Investigating a complaint about conduct outside of work?

sally2013

I have had to post this anonymously as my usual id identifies me personally but I am hoping someone on here might have experience of a similar situation.

I am in a very new job and have been asked to contact a member of the public who has complained about an employee who had a row with this person whilst on leave.

The employee and this individual have history. They were neighbours and had a falling out, which resulted in court and the individual was evicted from their home by the Local Authority. The employee was found to be without blame.

So, while the employee was on leave last week, he bumped into this other individual in the street and a row ensued.

As a result, the individual has phoned work and complained. I have been asked by HR to phone this person to find out if the employee has brought the company into disrepute. I am the employee's line manager.

I have yet to speak with this individual as I felt that the employee was entitled a voice first and that potentially, speaking with this individual could add fuel to the fire. The employee returns from holiday on Monday.

I also felt it was something a legal or HR person should be involved in and have been attempting to speak with my manager to discuss this. I couldn't get a meeting scheduled until this coming week. Whilst I have fairly substantial management experience, I have not experienced such a situation before. I was concerned that I may say something that either might not be correct (legally).

Should I speak with the individual? Should I push it back to HR to deal with? Should I say to my manager that I am not comfortable following this order and that a legal and/or HR person should do this? What are people's thoughts?

CKhalvashi

I think from the last paragraph, you need to speak with the individual employee, the MoP, and then your manager, as once you have all the facts, it will be easier to agree a course of action with your manager.

It's a difficult one, but at the same time, I'm very funny about what my staff do outside of work, especially as about 80% of the office have vehicles/clothing (we supply branded hoodies etc, that I know some employees wear outside of work) that identify the company, and therefore could bring the company into disrepute.

Without knowing the full facts, and your company policy (which I'm not asking you to post, for obvious reasons), I'm not able to advise.

CK

Nebulous2

I don't know your industry or policies, but I think you need to speak to the complainant. Several reasons for that:-
1. You need to 'clarify the complaint.' What is the complainant saying happened? What do they want done? We would agree with them in writing what the elements of the complaint were.

2. You may have a formal timescale agreed by company policy for investigating complaints. Ours is tight and we need to plan our dates at the start to make it. Going to the employee first may well require more toing and froing.
3. A delay and going to the employee first makes the complainant think you are not taking the complaint seriously. It could also look to outsiders as though you are colluding with the employee to come up with a story.

Some more thoughts on this, what exactly do they want from you? I think it is far too early to talk about bringing the company into disrepute. The first part of process here is investigating a complaint from a member of the public. That may/ could lead to potential disciplinary action for the employee, but the process should be clarified. Personally I'd be inclined to separate the two, with one person investigating the complaint and if necessary another person investigating the disciplinary.

King_Nothing

What business is it of the company to even entertain this if the employee was on leave, unless they were still wearing a works uniform, but why would you while you're on leave. If that wasn't the case, given the history of the people, odds are he may remember where your employee works and is !!!! stirring because they're a vindictive person, and I doubt many nice people get evicted from their houses so I would take the individuals credibility with a pinch of salt personally anyways.

duchy

The whole thing sounds absolutely ridiculous

When on holiday an employee is not representing the company in any way .... unless they claim to be eg by claiming they would use a work based authority to take action on an individual ...like saying they would get a child taken into care if they had a row with someone and they worked for SS (I'm struggling to think of examples) ....or they use company ID or wear company uniform -all of which sound very unlikely .
This sounds more like a personal dispute and the MoP is trying to make trouble for the employee by involving work.

At this point you are merely investigating a complaint from the public ....odds are you're going to find this has nothing to do with work.
I'd be fact gathering from both the employee and the MoP -in that order- exactly as you would any other complaint and once you have "evidence" proceed. I do find it very odd that you have been briefed to look at it as "bringing the company into dispute" before an investigation has even taken place though.

There's a back story here somewhere you don't know about I suspect.

flashnazia

The fact that you are worried about running the process correctly and are asking for help is a good sign.
Now, can this wait until after Xmas? If not you could potentially ruin someone's Xmas over what could be a vindictive, vexatious allegation.

Whatever you do don't make it formal yet. You don't have enough evidence to do so. Just imagine you are in this person's shoes. How would you want to be treated?
Invite the employee for an informal chat to talk about the complaint and make clear that you know there is a history and you just want to get their side of the story. Don't do anything that could pressurise or stress the employee out.

Be aware that management may have an axe to grind. Could this be a flimsy excuse to get rid of someone perhaps?

geri1965_2

All you have been asked to do is phone the complainant to find out the nature of the complaint. In the nicest possible way, I suggest you just get on with it.

wiogs

"A row ensued". This at the moment means little.

From what you have said I would push it back to HR. Does your company have any sort of official policy on matters like this? Ask HR, that will give them something to do for a while.


Why has the MoP written to your company and what exactly are the allegations? If the MoP had complained that a member of your staff, whilst on duty, had cut them up in a liveried van, or physically or verbally abused them then fair enough you could become involved. (I have had to deal with both)

If HR want more info let them investigate but at this stage, and from the info you have given, I would not speak to either party.

I appreciate you can't give too much away on a public forum.

agrinnall

" I have been asked by HR to phone this person to find out if the employee has brought the company into disrepute."

Do this, and nothing more, try not to get into any discussion on what the original cause of the row was. Report back to HR and take it from there.

LittleVoice

Have you seen the detail of the complaint? I would get all the "evidence" HR have thus far and then contact the MoP to check anything which is not clear. Without using the phrase "bringing the company into disrepute" to them, try to establish how the company is involved.

What employees do in their own time when not wearing work identifiable clothing or setting out to represent the company can still be of interest to the company. As the employee was on holiday but still, presumably, somewhere local, the MoP may have thought they were working (or should have been working) and therefore this could have been in what they thought was "work time"). We don't know - and the OP might be able to find out whether this was the complainant's belief.

ValHaller

LittleVoice wrote: »

Have you seen the detail of the complaint? I would get all the "evidence" HR have thus far and then contact the MoP to check anything which is not clear. Without using the phrase "bringing the company into disrepute" to them, try to establish how the company is involved.

Yes. to be totally fair about this, you have to hear the substance of the complaint - the allegations of what happened - and decide for yourself if this was bringing the company into disrepute. You should not ask the question 'Did X bring the company into disrepute?'

Duchy, above, is right about what is bringing the company into disrepute. The bar should be set quite high. To my mind it is not enough that the MoP knows that the employee works for the company - there has to be some element of representing the company for this to stand up.

The natural presumption has to be that the employee was not representing the employer. The fact that there is previous between these 2 relating to having been neighbours will make the natural presumption that the employee was not representing the employer even harder to overturn.

I think the fact that HR have asked you to deal with this only reflects that they don't really want to run with this. I have never been faced with anything like this at all as a supervisor, but I would start from the position that this complaint is probably out of order and unless the MoP came up with something which was plainly bringing the employer into disrepute, I would be expecting to recommend no further action to HR.