false Accusation made against an employee

[Willow75]

Hello, I am hoping that somebody may be able to offer some advice on an unfortunate situation that I am currently experiencing.
I apologise in advance for the long message but it is quite long winded.
I am self employed and have been carrying out sub-contracted works on a school, the work has been completed to a high standard and without complaints.
I was informed by the main contractor, whom I was working for, late yesterday evening that the school had received a serious accusation against one of the engineers that were onsite carrying out the work. The contractor asked if I would attend a meeting the following day along with my engineers to help with their investigations into the allegation. They mentioned that they had arranged for their external HR advisers conducting interviews during the meeting.
I along with my engineers have attended the meeting today and have been interviewed by the HR advisers and it appears that one of the engineers has been accused of making a racial comment to a child within the school.
The child has described the engineer in detail (hair colour and facial hair) and this description does not match any of my engineers at all, although it does match the description of the main contractors engineer.
All of my engineers have stated that they have not made any racial comment or spoken the words that the child has stated were said.
One of the main contractors employees has admitted that he has said 'some of the words' that the child said he heard. He has Accused our youngest engineer of speaking the 'other comments'
Our employee has denied hearing or saying any of the words.
The main contractors HR advisor was very intimidating when he interviewed our youngest employee and was almost trying to 'make' him say that he had spoken the words.
Our employee is adamant that he has definitely not said anything and we feel he is being used as a scapegoat as the main contractor could potentially loose a considerable amount of work if they are accused of racial abuse.
The main contractor has said that their HR Adviser will generate a report of their investigation and forward it over to the school.
We are concerned that this report will be in favour of the main contractor and that our young employee will be made a scapegoat."

I would really appreciate some help as I do not know where I stand legally, what I am entitled to read or have copies of and am I entitled to read the report prior to it being sent to the school. Can I request that the report is not sent to the school if I disagree with its content.

I have asked the main contractor to confirm if the child heard the words being spoken from one person or from two people.
My thoughts into this are that the main contractors engineer has already admitted to saying that first part of the allegation but denies saying the second part.......if the child has heard the words spoken by one person then surely the main contractors engineer must have said all of the words.

Many thanks in advance. X

[Willow75]

I was wondering if there is anyone available to offer advise on this matter as I desperately need to know which way to go with it.
Many thanks x

[paulajayne]

"The child has described the engineer in detail (hair colour and facial hair) and this description does not match any of my engineers at all, although it does match the description of the main contractors engineer."


So NOT your engineer!

Why are you therefore involved?

[Willow75]

Thank you so much for your reply, I really appreciate your help.

We have been racking our brains trying to think of how we prove that our engineer is telling the truth when really the fact is the child has described the main contractors engineer in detail.

Our main concern is that the main contractors report to the school is going to read in their favour and still accuse our engineer.

Are we legally allowed to put in writing our version of the incident and request that we read their report prior to it being Submitted to the school.
The main contractors HR advisors are refusing to send us a copy of the voice recordings from the interviews on Friday, are legally entitled to the voice recordings made of our engineers.

Our company has an excellent reputation and we are worried that the main contractor is trying to tarnish our reputation to save the their own backs.

Should we be thinking of employing a solicitor to fight our corner as I am not very good at writing legal letters!!

We were thinking of sending an emailed l to the main contractor tomorrow stating our concerns and send a copy to the schools head mistress so as to ensure that we get the truth to her.

Many many thanks for your help. X

[ULA]

Firstly a couple of question. You said you are self-employed and then spoke about your engineers - are they directly employed by you on contracts of employment? I'm just trying to understand the "employment relationship" between you and "your engineers" in order to better respond to the issue. Also did you and your engineers know that the meeting was being recorded and I get the impression it was not a one-on-one situation but you were all together and witnessed the questioning of your young employee.

Is there any further update as I know I an coming in on this a couple of days after your first posted.

