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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
They had a little disclaimer sheet that they would have the person sign that says, I came into HR today, and I reported x y z, but I do not want HR to pursue an investigation. I do not want, this to be taken any further. I just wanted HR to be on notice. And they thought that that was gonna protect them in court. And I was like, there is no defense that says the employee didn't want you to complain.
Leah Stiegler:The only real strong defense is the minute we learned of it, we took prompt and effective remedial action. And so that's what you've gotta come back to.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. You know, you never forget your first, employment investigation that is. I was a wet behind the ears HR rep in a health care setting, and I got a call in the middle of the night to respond to a patient's family's complaint about the nursing staff who were asleep on a unit when they were supposed to be monitoring patients.
Mike Coffey:That was more than thirty years ago, and I'd probably cringe today if I reviewed my notes or read that report. I kinda wish I did have it. But I did manage to conduct the investigation without getting sued, and I got the bug. Employment related investigations are still my favorite. Give me a supervisor who can't keep his hands to himself, and I've got a great day ahead of me.
Mike Coffey:And joining me today to discuss workplace investigations is Leah Stiegler. Leah is a principal in the Richmond, Virginia office of the law firm Woods Rogers, where she focuses her practice on counseling and representing employers in state and federal court. She also provides custom design training for employers and cohost the Woods Rogers video series on YouTube called What's the t in l and e? Welcome to Good Morning HR, Leah.
Leah Stiegler:Thank you, Mike. It's it's been my lifelong dream to be here with you, today. So I'm very excited to tell you about all my my woes, my mistakes during investigations, and all the fun, the fun things I've learned through them.
Mike Coffey:Well, let's just start with your what's your craziest workplace investment? That's the first thing that you say, you know, at a tea pot at a dinner party or something, first thing when they find out what I do, somebody wants to know, okay. So tell me the craziest thing you've seen.
Leah Stiegler:Oh, yeah.
Mike Coffey:What's yours?
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. So as a management side employment lawyer, sometimes I'm actually doing the investigations, and other times, I'm kind of, you know, one step away appointing the investigator who's going in and interviewing it, and I'm kind of monitoring the scope and the issues and all that. But recently, we had one where we represented an apartment complex and the investigation started with the property manager who was claiming that they were being sexually harassed by basically a third party consultant that was coming in to kind of monitor and assess the complex and and give the ownership company an idea of why it wasn't doing so well. Basically, this the the ownership company said, hey. Come on in here.
Leah Stiegler:We want you guys to to give us a rundown of of the good, the bad, and the ugly so that we can improve our profits and all that.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Leah Stiegler:Well, while this was going on, the property manager starts submitting all these really egregious sexual harassment claims against the third party company, including something like, you know, alleging that one of the consultants, made comments to her about, oh, can we rent one of these rooms for an hour? And then making very racially derogatory comments about, you know, the the demographics of the people renting and all that. Well, turns out after we start investigating, the claimant was really there trying to cover up her own misgivings and try to get ahead of it. She was doing everything she could to get the consultants off-site because it turns out in the end of it, she was basically, you know, half of a bunch of the apartments were not rented out and, officially. Right?
Leah Stiegler:But then when you looked into it, they were occupied and their rent checks were going somewhere, not into the central system. So you can presume that maybe the property manager may or may not allegedly have had something to do with, you know, renting out apartment rooms and pocketing for herself the, the rent checks and not putting them in this this the, the system. So that was kind of a wild one. You never get a or you you rarely get the one eighty to happen.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Well and and one of mine is is really similar. It's and and I think a lot of us have seen something like it. It was a, you know, sexual harassment, allegation. In fact, it was a rape allegation.
Mike Coffey:And Oh, wow. The lady had actually filed a police report, and this was a large, very conservative religious organization. And I went in, and the complaint was against the print shop manager and and from a female who is part of the clerical staff reporting to one of the upper echelon people in this very like, again, very conservative religious group. And I start, the investigation. I get her statement, and then I and she gives me the names of other people who would be she thought would be cooperating with witnesses.
Mike Coffey:And so I start talking to them, and they're all like, oh, no. She was, like, chasing him a lot and talking to him. And, by the way, he was also dating this person and he's also we think he was fooling around with this. This guy was a Romeo and he was making his way around the organization, but everybody who saw any of their interactions said she was chasing him. Oh.
