Tag Archive for: Workplace investigations

The Manchester City case: What can HR learn about workplace investigations?

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Whether you’re a football fan or not, it’s hard to have missed the headlines surrounding Manchester City and the investigation into alleged financial rule breaches. While the world of Premier League football might seem a long way from the day-to-day challenges of HR, there are some surprisingly relevant lessons here, particularly when it comes to workplace investigations. The big takeaway? Don’t let things drag on, keep your eye on the facts and don’t let the rumour mill take over. These are simple principles but getting them right can make a real difference to how an investigation unfolds.

Why is it so important not to let investigations drag on?

One of the striking things about the Manchester City case is just how long it has taken to get to this stage. Concerns were raised in 2018, charges were announced in 2023, and the commission’s decision followed in 2025. And, as is often the case with complex legal proceedings, that hasn’t necessarily been the end of the story.

Now, I’m not suggesting that a workplace grievance is quite on the same scale as a Premier League investigation! But the principle is much the same: the longer it takes to resolve an issue, the more complicated things can become.

In the workplace, delays can mean more disagreements, more allegations and more people getting drawn into the situation. Positions become entrenched, relationships suffer and what started as a relatively straightforward complaint can turn into a much bigger headache.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team still has to get on with its work. Morale can dip, productivity can suffer, sickness absence can increase and people may even decide it’s time to move on.

How do you stop a small problem becoming a much bigger one?

We’ve probably all seen situations where one issue leads to another, until nobody can quite remember what the original problem was!

Workplace investigations can easily go the same way. An initial grievance might be followed by a counter-grievance, an allegation about something that happened months ago and a list of other complaints that have been building up along the way.

Before you know it, the investigator has a mountain of issues to work through, some of which may have little to do with the original concern.

Of course, new issues shouldn’t be ignored simply because they weren’t part of the original complaint. But they do need to be considered carefully, with a clear plan for how they will be addressed.

What about the office rumour mill?

Football fans rarely sit on the fence when it comes to their clubs. Everyone has an opinion, everyone knows what really happened and everyone seems to have a view on what the punishment should be!

The workplace is no different. As soon as an investigation starts, colleagues may begin discussing what they think happened, who they believe and what they think HR should do about it.

Confidentiality is important, but you can’t always stop people talking.

The real challenge is making sure that gossip doesn’t become confused with evidence. When interviewing witnesses, I want to understand what that particular person actually saw, heard or experienced. Being told that someone else said something happened is not the same as witnessing it first-hand.

That doesn’t mean second-hand information should automatically be dismissed as it may point to evidence that needs to be checked. But it does need to be treated with care.

How do you keep everyone confident in the process?

When an investigation seems to be going nowhere, or nobody knows what’s happening, it’s easy for people to assume that nothing is being done or that a decision has already been made.

Keeping people informed, explaining the process and being clear about timescales can make a real difference. So can making sure that decisions are based on the evidence rather than on who shouts the loudest.

What are the lessons for HR teams and line managers?

  • Get started promptly. Acknowledge concerns, assess any immediate risks and agree realistic timescales.
  • Keep things focused. Be clear about the issues being investigated and have a plan for dealing with anything new that emerges.
  • Get the evidence early. Identify relevant documents, messages and witnesses before information becomes harder to find.
  • Ask questions, not lead questions. Give people the opportunity to explain what they know in their own words.
  • Keep an open mind. Don’t decide what happened before you’ve considered the evidence from all sides.
  • Keep things moving. Review progress regularly, explain any unavoidable delays and make sure the investigation reaches a conclusion as soon as reasonably possible.

The Manchester City case might seem an unlikely source of HR inspiration, but it highlights some important lessons about handling complex investigations. The longer matters remain unresolved, the more difficult they can become, and the harder it is to ensure that everyone feels the eventual outcome is fair.

For employers, the answer is straightforward: act early, stick to the evidence and don’t let the process drift.

Forgive one final football analogy, but when it comes to workplace investigations, it’s always better to deal with the problem before it goes into extra time!

If you would like to discuss support for a forthcoming investigation, please contact Simon Martin in the Narrow Quay HR team at simon.martin@narrowquayhr.co.uk.

