Anonymous Complaints

jscheidter

Does a company have the duty to investigate anonymous complaints of discrimination when the complainer does not want to give his/her name but are willing to name the harasser?

ray a

To get this discussion rolling, yes, I would begin an investigation. If you don't, and the charge is true, you could put the company at risk. I recently had a situation like this and within a couple of hours, the accuser did make themselves known to me. Then they opened up giving me the complete story.

marc

We have gone around and around on this question in the past.

If you ignore this type of complaint that later on turns out to be founded, you will then be judged by a "knew or should have known" standard.

You cannot, in my opinion, honor requests for anonymity. Once you are burdened with knowledge, you must investigate. You can try to keep the names out of it, but that can be difficult to do and you cannot compromise protecting the company to keep someone's name out of the process.

There are also some horror stories out there about false accusations that cannot be ignored. I say investigate and try to respect the anonymity request, but not at the expense of the investigation.

HRPager

My anonymous you mean that the person called and you don't know who they are, not that you know who they are and they want to remain anonymous, correct?

I had this happen, took notes of the conversation, shared them with the supervisor/manager to keep an eye out for the situation and touched base with the supervisor over the next couple weeks so I had documentation that we were aware but did not see any evidence that led us to believe accusations were true.

deniseE

I have to agree with the others about the "knew or should have known standard"...something was bothersome enough that it prompted a complaint...and now you have the responsibility to protect the ee and the company.

You can let her know that you will attempt to conduct your investigation in such a way that will protect her privacy, but you cannot guarantee it.


good luck!

Carey

If even you don't know the identity of the complainant, you can investigate to the best of your ability and act accordingly. If the allegations are denied and there are no witnesses or other evidence, then you document your efforts and you're done. This kind of complaint is sometimes difficult to investigate if the anonymous source didn't name witnesses also. You can't question everybody to see if anybody knows anything.

Whatever

I, too, would investigate. In spite of the whistleblower laws, there are people who are still afraid there will retaliation if they come forward.

Shadowfax

Whenever the e/er has 'reason to believe' there may be discrimination in the workplace, the e/er has a statutory obligation to investigate.