Harassment and Workplace Investigations Update: What #MeToo, The Fire Service and The Met Police Teach Us Handling Workplace Investigations
What the #MeToo movement, BBC Panorama Revelations, the Fire Service, and the Met Police teach us about handling workplace investigations
There is increasing exposure of systemic failures in how organisations handle allegations of harassment, misconduct and generally how workplace investigations are run.
The Independent Culture Review of the London Fire Brigade, Baroness Casey’s Review into the Metropolitan Police, and more recently, the BBC Panorama revelations into police misconduct have all laid bare deep-rooted issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, and abuse of power. They highlight repeated patterns of leadership failure, cover-ups, and flawed investigations where complainants were silenced, warning signs ignored, and toxic behaviour allowed to thrive.
These cases are a wake-up call for every organisation. When workplace investigations fail, cultures decay, trust erodes, and reputational damage follows. This session explores what these lessons mean for all employers and how to handle workplace investigations with fairness, rigour and humanity.
The session will cover:
Reminder of law against harassment and sexual harassment.
Anticipated legislative updates.
Learning from public sector failures.
Investigations: Getting it right from the start.
The role of bystander intervention.
What neuroscience can tell us about harassment.
How to empower change through culture, polices and training.
Victoria Hall and Pam Cannell, Impact Lawyers Ltd
Victoria Hall is an experienced employment lawyer, a Level 7 CIPD-qualified HR professional, accredited external workplace investigator, practising coach and a non-executive director. She is also an author, speaker, trainer and coach in the field of human performance. Victoria has extensive experience in advising on employment law and HR issues covering the employment life cycle including recruitment & onboarding, employee management, employee engagement, equality, diversity & inclusion, TUPE, re-organisations, redundancies, settlement agreements and other exit strategies. With a background as an operational manager and officer in the Royal Air Force (RAF), Victoria’s unique combination of operational and legal experience enables her to deliver practical, common-sense, and legally sound advice, always from a human perspective.
As a Global HR Director, Pam Cannell leads the delivery of tailored HR consultancy services, addressing both strategic initiatives and day-to-day HR challenges. A chartered member of the CIPD, Pam is a senior international HR professional with over 25 years’ experience designing and implementing people strategies within organisations across a breadth of sectors, including engineering, information services, telecommunications and banking. Leaving the corporate world in 2019, Pam now specialises in supporting businesses to develop robust and sustainable growth strategies. She is also highly sought after for her forensic approach to the investigation and resolution of complex, ambiguous and high-risk employee relations cases. Pam has a reputation for being pragmatic and commercial, for operating with honesty and integrity, and for delivering at pace in extremely complex environments