Mike Coffey:And so I I finally sit down with him, and and he comes claiming, yeah. This is you know, we we had an affair, blah blah blah, and she's married. And she freaked out when her husband started asking. And, you know, and for some reason, he figured out something had happened one day, and she and he had basically forced her to call the police, for because he believed she was she told him she was assaulted. And and then it went on and on, and he got into the workplace.
Mike Coffey:And this guy was a Romeo, but she ultimately, right there, when, you know, I laid all this out, she rescinded it in writing, her complaint. And then I give my reports to the this organization, and they they I think they fired about half a dozen people.
Leah Stiegler:Oh my God. They were
Mike Coffey:so conservative that, you know, these people who are having extramarital affairs and doing all these other things work just outside their alleyway.
Leah Stiegler:Right.
Mike Coffey:And I felt bad for these poor witnesses who just had told me stuff, you know, had told me, you know, we're trying to do the right thing. But it was it was it was a wackadoodle day. I mean, I got almost all of that done in one day, and, it was, like, all my children or something. It was Right. I was I was watching my grandmother's stories.
Mike Coffey:It was it was something else. Yeah.
Leah Stiegler:You you just can never guess where your investigation is gonna go and what results you're gonna get. And I I would say, like, note you could have the exact same sexual harassment allegation in two different workplace at place places at two different times where an employee is claiming another employee, you know, physically touched them inappropriately or whatnot. But because the characters at play are so different and the nature of the workforce is so different, it's always gonna be a different result. And so something like that, I'm I'm curious how you got her to sign that written statement.
Mike Coffey:You know, she wrote it. She wasn't on board with the way this thing was going. And once she I laid it out and told her what, you know, everybody had said, what he had said, and all her body language. I mean, she was even nodding her head, you know, her you know, she was agreeing and it was everything they teach you about, you know, the neurolinguistics and everything. She was doing it.
Mike Coffey:And so I and so I just said, so why did you make up this story? And she has poured it out there. Wow. And Yeah. Or I said I think I was saying, why did you have to go to why did why did you feel like you had to go to the police?
Mike Coffey:Something like that. And and she just poured it out there, and I just pushed the the the legal pad across the map and said, just write it down and explain it. We'll we'll, you know, we'll work this out.
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. The the other interesting thing about that is you get you know, sometimes you're looking from an investigation standpoint at one individual making one accusation against one other employee. But then when you start to look at look at it, the scope of your investigation just expands and expands and expands. I recently had one where an employee filed a, you know, a conflicts of interest complaint against another person and in the organization, and it just the scope just got bigger and bigger just kinda looking at how far back do we go and what we went down, kinda, you know, different areas where there were tangential issues that involve that. And I was like, you know, by the end of it, I said, wow.
Leah Stiegler:You know, this was something in my head I was originally thinking. This can be, like, a three or four page investigative report. Right? Two or three witnesses. But, no, it ends it ends up being a 20 page
Mike Coffey:report with 30 witnesses. So Well and that's, you know, that's often you're just talk you're talking about all these different witnesses, and I'll often end end it, hey. Is there anything else you think that management ought to know about what's going on? And sometimes you just keep pulling at that sweater, and it just keeps on, you know, unraveling, and there's more and more. And then then you have to go to the client and say, you know, do you wanna pay for this?
Mike Coffey:Do you wanna pay for this? What do you you know, what you know, how much how much time do you wanna spend on this? But, it gets legit. But let's start there. You know, when you know, those kind of open ended questions where people start volunteering, but a lot of us in HR have had that experience where somebody knocks on the door and says, hey.
Mike Coffey:I don't want you to do anything about this, but you should know. And, of course, all they're doing is pulling the pin on the hand grenade and throwing it across the HR desk because now you've got to do something and you're gonna be the bad guy. When does that kind of rumor or I heard this or I said this, when does that become something that somebody needs to investigate?
Leah Stiegler:Oh, that's a great question. Like, when do you have a complaint that needs to happen? Well, I mean, when for to protect the organization, right, anyone who is a management level employee is gonna be deemed the company. And so the the standard is really once the company is on notice that offensive conduct that may be deemed harassment, right, is happening, or once the company knew or should have known, so should have known is in there too, and that's that's an interesting one. The company has an obligation to take prompt and effective legal action.
