'It seems like their HR department was well trained because they followed all the right steps,' says employment lawyer on Parq Vancouver's investigation
A recent dismissal of a discrimination complaint by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal (HRT) serves as a “template” for employers and investigators for how to handle employee harassment complaints properly.
On May 21, 2019, the employee, who had worked for Parq Vancouver for over 10 years and oversaw a team, told her supervisor informally that one of her staff was singling her out and criticizing her work errors publicly, in retaliation for past discipline. At the supervisor’s request, she followed that discussion with an email summarizing her complaint.
The situation escalated when on July 14, the employee – described as a “valued and long service employee” by Parq – made a formal complaint to the HR Director that the colleague had mocked her speech impediment in front of other employees.
The complainant is a “survivor of a serious health condition and related surgery,” the tribunal decision states, “which left her with what she describes as a speech impediment.”
Parq conducted a two-month investigation which found the accused employee had violated the company’s policy against bullying and harassment, and made her write a letter of apology to the complainant, as well as other remediation actions. Not satisfied with the outcome, the employee brought her complaint to the HRT, which it dismissed.
“Fair, timely and thorough” handling of harassment complaint
Professionalism, training and timeliness are what made Parq Vancouver’s handling of the complaint exemplary and led to the HRT’s dismissal, says Ritu Mahil, employment lawyer at Southern Butler Price in Vancouver.
She also sees it as a sign that HR departments are starting to catch on to how to properly address harassment in the workplace, thanks to increased awareness and education.
“Education is having an impact,” Mahil says. “It seems like their HR department was well trained, and they’ve probably gone to seminars about what to do in an investigation, because they followed all the right steps.”
The tribunal called Parq’s treatment of the complaint “fair, timely and thorough,” Mahil says, explaining that for that reason, the tribunal decided there was nothing that would further the purposes of the Human Rights Code by continuing.
“They clearly had a complaint process in place. They had a trained director who took charge of this process, was able to conduct a thorough investigation and was able to move forward with the remedies that they found appropriate."
Employer didn’t take ‘swift action’ with harassment complaint, employee alleged
When the complainant brought her allegations to Parq’s HR Director, they apologized for the delay and promised to follow up. By July 17, 2019, the HR Director advised the complainant that an investigation was commencing.
Shortly after the official complaint, the complainant accepted a new job in gaming compliance, which she said she was accepting because she wanted to get away from her harassers. The next day, she went on medical leave because of stress she attributed to the harassment.
The complainant alleged that Parq did not act in a timely enough fashion, and that because of this, her “dignity, self-respect, and confidence have been severely impacted” by the bullying, the tribunal wrote in its decision.
“She questions her relationships with co-workers who she once considered friends, fearing they too will mock her. She feels ashamed of how she looks and sounds. […] She says she has been unable to heal and move on,” the Tribunal wrote.
However, the steps Parq took were exactly right, Mahil says.
“The director wrote her and said that they're commencing an investigation, and then they promptly proceeded with it and it took two months, which is reasonable,” she says.
“You want to have a fair process. You can't just make a snap decision, saying ‘This happened, so therefore, there's a violation.’ It had to be a fair and thorough process. Two months is completely reasonable. And then then they went beyond that too.”
Multiple witnesses interviewed in harassment investigation
Throughout the course of the investigation, Parq interviewed multiple witnesses over several weeks. On July 26, 2019, they interviewed three potential witnesses identified by the complainant. By August 27, 2019, they had interviewed the alleged harasser, who claimed to have no memory of the harassment.
However, the interviews with witnesses provided sufficient evidence to support the claimant’s allegations.
On September 18, 2019, Parq issued a "Final Written Warning" to the harasser, warning that any future conduct of a similar nature would result in termination. This is when they ordered her to formally apologize to the claimant.
Plus, they didn’t stop there, as Mahil noted; in June 2021, Parq reviewed and updated its bullying and harassment policy, re-naming it the "Bullying, Harassment & Unlawful Discrimination Prevention Policy," requiring all employees to attend mandatory respectful workplace training.
Document, document, document to ensure sound harassment investigations
It’s crucial to document harassment incidents from the very first moment of an occurrence, Mahil says, even if there is not an official complaint or even an allegation.
“It's not just that they ran a fair process, but it was a well-documented fair process, where they were able to provide the evidence that was necessary to show that they were fair and timely and thorough,” says Mahil. “So, backing it up with documentary evidence to support your argument, that was very important, and they had everything ready to go in the case that there was a complaint.”
Plus, thorough training and anticipation of misconduct is strongly recommended. Being on top of harassment policies is important, but won’t solve every problem or be 100 percent effective, Mahil says.
“People will still behave a certain way,” she says. “All employers should be taking those steps, and then you're still going to end up with bad behaviour, that's just the nature of human beings. So in that case, you have a professional human resources department that is able to jump in, as they were in this case, and deal with the issue, as they said, ‘fairly, timely, and thoroughly.’”
