Mike D. Sandulak (mike.sandulak@providence.org) is Director of Investigations at Providence St. Joseph Health in Portland, OR.
Conducting workplace investigations seems easy enough: receive a complaint, gather evidence, conduct interviews, and determine whether a policy was violated. However, trained workplace investigators know there is more to it than that. For example, in investigations where you have a “word against word” or “he said/she said” situation, an investigator cannot simply take these statements to make a finding. Rather, this requires an investigator to make credibility determinations in order to assess the accuracy of statements to be clear about the evidence. In doing so, investigators should consider the following factors to determine the credibility of witnesses:
