Know your boundaries: Legal considerations for investigating and interviewing employees
- Understand the science of communication
- Do you know your legal authority for conducting interviews?
- Can you use deception in interviews?
- How do you avoid breaching the employees’ rights under law?
- How do you avoid employee claims of breach of privacy, emotional distress, defamation, false imprisonment, or assault and battery?
- What about trade union protection?
Understand the science of communication
- What are communication facilitators and inhibitors?
- What is the employee really saying with word choice, tone, and syntax?
- What is the employee really saying with body language from the head, face, nose, mouth, eyes, arms, shoulders, elbows, hands, legs, feet, and posture?
- What is the employee really saying with anger, boredom, frustration, and body movements?
Learn how to prepare for the interview
- How do you properly establish the foundation for your investigation?
- How do you gather evidence and background information for the interview? Where do you get the information from?
- What is the best venue and physical environment for interviewing?
- How should you plan the interview for witnesses, conspirators, and perpetrators?
Learn how to conduct the interview
- What are 13 verbal clues of deception you need to recognize?
- What are 10 non-verbal clues of deception you need to recognize?
- What is the proper interviewing sequence and use of questioning? How do you open the interview, get good information, resolve contradictions or deceit, and close the interview?
- What is the best approach to obtaining an admission of guilt? How do you help the employee rationalize what he or she did and tell you what truly happened?
- Learn how to professionally conduct an interview in stages with the proper introduction and rapport establishment, information gathering, assesment questions, closing, and admission seeking.
Know how to report your findings
- How should your findings be presented to company insiders, attorneys, defendants & witnesses, the press, or juries?
- What is a good report structure for presenting your findings?