Remote Investigations
While some issues may be able to wait until the world returns to something approaching normality, we know that there are some which cannot. During the Covid:19 lockdown, should serious issues come to the surface or if allegations are made against senior employees, a remote investigation may be needed.
Our highly experienced investigations team can conduct remote investigations into allegations of all kinds of wrongdoing. Using specialist investigators to conduct the interviews and interrogate the evidence gives you confidence in the findings reached, saves you substantial management time, and will help avoid allegations of partiality that might otherwise be levelled at an internally appointed investigator. We can also call on our HR Consultants to support you with an investigation or to provide additional support to the HR team.
Our investigation team has a wealth of experience in interviewing witnesses by remote means. We conduct our interviews via secure video conference, and our team are used to dealing with challenges such as uninvited participants, technology failures and unauthorised or covert recording.
We can protect the confidentiality of the process as an external extension to your team. We routinely manage and secure all documents and interview notes, and we use a specifically designed secure portal to ensure that data protection and confidentiality concerns are fully addressed. We can grant access to the portal on an ‘as needed’ basis to specific members of your internal team, such as the eventual decision maker for any disciplinary process, avoiding the need to send sensitive documents by email or in hard copy.
As many of our investigators began life as employment lawyers, and some have specialist mental health first aid training, we are well placed to ensure that wellbeing concerns are addressed and reasonable adjustments are made to the investigative process, where they are needed.
If you would like to discuss any remote investigation needs, please contact Karen Baxter or Emma Richardson.