BOGUS HR Complaint Filed against Me by Team member - What are my rights
mcwho
2 Posts
I am a Team Lead for a very large DoD company, I work as a consultant in IRAQ, I am the Team Lead. One of my team filed a Bogus HR complaint against me. I have not seen the complaint nor seen the response from my HR to the allegations.
My Manager and his Boss came to IRAQ to Investigate. I assume that my Bosses Boss was asking as an HR rep, I was asked numerous questions that were at best offensive to me. My team members were also interrogated about my behavior. we have a team of myself and three individuals. This has usurped respect for me. The allegations were all false or lies.
Questions asked for example included:
Did you ever make obscene gestures to an individual in the team
Did you ever push anyone in the hallway.
Did you ever lean on someones desk to try and intimidate them
Did you ever call a team member a Mexican.
What are my rights, this was on I believe form a team member who wanted to get me fired. I have lost confidence in the Managment and The HR for handling this so unprofessionally.
ON the HR site it states " Employee complaints of employee abuse made in good faith will be held in confidance".
Waht about the NON good faith lies perpatrated by this individual.
Do I have a right to get a copy of those complaints. ?
Comments
[quote user="NYGiants"]The best advice I can give you (and you most likely won't like it), is to sit tight during any investigation, let it play out. If the complaints are false, then the investigators should come to a reasonable conclusion. The biggest risk here is the risk of retaliation by you (real or perceived) against the complaintant during an active investigation. Even if the original complaint proves to be false, any retaliation would be easier to prove and most likely be your down fall. It is difficult to be the target of a complaint, but the process of investigation should bring the correct result.[/quote]
Bingo.
Also, and you won't like this if being asked matter-of-fact questions about alleged events is so upsetting to you, but you may well not realize that you have intimidated people, referred to someone by their ethnicity, or were perceived to be pushing someone when you accidentally bumped them. I believe that you believe that those things have not happened. The purpose of the investigation is to find out if they did, in fact, happen, and that often cannot be determined by simply asking the accused but that's typically the starting point. Sometimes people do say, "Yes, I called him a Mexican. He is Mexican, isn't he?" and they don't really realize that there may be a problem with that.,
[quote user="NYGiants"]The best advice I can give you (and you most likely won't like it), is to sit tight during any investigation, let it play out. If the complaints are false, then the investigators should come to a reasonable conclusion. The biggest risk here is the risk of retaliation by you (real or perceived) against the complaintant during an active investigation. Even if the original complaint proves to be false, any retaliation would be easier to prove and most likely be your down fall. It is difficult to be the target of a complaint, but the process of investigation should bring the correct result.[/quote]
Bingo.
Also, and you won't like this if being asked matter-of-fact questions about alleged events is so upsetting to you, but you may well not realize that you have intimidated people, referred to someone by their ethnicity, or were perceived to be pushing someone when you accidentally bumped them. I believe that you believe that those things have not happened. The purpose of the investigation is to find out if they did, in fact, happen, and that often cannot be determined by simply asking the accused but that's typically the starting point. Sometimes people do say, "Yes, I called him a Mexican. He is Mexican, isn't he?" and they don't really realize that there may be a problem with that.
[quote user="NYGiants"]The best advice I can give you (and you most likely won't like it), is to sit tight during any investigation, let it play out. If the complaints are false, then the investigators should come to a reasonable conclusion. The biggest risk here is the risk of retaliation by you (real or perceived) against the complaintant during an active investigation. Even if the original complaint proves to be false, any retaliation would be easier to prove and most likely be your down fall. It is difficult to be the target of a complaint, but the process of investigation should bring the correct result.[/quote]
Bingo.
Also, and you won't like this if being asked matter-of-fact questions about alleged events is so upsetting to you, but you may well not realize that you have intimidated people, referred to someone by their ethnicity, or were perceived to be pushing someone when you accidentally bumped them. I believe that you believe that those things have not happened. The purpose of the investigation is to find out if they did, in fact, happen, and that often cannot be determined by simply asking the accused but that's typically the starting point. Sometimes people do say, "Yes, I called him a Mexican. He is Mexican, isn't he?" and they don't really realize that there may be a problem with that.
