Workplace Investigations in Municipalities: A Certificate Program

Best for: Municipal HR and labour relations professionals, internal investigators, senior leaders, internal legal counsel, union leaders, and health and safety professionals whose work intersects with workplace investigations.

This four-day virtual certificate program gives municipal professionals the tools to conduct fair, thorough and defensible workplace investigations. The program combines legal foundations, investigative best practices and skills-based learning with an understanding of the municipal workplace realities that often shape complaints, conflict and organizational risk. It is designed for those who are responsible for assessing complaints, deciding whether an investigation is required, interviewing parties and witnesses, analyzing evidence, making findings, or overseeing investigation processes.

Participants learn how to plan an investigation, manage procedural fairness, ask effective questions, assess credibility and reliability, organize evidence, write clear findings and recognize when an individual complaint may point to broader workplace risks. The municipal focus makes the learning especially relevant to environments where political dynamics, public-facing work, statutory obligations, bargaining relationships and operational pressures can all influence how complaints arise and how they should be managed.

Program agenda & key outcomes
• Assessing complaints and choosing the right response: investigation, conflict
resolution, coaching or another organizational intervention
• Legal definitions and case law on harassment and discrimination
• Planning and conducting fair, effective interviews with parties and witnesses
• Gathering, organizing and analyzing evidence
• Assessing credibility and reliability, identifying unconscious bias and applying the appropriate standard of proof
• Making defensible findings and preparing clear, objective and evidence-based reports
• Effective use of AI to support investigations
• Developing recommendations that support complaint resolution and broader workplace risk reduction

Dates: January 12, 14, 19 and 22, 2027 (virtual, 4.5 hours each day)

Cost: $1,975 + HST