Agency reports must include, for all employment investigations that have ceased or concluded into alleged misconduct or serious misconduct in the past financial year:
Outcome
The outcome of the investigation (select 1):
- Serious misconduct found to have occurred
- Misconduct found to have occurred
- No misconduct or serious misconduct occurred, or insufficient evidence to determine if misconduct or serious misconduct occurred
- Investigation ceased and no findings made – please explain why
An outcome is determined by an employer following an investigation. Only 1 outcome should be recorded and where an investigation led to multiple outcomes the most serious outcome relating to the staff member should be recorded.
Category
What the investigation related to (select all that apply):
- Gifts, benefits or sensitive expenditure
- Political neutrality
- Information security and acceptable use of IT resources
- Use of social media
- Racial harassment
- Sexual harassment
- Bullying and/or other harassment
- Discrimination
- Fraud or corruption
- Theft
- Dishonesty
- Conduct outside of work
- Dangerous behaviour at work
- Failure to follow reasonable instructions or meet workplace expectations
- Other – please describe
Each investigation can relate to multiple categories. Only select a category if it was a substantive element of the investigation (not incidental or peripheral). The description of what each category covers is set out in Appendix 1.
Action taken
The action taken following the investigation (select 1):
- No further action taken
- Letter of expectations
- Warning (including verbal, written and final warnings)
- Dismissal (including on notice dismissal or summary dismissal)
- Staff member resigned before an action could be determined or applied
- Other – please describe
For each investigation only the most serious sanction applied should be recorded.
Job level
The job level of the staff member being investigated (select 1):
- Senior Manager (tier 1, 2 or 3)
- Manager
- Staff member
These job level classifications align with those used in the public service workforce data collections. In small organisations, tier 3 managers may function as team managers and may not ordinarily be considered senior managers, however for reporting purposes tier 3 should be grouped as senior managers.
Employee names, job titles or employee ID numbers should not be included in reporting.
Free text responses should be concise and not include unnecessary personal information. Reporting may identify high-level themes from free text responses but will not include verbatim responses.
To support accuracy and minimise effort at the conclusion of the reporting period, we suggest organisations keep a record of investigations as they occur over the year. It may be useful to utilise a table like the example in Appendix 2 to ensure an accurate record of investigations is kept.
Reporting should record individual employees separately
For reporting purposes, where an employment investigation involves multiple employees facing allegations of misconduct or serious misconduct, please record the outcome for each employee separately. This ensures that outcomes of investigations are counted per individual, rather than as a single case covering multiple employees.