Workplace Investigation: The COST

[00:00:00] So someone files a harassment complaint and you know it has to be investigated and of course like it does, but now you want to know what it's going to cost. So I haven't seen anywhere almost anyone publish these numbers possibly because the rates vary from place to place and because the size of investigation can vary. But I'm going to walk you through some numbers that are going to help you understand what the costs will be to your workplace.

[00:00:28] Hi, I'm Andrea Adams and this is the HR Hub. So talking about the cost of investigation and an investigation has a lot of pieces. And of course it's best to avoid all of them by setting up your systems and processes to avoid you know ever having these problems. But even then sometimes you're going to get one despite your best efforts because to some degree this is a cost of doing business and the cost of having employees. I'll bet it is of course an unpleasant one.

[00:00:57] So the first part of an investigation is the intake and the scoping. This is where the investigator needs to understand the complaint, figure out what the allegations are, and what is going to be in scope. This can be tricky if the allegation is vague. There's the question, does it actually even merit an investigation? A common example of this is someone who's alleging a toxic work environment. Now that can sound like harassment, but is it?

[00:01:28] There's no legislation anywhere that talks about a toxic work environment. Of course, I don't know all of all the legislation in the world. So if you know different, let me know. The investigator may not be able to come to a conclusion about whether or not there is an investigation without actually talking to the complainant first. But before we speak with a complainant, the investigator needs to review whatever documents are available initially.

[00:01:57] It could be emails, screenshots, texts, policies. Particularly, it's important to review an organization's respectful workplace policy or harassment prevention policy. Whatever is initially available has to be reviewed. The next step is to talk to the people involved. We'll start with the complainant, then go to the witnesses and respondents.

[00:02:26] The interview of the complainant and respondent can be quite lengthy. Often, depending on the nature of the allegations, like one and a half hours, and that's just for the first conversation. Witnesses are usually less lengthy, but for each interview, we have to prepare for that to ensure we don't miss anything in the discussion.

[00:02:51] And oftentimes, we'll learn something in a later interview that requires us to circle back to either the complainant or the respondent and ask some more questions. But once the interviews are done, then we move on to the fourth step of the analysis. We need to look at the evidence, make findings of credibility thoughtfully, and make sure that we're applying the right standard in our consideration.

[00:03:17] The final step of an investigation is the report writing in which we bring it all together. This is the longest part of the process. It's really, it's shockingly, like it takes a long time. We have to document what we've learned, the allegations, the evidence we found, and the findings. So those are the five steps. Investigations are far from being the same. I mean, the process, most similarities is the process.

[00:03:48] I would venture to say that there are basic investigations, moderate investigations, and this refers to the complexity, the number of people involved. And then there are some investigations which are incredibly complex, and I can't estimate the cost on those. But we can think about basic or moderate complaints, which I would venture to say is the majority of them.

[00:04:13] So a straightforward complaint is a complaint of usually harassment that's made by one employee against one other employee, and maybe there is a witness or not. Maybe someone shouted out and told someone you're an effing asshole, and everyone thinks you're a pile of garbage in a fit of anger. That could be harassment, but it doesn't involve violence. But there's yelling.

[00:04:39] You know, it's not something we want in our workplace, but it's straightforward. Now, something slightly more complicated might be a span of incidents over a few weeks, hopefully, but more or less they're kind of the same. They're the same in nature, same basic allegations, but now there's more witnesses and more incidents we need to dig into.

[00:05:04] Then there are those investigations that are really complicated, like someone who is alleging verbal abuse and sexual harassment against their boss for a behavior that has spanned the last year and a half or months anyway.

[00:05:25] And in an instance like this, we're looking at understanding multiple incidents, perhaps many witnesses, and more than one type of legislation. Like in this example, we're talking about occupational health and rights, occupational health and safety and human rights, at least in Canada. Then there are these super complex investigations, like a Harvey Weinstein kind of thing.

[00:05:54] In an organization that might look like someone coming forward alleging sexual harassment and then five more people come forward alleging similar things. Those are complex. For the purposes of this episode, which is about helping you understand what the cost of this is going to be, let's take a moderate complaint.

[00:06:17] This is one complainant, one respondent, three to four incidents happening over a few weeks and four witnesses. This is not exotic. There's no sexual harassment. There's it's not criminal and it's fairly well contained. So here's what the breakdown looks like in terms of hours for intake of the complaint and scoping. We're probably talking a couple hours.

[00:06:48] When we want to look at the documentation, so that's the emails and any policies, that's going to take an hour or two. But for the sake of our math here, we're going to talk about an hour. We're going to have to do six interviews. We have to interview the complainant, the respondent and the four witnesses. The respondent and complainant's interviews can each take two and a half hours, including the prep.

