HireCentrix - ViewPoint

THE KEY TO GOOD FAITH INVESTIGATIONS

As the human resource professional in your organization you may be called upon to conduct a confidential investigation and as such, your methods and findings must be able to withstand the scrutiny which will most certainly occur.

Fair investigative treatment toward the complainant, subject of investigation and the witnesses will ensure that employment decisions will be asserted without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, medical condition, pregnancy, age, physical, mental disability or any other discriminatory non-merit factor.

President Obama at a press conference in Hawaii referring to a question about the scandal at Penn State made the observation that protecting the innocent was more important than shielding institutions or organizations. I took in the premise and then looked at the daily RSS feed I receive from the EEOC and began to question the strategic moves many corporations are making in the marketplace.

A Twitter discussion caught my eye earlier; it was about HR not having standards for measurements. HR not having standards is a problem that is truly harmful to the industry at large because of the following reasons:

1. Not having rigorous standards means whatever results and data you get from your internal surveys, performance management, and whatever else you use to “measure” your employees and business are not valid or reliable.

I was in the Dallas-Fort Worth area last week for HRSouthwest and where I presented a session called “this is your brain on diversity.”  This is a session where I take some significant insights from the fields of neuroscience and social psychology and consider what they mean to how we do diversity and inclusion work (and to some extent how we do human resources, leadership & organizational development work as well).

Robert Half  just released the results of its Finance and Accounting Survey in which 36 percent of the CFO's who responded said that the number one reason that new hires don not work out is  poor skills. I would suspect that if you talked to operational executives you would get the same feedback. So, if this country is so great why do we get this type of response to such surveys?

My guess, from multiple observations and sources, is that unethical conduct for business advantage is not only used, but welcomed. The organizations may have massive policies on “ethics” but they are applied primarily to employees doing unethical things for personal gain. If the employee is caught, he/she may be fired.