Leah Stiegler:And so that could generally, it looks like when it comes in the form of a harassment complaint, you know, conducting an investigation, maybe putting someone on administrative leave while you conduct it, taking in full evidence, giving everyone an opportunity to to respond to the allegations and provide their side of the story, and then coming up with a remedial response, which could be anything from training to termination, right, or disciplinary action of some sort. But I I think it's hard because a lot of times, we will I'll have clients who'll say, do I really need to investigate this? And I'm like, is this the stand have we gotten to the standard where we we know something is potentially happening or we should have known? Whether that's a manager seeing offensive conduct happen, somebody reporting it directly to them or to HR, or whether, you know, they hear rumors and gossip about it. I had an interesting one for a firehouse years ago where an I'll
Mike Coffey:admit those are hot messes. I can really imagine.
Leah Stiegler:I I was gonna say if I had a dollar for every time I had a firehouse investigation, I'd probably have $5. Okay? Yeah. So but, yeah, it's a think about the culture of that workplace. Right?
Leah Stiegler:It's intimate. Employees are working twenty four hour shifts. They're they're in sleeping quarters there. They're eating together. They're watching movies, whatever it may be.
Leah Stiegler:And this was a situation where you had a young girl who was a junior firefighter, sixteen years old, hanging out at the firehouse. Yep. That is a thing.
Mike Coffey:For recipe for disaster. Yeah.
Leah Stiegler:Now I'm glad you say that because we thought that was obvious too, but the firehouse did not think that was obvious. When, basically, there were rumors going around that she was having an intimate relationship with one of the 26 year old fire male firefighters. And employees had basically observed them going to the movies together. Someone observed them coming out of the sleeping area to like, the men the the men's sleeping area together. So this young girl, her parents actually filed a lawsuit against the firehouse, a negligence lawsuit.
Leah Stiegler:And when we conducted an investigation, the chief of the the fire station was like, well, yeah. I mean, I had heard rumors and gossip, but that's just hearsay and, you know, I don't deal with gossip. You know? I'm above gossip. And I was like, okay.
Leah Stiegler:That's the should have known standard right there. That is like prima facie. You should have known that something terrible was happening or, you know, potentially happening and should have gotten into it.
Mike Coffey:So, you know, the other thing is I see a lot is the complaint doesn't directly address a legal issue. You know, it's a violation of policy or whatever else or just, you know, something that's creating a really negative workplace culture, but it's not title seven protected or anything like that. And employers kinda just push that stuff off, and then situations grow. And now, you know, and maybe it does turn into a, you know, a title seven issue or some sort of, other discrimination where I'm getting in trouble, you know, employee b is getting in trouble for the same conduct that we've put up with for talk you know, employee a for a long time. And so it doesn't even always have to be strictly a legal violation.
Mike Coffey:Right?
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. Absolutely. And I I think that I think that there's both sides to that. Right? I mean, I think we've you never get a perfect harassment complaint.
Leah Stiegler:I mean, that is so rare. I I bet you'd agree with me that
Mike Coffey:Straight quid pro quo or something.
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. Yeah. And that it's very clear. It's on it's in writing to the HR department saying, here's what happened, who, what, where, when, why, and I'm I feel like I'm being harassed at work. Whatever.
Leah Stiegler:You know? Normally, it does come in a vague statement of some sort. I'm giving an example of, you know, an a manager who disciplines an employee or gives them a bad annual review. The employee goes to HR and says, I just feel like my manager is really targeting me. It feels like a very toxic work culture, and I I'm I'm just feeling really stressed.
Leah Stiegler:I maybe I'm being treated differently, but they're not using any trigger words like harassment, discrimination, retaliation. And, you know, in one sense, you might say as an empathetic HR professional, well, let's just talk through that. Let me, you know, walk you through and give kinda empathize with you about this in your review or whatnot. But the other part of you should be saying, well, do I have something more here? Is someone saying they feel uncomfortable and unfair.
Leah Stiegler:Because if we don't if we don't investigate that and we don't take any prompt and effective remedial action, and there may be none, right, then if this individual were to file a lawsuit later, they're gonna easily be able to make the argument that the employer at least should have known that by that that vague complaint to HR, they were on notice that offensive conduct might have been happening.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. And there's no magic it's like the ADA. There are no magic words. You you know, you don't have to say these specific things to to have a valid issue that somebody needs to investigate.
