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Workplace Investigations - Witnesses Interviews
- How to prepare and what to do before an interview.
- Organizing your interview so you can ask good questions.
- Strategies for the reluctant witness.
- The angry "hothead". Dangerous or something else?
- What about tape-recording: Is it a good idea?
- Body language: Can you tell if a witness is giving false or skewed testimony? Developing behavioral baselines.
- Considering cultural diversity.
- The note taker and their role.
- Taking notes and pacing the interview.
- Starting and ending your interview.
- Educating all parties about retaliation
- What about witnesses that are not your employee? Tips for customer complaints and joint employment interviews.
- When are employees entitled to representation during an investigation?
Overview of the webinar
Employers do investigations every day. These fact findings generally entail conversations with employees so as to gather observations and determine facts.
In theory, investigatory interviewing sounds easy but in reality, it's often not.
One common challenge is struggling to gather information during witness interviews. In investigations, it's crucial that interviews are structured to capture and gather all available accurate information, notwithstanding employee emotions that are often running high.
Witness interviews are often especially challenging because many employees for a variety of reasons are reluctant to be involved and can be less than forthcoming. Friends of employees and those accused of an offense are often downright angry and vengeful. Investigations by their very nature tend to leave at the least some employee relations damage amongst employees.
Some investigators, unable to gather information, turn to body language to make determinations of credibility. Not only can that approach be fraught with indefensible and challengeable findings, TV shows while entertaining, are not good training for interpreting body language.
Who should attend?
- Employee Relations
- Human Resources- Generalists, Business Partners, Managers, Directors, VPs
- Safety
- Management
- Internal Investigations
- Organizational Development
- Supervisors
- Branch Managers
- Small business owners
- Plant Managers
Why should you attend?
The assigned investigator in many workplaces is often an already overburdened employee to whom another time-consuming project is now assigned, often to their dismay. This investigator may have had little to no training in how to perform investigations. Or they may have had training in the process of investigatory mechanics but never actually performed an investigation. This webinar will help investigators move through what often seems an investigatory maze. This webinar will cover ways to assess credibility of witnesses combined with the facts as presented. It's also critical that an employer learn how to take steps to avoid retaliatory behavior towards individuals involved in investigations or making complaints. Additionally, there are steps an employer can take to minimize the inevitable gossip and side taking that disrupts business.
Faculty - Ms.Teri Morning
Teri Morning, MBA, MS, President of Hindsight HR specializes in solving company “people problems” and providing big company style HR service to small businesses. Teri has enjoyed consulting with employers throughout the country, solving problems and training managers and employees for over 20 years, meeting and working with employees from all types of businesses. Her years of experience in human resources and training in a variety of fields, including retail, distribution, architectural, engineering, consulting, manufacturing (union), public sector, and both profit and non-profit companies allow Teri to understand employers (and) employees particular point of view. Teri also provides software solutions for incident management, employee relations investigations, and safety purposes (Incident Tracker.)
In addition to an MBA, Teri has a Master’s degree in human resource development with a specialization in conflict management. Teri was certified by the state of Indiana in mediation skills and is currently certified in project management, IT management and qualified as a Myers Briggs practitioner. Teri has held the PHR, SPHR, SPHR-CA, and SHRM-SCP certifications.