[quote user="NYGiants"]The best advice I can give you (and you most likely won't like it), is to sit tight during any investigation, let it play out. If the complaints are false, then the investigators should come to a reasonable conclusion. The biggest risk here is the risk of retaliation by you (real or perceived) against the complaintant during an active investigation. Even if the original complaint proves to be false, any retaliation would be easier to prove and most likely be your down fall. It is difficult to be the target of a complaint, but the process of investigation should bring the correct result.[/quote]
Bingo.
Also, and you won't like this if being asked matter-of-fact questions about alleged events is so upsetting to you, but you may well not realize that you have intimidated people, referred to someone by their ethnicity, or were perceived to be pushing someone when you accidentally bumped them. I believe that you believe that those things have not happened. The purpose of the investigation is to find out if they did, in fact, happen, and that often cannot be determined by simply asking the accused but that's typically the starting point. Sometimes people do say, "Yes, I called him a Mexican. He is Mexican, isn't he?" and they don't really realize that there may be a problem with that.
I did say Bogus complaint, didn't I. Your explanation is saying that I should assume that he was correct, not so. By the way, it was the previous LEAD that called him a Mexican it was well comented and laughed by the previous tam lead to all members of the team. You seem to try to find truth in a bogus complaint that has no truth.
There is truth and there are lies, do you know thye difference, I do, and I will not let my reputatiopn be ruined by this person. I did sit still while the investigation went on, the person doing the investigation asked all of my team very pointed questions.
When I wnt to talk to my boss about how this played out, and what I had suspected, I saID i ASSUME A hr COMPLAINT WAS MADE, THATS WHAT CAUSED THE QUESTIONS, HE RESPONDED WITH "yES, AND WE COULD NOT PROVE YOU GUILTY OF ANYTHING, AND ALSO WE COULD NOT PROVE YOU INNOCENT" I thought we were innocent untill proven guilty , is this not the cas e IN HR circles ?
The team is four persons, myself as LEAD, and three others, everyone else gets along and works well together, the "Bad Apple" does things behind everyones back, performs tasks that are undocumented, and will not help one of the new persons who I hared. He keeps processes and procedures secret.
[quote user="mcwho"] I did say Bogus complaint, didn't I. Your explanation is saying that I should assume that he was correct, not so. By the way, it was the previous LEAD that called him a Mexican it was well comented and laughed by the previous tam lead to all members of the team. You seem to try to find truth in a bogus complaint that has no truth.[/quote]
I understand that you said, "Bogus" but I don't think you understand what I said. I said that you may not know how your behaviors have been perceived by other people.
But lets get this straight: we cannot know if any of your claims are true. We don't know that you have a job. We don't know that there's a complaint filed against you at your job. We don't know that you aren't a 13 year old kid posting flame bait. We can only respond to the situation as you lay it out.
[quote user="mcwho"] There is truth and there are lies, do you know thye difference, I do, and I will not let my reputatiopn be ruined by this person. I did sit still while the investigation went on, the person doing the investigation asked all of my team very pointed questions.[/quote]
Having done more investigations of this type than the average non-HR professional, I'm going to presume that I have the expertise and experience advantage here unless your ability to tell truths from lies stems from ESP. My training and experience both suggest that I cannot tell truth from lies by reading one person's self-interested version of events pertaining to an allegation against him or her. Your own internal investigators apparently couldn't tell that, either, or they wouldn't have spoken to anybody else after they spoke to you. That is typical and to be respected.