[Willow75]

Dear Ula, Many thanks for your response I really appreciate it.
The engineers are directly employed by us.
The main contractors HR advisor asked if they could record the interviews and I sat in whilst our engineers were interviewed separately.

The HR Advisors have still not sent over a copy of the recordings, they said that they would send them immediately after the interviews were taken on Friday afternoon.

The main contractor has contacted me again today to say they have called in their engineer for a second interview to clarify some points and he is still adamant that he spoke the first part of the phrase and that our engineer spoke the second part of the phrase.
The main contractor has confirmed that they have submitted their report to the school today and that they will be attending a meeting with the school tomorrow.
We feel that their report will be in their favour and not reflect our side of the investigation.

I really do not know if or what I need to do next.

Many thanks x

[ULA]

Thank you for the further information. Firstly please understand my experience is within a normal employee/employer relationship so I am a bit unsure how the environment works in regard to your relationship to the main contractor are you sub-contracted by them? The only reason I ask is to try to understand why it was the main contractor's HR advisors who were interviewing your employees?

That aside I would suggest the following courses of action. Firstly formally, by email, request a copy of the recordings pertinent to your staff in accordance with your discussion with the HR Advisors together with a copy of the report the main contractor has submitted to the school. If they are not willing to provide the full report they should as least provide a copy of the part that relates to the investigation/interviews carried out with your employees and any other exerts that relate to your employees. Secondly I would suggest that you follow whatever internal procedures you have in place to carry out an investigation into the situation yourself, as if you had been notified directly of it, rather than through the main contractor and then carrying out an investigation in accordance with that procedure. Ensure that you have a neutral person (someone not previously involved in events so far) in your company to take notes of the investigatory meeting also if your employee has any witnesses that may have seen the incident or heard what was said then they should be interviewed as well. Thirdly I suggest you email the school, inform them objectively the process you and your staff have been through, that you have co-operated with all requirements of the main contractor, however in order to be fair and thorough in regard to the situation you are following your own internal investigatory procedures and will make a further report to the school on the outcome of your findings. Obviously time is of the essence of they have submitted your report today.

I am not sure what else to suggest at the moment just trying to give you options which may help the outcome for your employee. In regard to the correspondence to the school hopefully it will support a view that you are engaging with the seriousness of the process but as the engineer's employer you have the right to carry out your own investigation which should be reported back to the school for them to review alongside the main contractors report. Also given a "second" person is being implicated the school should try to ascertain from the child, who has given a detailed visual description, whether anyone else was involved in the situation and if so try to get a description of that individual.

At this stage not sure what else to suggest you can do - hopefully this helps

[Willow75]

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, I really appreciate it.

The main contractor has telephoned this morning to say that they have attended a meeting with the school this morning and the school are happy with the report submitted.
The main contractor has said that the school have suspended the main contractors engineer (he admitted to saying part of the phrase) and they have suspended our young engineer from school sites even though he has denied saying anything and there is no evidence to state that our engineer said anything.

Should we still approach the school to try to clear our young engineers name?
Should we still carry out our own internal investigation?

Many thanks

[ULA]

Thanks for the update.

How sure are you of the denial of your engineer that he did not say anything? Obviously you sat in with the interview the HR Advisor had with the engineer however as his employer you need to satisfy yourself of his innocence and if that needs further investigation then you should undertake it - I think this is an important factor because you cannot be seen as an employer to "brush aside" allegations of radical comments being made by your staff without a thorough investigation of the facts.

This is also important in terms of your possible next steps. Since your en

gineer is suspended from school sites do you have alternate work you can transfer him to i.e. contracts that are not schools sites? If so and you can satisfy yourself that he was not involved in the allegations then maybe that is a solution to his ongoing employment with you. If however you only deal with school sites then you would need to open a dialogue with the school in order to try to clear your engineers name and get him reinstated on school sites. Whether by doing your own investigation and reporting to the school on your findings will prompt them to reconsider is something that you can discuss as an option with them, however their decision may still be unchanged.