Culture Reviews – What Are Your Staff Members Really Thinking?

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Are you confident that you know how your staff are feeling at work? Have you noticed tensions in the staffroom or at meetings, but no one suggests anything is amiss?

Perhaps you already do an employee engagement survey but don’t feel this is giving enough relevant details. Or perhaps you are aware that there is a particular team which is not functioning well and you can’t quite establish why that is.

There can be a variety of reasons why it can be hard to get to the heart of what is happening in situations such as this – finding time in a busy schedule, using the right tools to gather in that feedback. Sometimes there is a reluctance from staff to engage on sensitive issues or to speak about colleagues. If left unchecked these tensions may well develop into significant issues for you. Undertaking a traditional workplace investigation to look into these matters might not be the right tool, as the concerns may not focus on one individual, may come too late, may not be practicable, or might not really get to the bottom of the issue.

What Does a Culture Review Involve?

This is where a culture review can really help. It can take a number of forms – online surveys directed at the particular issue, focus groups or one-to-one interviews. Often a culture review will involve a mixture of these methods to really gain a detailed understanding of what is going on.

What Data Can a Culture Review Gather?

At Narrow Quay HR we have a lot of experience in running a variety of culture reviews – looking at general morale across the staff community, dysfunctional teams, character clashes and conflicts. We have also conducted reviews to check in on staff confidence and understanding of key policies such as safeguarding. We know that staff respond really well to a third-party undertaking this type of review – it reassures them of confidentiality (or, potentially, even anonymity), enables them to talk more freely than they would to colleagues and/or offer constructive feedback where they might not otherwise feel able to voice their thoughts, and demonstrates the school’s commitment to finding a resolution.

How Narrow Quay HR Can Aid Your Culture Review

We work with you to develop the right medium for gathering the feedback you need, and through our analysis will draw together the key themes with recommendations for action. We analyse the data we collate and provide you with a report setting out themes and findings, and our recommended next steps. We can meet with you to discuss our findings and any appropriate follow up. We can support you with actions that may flow from the review, which may be more formal investigations into particular incidents or mediation where you have unresolved conflicts.

Narrow Quay HR is a subsidiary of VWV and our team of HR consultants are a mix of former lawyers who now specialise in HR and highly experienced HR professionals, giving you solid legal grounding and practical expertise.

If you would like to talk to us about your individual HR needs, please contact Sue Meehan Boyes in our team on 07384 468797.

Workplace Investigations – What Can You Learn from the Downing Street Parties?

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Recent investigations into ‘gatherings’ at Downing Street are being undertaken by Sue Gray, who also investigated claims of a staff party at No. 10 on 18 December 2020, when London was subject to severe restrictions.

Her senior colleague, the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, stepped down from carrying out the investigations because it was possible that he had attended one of the parties himself. Sue Gray’s investigation now includes the ‘bring your own booze’ event on 20 May 2020 and a wine and cheese gathering five days earlier.

As workplace investigators, we are aware of the issues that can arise during a workplace investigation. We reflect on the key things to consider when conducting an investigation, and how to prepare for the process.

Expecting the Unexpected

In one of our recent workplace investigations, we were asked to find the source of a leak at a school about a member of staff being involved in a safeguarding incident. All was progressing smoothly until one member of staff named the school’s investigator as the source of the leak. The investigator had to step down, leaving us to run the investigation ourselves.

In an investigation you must be able to react to unexpected developments and make appropriate changes to ensure that the process remains fair.

New Matters Might Arise

Fresh matters commonly come to light during our investigations. It’s important for those who have commissioned the investigation to know this to establish whether they want any new matters to also be included, rather than just expanding the scope without consideration.

If the commissioning officer wants the investigation to be expanded to include new matters then an updated Terms of Reference will need to issued. If that happens then depending on the stage we have reached we may need to re-interview some people to whom we have already spoken. It’s another reminder that investigations often don’t proceed in a linear fashion.

How to Deal With Multiple Incidents

The other matter to consider is how the investigating officer should address multiple events. When we carry out investigations we know it is important to first consider each incident on its own merits, which means considering the evidence related to each event.