Leah Stiegler:I love that you use the term magic words because I do think that because maybe because of social media or, whatever, people know what the magic words are now. So the other side of that is we are getting I feel like I'm getting more clients that are coming to me saying, you know, this employee filed a harassment complaint or discrimination complaint or retaliation. And when I read the substance of the complaint, it has nothing to do with harassment on the basis of sex or race or age or anything like that. It's just, yeah, my manager's really hard on me, but I'm gonna classify it as harassment. And then the company feels like they they have an obligation to address it.
Leah Stiegler:And so sometimes you may get something that's, you know, masked as as something you really formally should investigate, but you don't necessarily have to when you look at the substance of it.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning. HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. At Imperative, we help risk averse clients make well informed decisions about the people they involve in their business. And because our research is thorough, our reporting is robust, and our compliance is strict, our clients can take action on the information we provide.
Mike Coffey:And when they call us with a question, we answer the phone and get them what they need with fast and friendly service. You can learn more about how we serve our clients at imperativeinfo.com. If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been pre approved for one half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information visit goodmorninghr.com and click on research credits, then select episode one eighty seven and enter the keyword intake, That's I n t a k e. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:And now back to my conversation with Leah Stiegler. I spend way too much time on Reddit, and everything on Reddit in the in the employment related, subreddits is retaliation. Everything's retaliation. And, you know, every now and then I pipe in and say, well, retaliation in and of itself may isn't illegal unless it's related to protected activity of some sort just because, you know, you getting in trouble for a performance management issue may be retaliation for you, you know, being a crappy employee. I mean, you know, that's but it's not illegal.
Mike Coffey:Right? And, and so but that's always the you know, everything, you know, we those magic words on the Internet are all over, and people know, you know, how to say them, and they think you're gonna scare HR. And I think increasingly that's you know, I mean, I think there was a time, maybe ten or fifteen years ago, if you use the magic words, they would assume you were talking to an employment law attorney, and they gave you those words to use. Now oh, yeah. You know how to use Google or, you know, ChatGPT.
Leah Stiegler:ChatGPT. That's a big one. You know? You can you can put in all sorts of things in on there and type in, you know, I wanna I wanna submit a formal complaint to my HR manager, and here are the topics I wanna address. And ChatGPT comes up with a great thing.
Leah Stiegler:You know? Not that I've done this, Mike, but I have played around with it as with my colleagues. Okay? Just to be clear.
Mike Coffey:Well, but that's the you know? And you said the those you said formal complaint. And that's the other thing is I'm not doing a formal complaint. I just wanted to bring this up. When you're talking to your clients and about, you know, starting an investigation and they that person says, I don't wanna be involved.
Mike Coffey:I just want you to know. I I want confidentiality. I just want you to know this is going on. What is what would you tell what's the script when when somebody tells you, I'm telling you this confidentially?
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that that is a really hard one because that does happen a lot. I'm just venting to you, you know, but I don't want you to do anything about it because I don't I don't want someone to get in trouble or whatever. Mhmm.
Leah Stiegler:I just want it to stop. Okay. Well, how do we make it stop? Right? I think it's as easy as sort of, you know, addressing the fact that, you know, I absolutely hear you, and I understand your concerns, but I also wanna make sure that you understand that we have fair nonretaliatory processes to address this.
Leah Stiegler:We're gonna look at this fairly. We may even bring in someone from the outside, to take a look at this, and this is standard procedure. I can assure you that, you know, because you reported this, nothing negative will happen to you because of that report. But we we we as a company may have an obligation to take a deeper dive and look at this, and we wanna make sure that that we are doing the right thing for you and for other employees, because if if it's not you, then it might be another employee that complains about it as well. So something as simple as that, I think, is perfectly fine.
Leah Stiegler:You can't unhear
Mike Coffey:it. Yeah. That's the problem. And if the person is reporting on behalf of somebody else that they think is being treated unfairly and all of that, you know, I've said in the past, you know, I'll do everything I can to keep your your name out of this, but there's always a chance there's gonna be litigation in this. And there's, you know, I can't, at that point, guarantee anything.
