Fair to everyone in it
Everyone interviewed hears how the process works. The respondent hears the allegations in enough detail to answer them, and gets the chance to. A process that is fair to the respondent is the one that survives the grievance.
— The practice / Workplace investigations
Find out what actually happened.
Workplace investigations for Ontario employers — harassment complaints, misconduct allegations, and the complaints nobody inside the organization can investigate objectively. Impartial, documented, and built to be read back at arbitration.
When an outside investigator is the right call
Ontario employers have to investigate harassment complaints, and most can do it themselves. These are the times they shouldn’t.
- The complaint is about someone senior, and everyone who could investigate it reports to them.
- HR is a witness, or too close to the people involved to be seen as neutral.
- It’s the third complaint about the same person, and the first two went nowhere.
- Whatever we find will be grieved, and the investigation is the first thing the union will attack.
- An inspector has ordered us to have it investigated by someone impartial.
- We have a harassment complaint, a duty to investigate it, and nobody who has done one before.
How an investigation works
Four stages, agreed up front. You always know which one it is in, and nothing is added to it without your sign‑off.
01
A first call
Tell me what has been alleged, by role rather than by name. I’ll tell you whether an outside investigation is the right tool, and whether I am the right person for it.
02
Terms of reference
The allegations, the scope, the timeline, who receives the report, and the price — in writing, before anyone is interviewed.
03
Interviews and evidence
The complainant, the respondent and the witnesses, with union representation where the collective agreement provides for it. Documents and messages gathered as the work happens.
04
The report
A finding on every allegation, with the reasons, delivered to the person the terms of reference name. What happens next is your decision.
Built to be read back
An investigation is worth exactly what it is worth when somebody else reads it — an arbitrator, an inspector, or the union. Every part of the work is done for that reader.
Credibility, reasoned
When accounts conflict, the report says which one was preferred and why: consistency, corroboration, detail, and what is plausible in the circumstances. Never simply who seemed more believable.
A record you can produce
Interview notes, statements and documents kept as one file from the first day. If the matter goes further, the evidence is already in order.
A finding on every allegation
Each allegation is decided on a balance of probabilities. Nothing is left open for somebody else to fill in later.
How it stays impartial
The first question the other side asks is whether the investigator was independent. So the answer is settled before the first interview, not argued afterwards.
I find the facts; you decide what to do about them. The report says what happened and how I reached that conclusion, not what discipline should follow. And I don’t investigate a matter I am already advising you on.
More than twenty years in Labour Relations, across healthcare and the private sector, and on both sides of the table: a union steward, organizer and representative first, now advising employers. I know what a union looks for in an investigation report, because I used to be the one reading them.
What this isn’t
It isn’t a way to reach a decision that has already been made. If the outcome is settled before the first interview, an investigation only makes it harder to defend.
And I am not a lawyer, so a report is not legal advice. When what you do with the findings needs counsel — a termination, a settlement, a court date — I will tell you that you have reached that point.
Tell me what’s been alleged
A first conversation needs no names. Describe the allegation and the people involved by role, and I’ll tell you whether an outside investigation is the right call.
Please keep names and details out of the contact form — that is what the first call is for. You’ll hear back the same day.