We then need to consider whether any findings and conclusions can then be drawn by considering the various events together. We ask questions such as:

  • Are there any repeated patterns of behaviour?
  • Are the incidents similar?
  • Are the explanations similar?

In a disciplinary investigation it may be that any single incident in isolation would not merit a recommendation that it should be dealt with at a disciplinary hearing, but cumulative incidents would merit being considered at a formal hearing. This is particularly the case if an employee has been spoken to informally about their behaviour after one incident and then does something similar on a later date. It’s often only when we take an overview that the interconnected nature of the events reveal themselves.

For more details about how we typically carry out workplace investigations you may find our FAQ document helpful. If you’re looking for support with an investigation, please contact Simon Martin in our team on 07384 813 076 for more information on how we can support you.

Investigations – What Do We Do and How Do We Do Them?

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You might be thinking about using an external provider to carry out an investigation into an employment issue that has arisen. This might be because your internal resource doesn’t have enough time, or perhaps they have been involved in the issues that need to be investigated.

Alternatively, you might not have anyone in your organisation who has the skillset to carry out the investigation if the issues are complex.

The organisations that call us in typically have a dispute that needs to be resolved. At Narrow Quay HR, we help organisations get to the root of workplace disputes by conducting complex and sensitive investigations on their behalf. We cover areas such as disciplinary allegations, employee grievances, bullying and harassment, allegations of discrimination, whistle-blowing, employee fraud, and breakdowns in trust and confidence at board level.

So What Do We Do When You Instruct Us?

The first step is for us to let you know how much we think it is going to cost. We generally tend to charge per day so once we’ve taken some initial information from you we will let you know how many days we think it will take us to conduct the investigation and provide you with an investigation report. We’ll break it down so you can see what’s involved and how the time will be spent.

Once you’ve given us the go ahead, we’ll work with you to prepare the Terms of Reference. These set out the areas that we are asked to look into. It is often the case that our clients will take legal advice about the Terms of Reference. Preparing the Terms of Reference is an important stage because it tells us what we are investigating, and sometimes what we are specifically not being asked to investigate.

For instance, sometimes an employee may have raised a previous grievance or there may have been a previous disciplinary or capability matter they were not happy about. The employer will therefore not want us to deal with that because it has already been looked into. It is sometimes the case that during the investigation other matters crop up and we will always go back to the client to establish whether they want us to also investigate those matters.

What is also usually included in the Terms of Reference is the list of the people that we have been asked to interview. We’ll look at how we carry out the interviews below but in terms of interviewees, again this is sometimes something that changes during the investigation.

I recently interviewed someone who was accused of bullying. When I interviewed them they and their union representative named 15 additional people they said I needed to interview. When that happens, we need to take a view about the best approach to take. We need to be proportionate in how we proceed, we need to weigh up the relevance of the evidence to the matters we have been asked to investigate. We also need to consider questions like ‘are we likely to get several people telling us the same thing?’ We also need to think about the effect that carrying out any additional interviews will have on the time the investigation will take.

So, We Have Received the Terms of Reference, What Next?

We will usually be sent the relevant documents, so for example in the case of an investigation into a grievance we will be sent the grievance letter and the supporting documents. It’s also important for us to review the policy under which we are carrying out the investigation. This document will for instance say whether people can be accompanied by a work colleague or trade union representative in the investigation. The basic position is that there is no right to be accompanied at an investigation meeting but sometimes, particularly with public sector employers, there is that right included in their policy.

Having read the background documents and policies, we will then set up the interviews. When dealing with a grievance, we will try to interview the complainant first as it is important to fully understand the nature of the complaint or dispute. Experience says that the complainant tends to expand on what is included in the initial documents.

When we do the interviews, we don’t tend to record them. We take notes of the interview and after the interview send them to the interviewee to check, amend and approve. It’s often the case that the people we interview will send us further documents, which we will consider and add to the documentary evidence.