Mike Coffey:And, you know, if but, you know, if you're just a concerned third party, you know, I can try. But the other thing you have to remember is now you've told me this, and I have to start an investigation. And we have a company policy that says all employees must cooperate with an investigation. Even if you're the one who started it, you can't back out now, you know, because I've heard that. Oh, I wanna rescind my complaint.
Mike Coffey:No. Yep. We don't do that now.
Leah Stiegler:I had a a client that very creatively, if an employee came to them and made a complaint or another employee wanted to report something that happened to another employee but didn't want an investigation to happen, they had a little disclaimer sheet that they would have the person sign that says, I came into HR today, and I reported x y z, but I I do not want, HR to pursue an investigation. I do not want, this to be taken any further. I just wanted HR to be on notice. And they thought that that was gonna protect them in court. And I was like, there is no defense that says the employee didn't want you to complain.
Leah Stiegler:I don't know where you get that. Maybe that's down a Reddit hole or something like that. Yeah. The only real strong defense is the minute we learned of it, we took prompt and effective remedial action. And so that's what you've gotta come back to.
Mike Coffey:You know, I've got a strong bias, against trying or or for trying the to get the the person giving me the information whether it's a complainant or just, you know, interested third party informant or whatever to put it in writing. What's your take on that? I know some people like to have HR write it up and have that person sign it. What what's your preference?
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. I I would prefer something in writing by the employee because I think that gives a good, that's a good kickoff for the investigator, whoever's gonna come in and investigate it, to have that to start with. And I always recommend starting with the complainant and getting really a full understanding of their allegation so you can really flush out every aspect of their complaint. I'm not really a huge stickler for getting something in writing from the complainant. And mainly, that's because as long as I have an idea that they've reported something generally, I think a good investigator is gonna be able to flush out that complaint and then go back to the company after that initial interview and say, so here are the things that came up during this interview, which goes back to what you said earlier, which is sometimes the question is, you know, do is there anything else you want me to let management know or that you think management should know?
Leah Stiegler:And so then go back to the company and say, okay. Here's what I think the scope of this investigation should should be, these three issues to look into. But I don't know. What's your take on that?
Mike Coffey:No. I think you're right. If I I like it in writing because I've just had too many situations over the years where the story's changed.
Leah Stiegler:Mhmm.
Mike Coffey:And so I wanna pin everybody down to a story starting with the complainant or the informant or whatever. And people, when they're putting it in black and white, tend to be more direct than, you know, trying to be vague and I don't wanna, you know, chase them down or or have that story changed later. Well, I didn't really mean that. Well, now I've got what you wrote down. And so I'm a Right.
Mike Coffey:I'm a big believer in that. But so what about those situations where the complaint doesn't warrant an investigation? Where you just see on its face, this is not a violation of company policy. This is not you know, your manager's allowed to have a bad day sometimes, you know, or or, you know, if your coworkers don't like to have lunch with you, they just don't like to have lunch with you. Okay?
Mike Coffey:You know, maybe check your grooming. I don't know, but this is not, you know, you know, this is not elementary school. We're not gonna, you know, always, you know, police that kind of behavior. What how do you handle those circumstances where somebody really thinks that they've got they've been treated unfairly, but on its face, it's there's no there's nothing legally and or even on the company culture or that, you know, policy side.
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. I'll I'll go I'll do it through an example. So I love the they don't your coworkers just don't like you. They don't wanna have lunch with you, Comet. I had a situation where an employee filed a complaint that she felt like she was being excluded on the basis of gender because on Saint Patrick's Day, her male coworkers went out to, like, O'Toole's Bar or whatever for for a beer after work.
Leah Stiegler:Well, they just didn't like her. And Right. They were all in a fantasy football league, and they were doing their own thing. You know, they they were just friend, like, a good group of friends, and it wasn't a workplace sanctioned activity in any way. So the the client, the HR person that received this complaint, they knew very well the the dynamics of the workplace and the situation and that these employ these male employees were friends and had this league and all that.
Leah Stiegler:And they just simply we we sort of talked about these are simply documented internally, kind of the basis for why no investigation was necessary. And then I I do think some transparency to the complainant is appropriate. I I don't know what your take is on this, and I think it depends on the investigation. But I think too often people think that when they make a complaint, they're going to get your investigative report and the results of of what you do and the the personnel file of the accused and whatever it may be, because you'll do an investigation and maybe it doesn't warrant termination, and so they see that accused person coming in every day and nothing happens or in this case, nothing happened. No one was disciplined for not going out to inviting her out to to the bar.
