3 Free Tools to Improve Your HR Investigations

According to one study, 75% of workers have experienced or witnessed some form of workplace misconduct in their careers. That’s a lot of cases for HR workplace investigators!To reduce the amount of misconduct your organization faces and protect employees, you need to make sure your HR investigations are as efficient and effective as possible. But that can be difficult if you’re a small team, have a large caseload, or just don’t know where to start.To help you out, here are three tools that will make every workplace investigator’s job easier.

Uncover Areas of Risk with an Investigations Maturity Model

As you conduct your workplace investigations, it’s easy to get stuck in a routine. But continuous improvement protects the employees involved and makes your investigative processes easier and more efficient for investigators.How do you know where to start? Use an investigations maturity model. This tool helps investigative teams determine their program’s strengths and areas of risk or weakness.According to Meric Bloch, Principal at Winter Investigations, an HR investigative program’s maturity is determined by eight key characteristics:

• Defined procedural steps
• Efficiency
• Documentation
• Automation
• Effectiveness
• Standardization
• Consistent data metrics
• Program analysis

Based on these, your program could fall into one of five levels of maturity: initial, managed, standardized, predictable, or optimized. Each stage comes with its own risks and steps to improve. Once you’ve determined your program’s level of maturity, your team should make an action plan for addressing your weaknesses, so you can protect both employees and your organization through more effective investigations.

Start HR Investigations on the Right Foot with an Investigation Plan Template

Just like any other project, HR investigations should start with a thorough plan. Your team needs to know what actions need to be taken and in what order, when they need to be accomplished by, and who needs to carry out each one. Otherwise, you could miss an important step or duplicate efforts.Even if you’re a team of one, it’s smart to plan out your investigation before you start. Will you consult with external experts, people in other departments, or other stakeholders? Does your investigation need to follow a strict timeline or meet other regulatory requirements? Do you have multiple cases open at once? An investigation plan keeps these things organized, making your job easier.However, creating a new plan from scratch each time is a lot of work. Plus, the plans might not be consistent across cases or teams. Use an investigation plan template to ensure consistency and compliance, and to streamline the planning process so you can start investigating faster.