When we have interviewed everyone, we will then prepare our investigation report. We will set out the key elements of the Terms of Reference, the process we followed, then analyse the evidence we have received and set out our findings, conclusions. If we have been asked to do so then we also set out our recommendations. We will add as appendices to the report the notes of the interviews we have carried out and the documentary evidence we have collected.

It’s important to remind ourselves what our role is in investigations – we are fact gathering. We don’t make any decisions, although we may make recommendations.

What Does That Mean?

In a disciplinary matter, our role is to gather all the evidence and then at most we would recommend whether, based on the evidence we have seen, that we think it would merit being heard in a disciplinary hearing. We will never make recommendations about the level of warning for instance as that would be to overstep our remit.

Our approach is to take a balanced, objective approach and set out our thought processes, refer to the key evidence and then how we have arrived at our findings and conclusions which we arrived at on the balance of probabilities.

At Narrow Quay HR, we are all former employment lawyers with over 70 years’ experience between us. We understand how employment law requires investigations to be carried out properly and that informs our approach. I have acted for a number of employers over the years in Employment Tribunals and have been doing the advocacy when Employment Judges have spent a lot of time dissecting the investigations that were carried out. I have used that experience to inform my approach when conducting the investigation.

Our aim is to make our reports speak for themselves, so that the key evidence is referred to and our findings, conclusions and recommendations are clear. What that means is that it is very unusual for us to need to attend any subsequent grievance or disciplinary hearing for example.

I hope that gives you an idea of what we do and how we do it. Of course if you need any more details please contact Simon Martin on 07384 813 076, Sarah Martin on 07799 136091, or Caitlin Anniss on 07909 683938.

Workplace Investigations – Weighing up the Evidence

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Hargreaves v Manchester Grammar

Mr Hargreaves had been employed by Manchester Grammar (School) as a teacher since 1 September 2005. In March 2016 a pupil (Pupil A) alleged that Mr Hargreaves had grabbed him, pushed him against a wall and put his fingers to his throat. Prior to the allegation from Pupil A, Mr Hargreaves had not been subject to any formal disciplinary action.

As part of an investigation into the allegations, various pupils and teachers were interviewed. Two pupils corroborated Pupil A’s account and one teacher noted that Pupil A had appeared upset when reporting the incident. However, two other pupils who were interviewed had no recollection of anything unusual.  When the investigating officer interviewed the two teachers named by Mr Hargreaves as potential witnesses, one said she had not been in the area at the relevant time and the other said she had not seen anything unusual. The evidence of the pupils and teachers who had seen nothing were not presented to the disciplinary panel or Mr Hargreaves.

Following the hearing, Mr Hargreaves was dismissed for gross misconduct on 17 June 2016.

Mr Hargreaves brought a claim of unfair dismissal to the Employment Tribunal (ET) and the ET found his dismissal to be fair. Mr Hargreaves appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) on the basis that, taking into account the career-changing impact of the allegation, the ET had erred in respect of the significance of the evidence gathered from those who had reported seeing nothing unusual.

Mr Hargreaves argued that if Pupil A’s allegation was true it would be highly likely that someone in the vicinity would have noticed whereas, if his account of events was true, those close by would not recall seeing anything untoward.

The Decision

The EAT dismissed the appeal, holding that it was within the band of reasonable responses for the School to decide not to put forward the evidence of the witness who had seen nothing and to dismiss Mr Hargreaves.

The EAT commented that in investigating the incident it wasn’t that the School had not pursued lines of inquiry, it was that they had found that those lines did not have anything to add. The statements given by the witnesses had been considered and the School had reasonably concluded that the evidence  was immaterial and could not assist either the Claimant or the disciplinary panel.

Best Practice

While this decision provides some comfort to employers who have properly assessed the evidence gathered during investigations and decided that some is not relevant, we would still advise that it is in an employer’s interest to present all evidence. Choosing not to do so creates an unnecessary risk of litigation and a finding of unfairness.

This approach is in accordance with the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, which provides that in conducting a disciplinary hearing it would normally be appropriate to enclose copies of any written evidence, which may include any witness statements, with the hearing invitation.

For more information, please contact Sarah Martin on 07799 136 091 or Caitlin Anniss on 07909 683 938 at Narrow Quay HR. 

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