[00:07:18] And then each of the witnesses, an hour and a half, including the prep. So that's a total of 11 hours. There may be a second round of interviews to investigate new information that gets uncovered later. So that means I might have to circle back to the complainant or the respondent to understand some new information that came to light in later interviews. Those can take three or four hours and are really common.

[00:07:46] But once gathered all the information, you've done all the interviews, then you have to do your analysis and your credibility assessment. And that can take for a moderate complaint, probably four hours, I would say. And then following that, you're looking at writing a report and report writing like it's time consuming, no question. And that can take around eight hours.

[00:08:16] So when you add up all that, we're looking at 30 hours to properly investigate and for you to demonstrate that you've done your due diligence in ensuring a safe and healthy workplace and meeting the standards of anyone who might want to question your process. Now, a simple investigation, that was a moderate example. A simple investigation can take quite a bit less time.

[00:08:42] The smallest investigation I've ever done took about 16 hours. And I think I can't even begin to estimate what a super complex investigation is going to require because it can be so involved. But the majority will fall probably in the moderate range. So now, the other part you've been wanting to know is like, how much is it going to cost? Like, what is the hourly rate?

[00:09:08] In Alberta, an experienced HR consultant doing investigation type work will typically charge somewhere between 150 and 250 an hour. Depending on the level of experience they have, their workload, you know, if they're highly in demand, then then they're probably going to be charging more. But you're also probably going to be getting a good result from their work.

[00:09:37] Employment lawyers doing the same thing will probably charge $350 an hour and it will go up from there because the lawyers obviously they can be very expensive. Like, this is what I'm familiar with in other jurisdictions. It may be a lot more, could be, I don't know, maybe it'll be somewhat less. But if you know what the going rates are in your area, make a note in the comment section.

[00:10:02] But if we go with my, an average of those rates that I gave you at $200 an hour and a 30 hour investigation is costing you about $6,400. So, for a straight forward investigation performed by an HR consultant, not a lawyer, you should budget between $5,000 and $10,000 for an investigation.

[00:10:29] The most complex ones involving lawyers can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, which, yeah, I hope that is not you. If you think about it, though, the cost to your business is not going to stop there. You're going to have to free up people to participate in the interviews. They're going to be nervous beforehand and shaken maybe after.

[00:10:55] So, for each interview, there's going to be time lost before and after the actual meeting with the investigator. Then there will be an inevitable impact on productivity as upset employees are distracted and others are just gossiping, which we don't want but is going to happen.

[00:11:14] And we tell people when they're involved in one of these investigations directly, not to gossip, not to speak with other people, but people speculate and it's almost inevitable. Then, as the owner of a business, you are going to be spending some of your time meeting with the investigator to set the contract details of the work they're going to do.

[00:11:42] Then you're going to track progress of the investigation. You are the one who probably has to find and provide the documents they need to do their investigation. Another cost is that sometimes you might pay someone to stay home for the duration of the investigation to protect the workplace and your protect your ability to take serious action if the allegation is super serious.

[00:12:11] And so, if you think about putting someone on leave who's making $80,000 and you put them on leave for two weeks, that's $3,000. And it's money that you were planning to spend because you're paying this person anyway. But it's also, so maybe it's not a hit on the dollar bottom line directly, but it is lost productivity and additional expense if you have to hire someone temporarily to backfill or you have to pay overtime.

[00:12:40] Some will try and avoid the investigation, but I don't recommend it because in many jurisdictions now it's required by occupational health and safety and you don't want an order against you. Then if you run a poor investigation and do it internally with unskilled people, you can have someone file a complaint against you.

[00:13:07] Maybe human rights, maybe it's occupational health and safety. And then you're probably looking at lawyers who often charge so much more. So, unfortunately, once you have the complaint, probably the cheapest way to get through it is to do your proper independent investigation. Now, I'm going to briefly touch on avoiding these situations altogether.

[00:13:33] So, the absolute best thing you can do is have a respectful workplace policy and make sure your employees know about it. Next, reinforce the values of respect in the workplace and don't let people get away with minor infractions.

[00:13:53] A joke at someone else's expense or a joke in poor taste, you know, it might seem minor, but allowing these things to happen and then you don't know where to draw the line and they happen more, can open the door to a more significant thing. So, draw the line, draw the line early.

[00:14:16] But recognize that even in your best efforts to create a respectful workplace, you may still run into a situation that requires an investigation. And in those cases, reach out to an HR consultant or a lawyer in your own community to help you. And you can always reach out to me. It doesn't really matter where you are. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or at my email, andrea at thehrhub.ca.

[00:14:45] And so, that's the end of this episode. I've done a few other episodes, quite a few on investigations actually. And here's one on credibility assessments. This is definitely the most popular episode I've ever done. Or here's another one beside me on the basics of investigations. Thanks for watching out there. Have a great week.