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Originally Posted by MattyC
Really appreciate the discussion thanks Caramon.
I suppose from your perspective you probably cringe quite a bit at the sudden jumping on accused people, given in your experience many situations are built on misunderstanding and ignorance vs malicious intent.
So when someone is accused, do you make them aware of the accusation, or just move to taking the steps you mentioned (separate shifts, etc) hoping to avoid further confrontation? Like, if it’s an issue of misunderstanding, obviously that’s not resolved unless you actually discuss it with both parties and they discuss it with each other potentially or it will just continue due to ignorance. It seems logical to me that the separating of work shifts and stuff wouldn’t happen unless there were multiple/frequent accusations. At that point wouldn’t it be something that should be investegated further with potential dismissals?
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It has to be dealt with and the accused needs to be spoken with, unless it is such a ridiculous accusation. You almost never want to go down the ignorance path if it is a legitimate complaint.
If you are going to look towards eventual dismissal for an employee, the employer could be liable if they were shown to have essentially ignored a bunch of harassment complaints over a certain time frame and then terminated an employee, from both the accused and accusers. Issues need to be a addressed, discipline given and the person needs an opportunity to change their behavior (unless it is that severe).
I deal with many unionized staff, so there are some shift time/change rules I need to adhere to, which makes things more difficult. Occasionally we do temporary shift changes if the accusation is severe enough until we've had time to investigate (i.e. inappropriate touching).
It's a judgment call in some cases for permanent shift changes/moves - it will depend on how the accuser is affected and partly what they want to see as a resolution. I've had some people with severe accusations who wanted to try and work it out, others with less severe accusations who don't want to work with the person ever again. Each situation will call for a slightly different resolution. But yes, a single accusation could easily involve a permanent shift change or site move.