[quote user="mcwho"]When I wnt to talk to my boss about how this played out, and what I had suspected, I saID i ASSUME A hr COMPLAINT WAS MADE, THATS WHAT CAUSED THE QUESTIONS, HE RESPONDED WITH "yES, AND WE COULD NOT PROVE YOU GUILTY OF ANYTHING, AND ALSO WE COULD NOT PROVE YOU INNOCENT" I thought we were innocent untill proven guilty , is this not the cas e IN HR circles ?[/quote]
Unfortunately, you do not have the same types of rights in an employment investigatory/resolution process as in a criminal investigatory/resolution process. This has been covered many times, many ways (it's the season) on these fora. In short, you are not entitled to confront the accuser or to ask him or her questions. You are not afforded the nicety of being presumed innocent. Except under certain circumstances, you don't have freedom of speech at work, either. That is, you can be fired for saying "biscuits and gravy" and your employer can have a policy against saying "tree".
So, with that understanding, let's explore why that is the case. Your HR team's job is to protect the company. The company is an entity that writes paychecks. Not only yours, but several other peoples' as well, including the HR team and other persons who have a vested interest in the outcome of the investigation since these things can be very expensive both in direct costs in settlement and indirect costs such as loss of business through harm to the organization's reputation. So, in short, as the person reportedly standing accused of naughty things, I can understand why it's easy for you to focus on you but everyone else is focused primarily on the company, itself. That often comes out as concern for the alleged victim but, if your HR team is any good, that's not because they're automatically sympathetic to the complainant, it's because if the complainant's allegation is founded, that's the person they have to help. If the complainant's allegation is unfounded, they still have to be wary of the situation to ensure that the company takes steps to ensure that the unfounded allegations don't turn into founded ones by having allowed a situation to exist in which the reported activity could continue if it was, in fact, actually happening.
That's the part where these types of complaints are really hard on the alleged perp because you don't get the presumption of innocence, you get the affirmative resolve to protect the company from something that may not even be true. This is often done without actual harm to the alleged perp but it is also often done in a manner that more or less tops out the career of the person against whom the complaint was made if the type of work makes it difficult to work around the modifications to tasks and processes required to protect the company or if the HR team and/or upper management crew are merely average. There is little that you can do except rage against the machine since whatever protections they implement will be necessary from the Company's standpoint and it has the legal authority (in fact the virtual legal requirement) to implement them. So, it is with my best wishes for you that your HR team and upper management are above average.
[quote user="mcwho"]The team is four persons, myself as LEAD, and three others, everyone else gets along and works well together, the "Bad Apple" does things behind everyones back, performs tasks that are undocumented, and will not help one of the new persons who I hared. He keeps processes and procedures secret.[/quote]
And if you know this person is the complainant, your actions will now look like retaliation if you hadn't already started a very strong and convincing paper trail into the bad apple's performance problems. In either case, you should bring your performance concerns to HR and request advice on how to proceed since either you know the bad apple is the complainant or, since you don't know who it is, you are concerned about the perception of retaliation since the bad apple is the most likely complainant. It should be said here that the complainant is not now exempt from performance standards or policy. Often, in the course of an investigation, HR discovers that the complainant has a performance problem that was improperly addressed by their direct supervisor. That breaks down into too many scenarios to outline here, but the short story is this: involve your HR team, tell them of the concerns I just gave you to tell them you have, and get the alleged bad apple out through the normal process.
MCWHO. You have not posted for a few days and I hope that means you have calmed down. I can understand you being upset but that is the very thing that may cause you to fail in this manner because anger can be perceived as 'most likely to have. . . with that attitude." Be careful. TXHRGuy is right and his first post was simply to enlighten you of what the investigating party may be thinking and what perceptions people may have of you, right or wrong.
TX was giving you a simple strategy. It's like Patton beating Rommel. Patton was out numbered, Rommel had the superior tank. So why did Patton win? Simple, he read Rommel's books. He knew what he was going to do and simply out maneuvered him. TXHRGuy was simply telling you look at this through the companies eyes. You may see your defense or you may see that what you may have thought was normal interaction was not well received by others. Either way you will be better off knowing and then adjusting if need be.
TXHRGuy is straight forward. He has been with me. I have agreed and disagreed with him. Everyone is free to take his advice as a whole, in part, or not at all. But he by no means intends insult or harm to anyone. Just my humble observation.