if a woman (and sometimes a man) complains of having been sexually abused they are automatically believed. It is considered bad form and intrusive to question the complaining person.
When doing evaluations of these allegations in the business world, we are told, over and over again that the complaining woman (and sometimes a man) is promised confidentiality and the alleged perpetrator has no right to face his accused. Investigations if they are conducted at all - are all too often conducted by a biased person who is looking only for evidence to support the complaint and the potential evidence to the contrary is ignored – or else that person is called a liar. Having “second opinioned” many of these poorly conducted investigations, Speaker wrote the book: Conducting Workplace Investigations: Designed Investigator, from that book, comes this webinar.
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$200.00
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