Leah Stiegler:So they want transparency. And I think going back to that person and having that tough conversation of saying, you know, I understand your your concern. We will definitely be mindful of of exclusion. This is not a work sanctioned event. And we, you know, we'll sort of address these things as they come up.
Leah Stiegler:But let us know if anything comes up in the future, but, unfortunately, this doesn't entail investigation.
Mike Coffey:I always wonder sometimes, am I giving them a am I giving them a playbook to do a better complaint next time? You know, that's it. You know, it's, you know, so, yeah, I'm kinda cautious on that. But, but the reality is is sometimes it just it doesn't. And maybe maybe though, you know, this is an opportunity a learning opportunity for this employee.
Mike Coffey:Maybe we can we can coach them on, okay, tell me what the rest of the dynamic is. And tell me, you know, what's going on in that in that workplace. What are you contributing to that? Because that's always the thing. Nobody really thinks they're contributing into to any of the environment.
Mike Coffey:It's always, you know, you know, they're always the subject of it. But, you know, looking for ways to coach that employee and, you know, maybe have a word with that that that supervisor, that manager just saying, hey. You've got this dynamic going on. You may wanna keep, you know, an ear out to see if there's ways to to do some team building or something where, you know, somebody doesn't feel like they're they're being left out. And And when you, you know, when it's guys and a woman, you you really definitely wanna make sure that that that bro, you know, those bros don't bring that into the workplace and exclude her from projects or from information she might need, things like that.
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. No. I I think you're exactly right. I mean, I think the investigation is just one part of the story. But, I mean, from an HR standpoint, you're really responsible for for not, I mean, not alone, right, with management for ensuring that the workplace has a healthy culture.
Leah Stiegler:And so if employees have that sentiment, you know, they could be the, what is it, the the wolf that cries wolf all the time? The boy
Mike Coffey:who cried wolf.
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Not the wolf who's cried wolf. My goodness.
Leah Stiegler:But at the same time, you know, they're they could have a valid legitimate concern. And like you said, maybe there is an issue or dynamic going on in the workplace that's unhealthy. So I sometimes I think asking a couple questions and then even if you decide when you're talking to the manager to see if the manager is aware of any inappropriate dynamic or gender based concerns or maybe talk to one other employee. And if it doesn't go anywhere, I would document that and indicate we found no reason no reason to continue a formal investigation.
Mike Coffey:And we were gonna talk about investigations, and we've gotten half an hour into this. We've just talked about intake. Okay? So that's but I think it's important because it gets screwed up a lot. But how long especially on a complaint that you're not gonna take action on, how long what's your record retention policy on that?
Leah Stiegler:Oh, that's interesting. I would keep it the entire life cycle of the employee and the personnel file, and then I always recommend for as long as you keep the personnel file, and that may depend by state. But, I mean, you're never you never go wrong with five years.
Mike Coffey:Right. And so you said personnel file. What what's your opinion about having separate investigation files versus personnel files? Does it depend on who's got access or what?
Leah Stiegler:I would say it probably depends on who's got access. I don't really see too a significant legal issue with with either one one practice or the other. My only concern is if you have something in separate investigation files, you know, are we what if you've got different HR people or different managers coming in, and there's been a a complaint in 2018 against, you know, John Doe and then again in 2020 against John Doe, and these are all going into a separate investigative file and nothing is in John Doe's file, then when new HR person comes along in 2024 and gets a new complaint, it's they're not gonna have unless they have some cleaned up way to really look to see if other similar complaints have been filed. I'd like to make sure that they can also tell if there's a pattern or practice of issues going on as well. So whatever is easiest for the company where they can make sure they're they're keeping, being mindful of that.
Mike Coffey:Well, perfect. That's all the time we've got. Thank you for joining me, Leah.
Leah Stiegler:Yeah. Thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate it.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode at goodmorninghr.com or on your favorite social media platform. And if you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you're listening. It helps us reach more listeners. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer and you can reach him at robmakespods dot com.
Mike Coffey:And thank you to Imperative's Marketing Coordinator, Marianne Hernandez, who keeps the trains running on time. And I'm Mike Coffey, as always. Always. Please don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.