What is a workplace investigation? Buckingham Palace and the investigation of bullying against Meghan Markle

A year and half ago, right before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah was to be aired, news emerged that an investigation was being undertaken to explore allegations of bullying by the duchess towards her staff.

In this two part post, I will unpack the pillars on which every fair workplace investigation must be fixed upon and offer some insights on how different cultural styles of communications can lead to misunderstandings to the extent that some may feel bullied, undermined, and disrespected.

A brief overview of this case: 

At the time of the bullying reports, there were claims that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s communications secretary had made attempts to protect a number of palace staff working under the duchess. There were allegations that Meghan’s behaviours had resulted in two staff members leaving and a third one’s ‘confidence [was] being undermined.’ Meghan Markle’s representatives denied these allegations from the very beginning and even expressed sadness at what they perceived to be yet another character assissination by the mainstream media and possibly the Palace staff. Buckingham Palace, the head branch of this corporation, stated that they would begin a workplace bullying investigation into such allegations. 

This week, after a year and half, it was leaked that the investigation was completed by a third party law firm, that the results will not become public to protect the privacy of those who participated, and that there will be some changes made to the HR policies of the Palace. It was also confirmed that Meghan and Harry were not invited to participate in this inquiry. 

Any workplace investigation is complex and multilayered. This particular workplace is even more complex and nuanced as, there are multiple factors at play here including lack of information and context that the general public - myself included - has, the PR games being played between the three branches of this organization, and a possible smear campaign against the only racialized woman of the ‘working Royal’ who herself was a subject of relentless bullying and racism at least by many mainstream outlets and internet trolls. My purpose here is not to decipher the truth, rather to point out the pillars that must uphold any workplace investigation for it to be fair and just. 

What is a workplace investigation?

A workplace investigation is an impartial process of discovering and therefore determining, through collecting evidence, how likely it was for an alleged action to have taken place. 

There are four pillars that any workplace investigation must abide by: Fairness, Thoroughness, Timeliness, & Confidentiality

Fairness: 

An investigation must be fair to all the parties involved, including the complainant, the respondent and all the witnesses. In this sense, those who have been accused of a behaviour must be given time and space to not only know the details of such allegations, but to also have time to respond to them. An investigation that does not involve the respondent in its process, lacks the most basic pillar of an investigation, since it was not fair to at least one of the parties. 

If the reported stories are true that Meghan Markle was not asked to partake in this investigation and therefore was not given a chance to respond to the allegations made against her, then the results of this investigation are fundamentally flawed, one-sided, and do not include the full picture of the events. Therefore, any changes made to the HR policies, any attempt at problem-solving this issue will not address the entirety of the situation.

Thoroughness: 

A teacher of mine once said about investigations: “what is fair is thorough and what is thorough is fair.” An investigation must be thorough enough to go through all the relevant evidence and witnesses in order to get the best possible image of the conflict and the situation. 

Timeliness: 

An investigation must be done in a timely fashion in order to mitigate further harm. If an investigation takes too long, it might actually impact the evidence as the witness's memories might be impacted by retelling the story and even further gossip about the situation. Delaying the outcome delays the remedy, regardless of what that outcome is. 

Confidentiality:

As much as possible, the process and the information obtained must be kept confidential. People who are participating as witnesses in an investigation are often told and even asked to sign a confidentiality agreement to not talk about the interviews with colleagues at work. 

Without these four pillars the fairness of the process is compromised. 

Assuming the leak is accurate, it is not only the Duchess’s lack of participation that makes this process unfair, but it is also the lack of timeliness on the part of the employer to not address the Palace Staff’s attempts when they tried to raise some of these issues. 

Employees often reach out to those leaders they find supportive to try to mitigate these situations and to try to cope with them. It is the responsibility of the employer to follow up on such complaints not just to ensure that people are kept accountable, but also to reduce the harm to all the parties. Many employers still believe that a formal complaint is what triggers an investigation process and this over reliance on formal complaints prevents employers from listening and paying attention to the verbal complaints that their employees bring forward. 

Companies are mandated by legislation to provide a safe space of work for their employees. However, it is not simply about mitigating legal risks that face the company if they do not investigate, rather an investigation is a process that sheds light on what policies can be strengthened, what changes that can be created to include stronger safety measures for the workers, and what can be done to reduce harm. 

One of the greatest reasons to equip both employees and leadership in communications tools and techniques that allow them to speak on tough and challenging issues is to prevent a conflict becoming so big that would require legal interventions. And some of these communications hinge on understanding cultural differences in communication styles, more on this in the next post.