Most organisations have a grievance policy. Far fewer have examined whether the way that policy is enacted in practice — the conversations, the interviews, the decisions about who conducts the process and how — actually does what it is intended to do.
A 2025 decision of the Administrative Review Tribunal made the cost of that gap concrete. Senior Member Simon Webb found that an employer had failed to account for a workers experience of family and domestic violence when informing her she was being investigated for a code of conduct breach. The process itself caused her to suffer a psychological injury. Senior Member Webb found that "important aspects of [the worker's] case were not considered and taken into account when planning the investigation, and this failure meant that real risks were not identified or managed."
The employer was held liable for the harm caused by how the investigation was conducted.
Why Investigations Cause Secondary Harm
Trauma refers to the lasting impact of experiences that exceed a person's capacity to process and integrate them. In workplace settings, sources include bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination, racism, and violence. But many employees also carry trauma from outside the workplace — family and domestic violence, systemic racism, accidents, bereavement — and will never disclose it.
This matters because a formal investigation is, for most people, an inherently activating environment. Being interviewed under scrutiny, being required to recount distressing events, facing uncertainty about outcomes — all of these can trigger a trauma response in someone carrying pre-existing harm. And that response is frequently misread.
When a person has experienced trauma, the nervous system remains on alert. In a formal interview, this can mean going quiet mid-sentence. Recalling events from the middle outward rather than start to finish. Remembering with precision that a window was open, but being unable to say exactly what was said or in what order. These are not signs of dishonesty. They are well-documented consequences of how the brain encodes memory under high stress. An untrained investigator who misreads them as inconsistency or evasion will reach findings that are both unjust and factually unreliable.
It is not appropriate for investigators to ask reporters or other participants whether they have experienced prior trauma. Nor is it appropriate to ask a manager who may have been told something in confidence to disclose it. The only workable standard is to assume that any participant — reporter, respondent, or witness — may be carrying trauma that is not visible, and to design every process accordingly.
It Is Not Just Reporters Who Are Affected
This is worth stating plainly, because it is often missed. The harm caused by poorly designed investigation processes is not limited to those who raise concerns.
Respondents — the individuals against whom a complaint has been made — are also participants in a process that carries significant psychological weight. Being investigated, particularly where allegations are serious, is deeply stressful regardless of the eventual finding. A process that does not provide respondents with procedural clarity, a genuine opportunity to respond, and basic dignity in how they are treated creates its own risk of harm — and its own legal exposure.
Witnesses frequently occupy a difficult position: potentially present during distressing events, torn between competing loyalties, uncertain about whether speaking honestly will expose them to retaliation. Processes that treat witnesses as neutral information sources rather than people with their own stakes will routinely fail to gather a full and accurate picture.
Investigators and HR professionals are also at risk. Those who regularly receive disclosures of harm — bullying, harassment, sexual assault, abuse — are exposed to distressing material as a routine feature of their role. Vicarious trauma is a predictable occupational consequence of sustained exposure to the suffering of others. Left unaddressed, it erodes both the wellbeing of the professional and the quality of their work. An investigator operating under unaddressed vicarious trauma may miss important signals, make credibility assessments coloured by emotional fatigue, or bring a cynicism to a process that demands genuine care.
Trauma-Informed Practice Is Not Soft — It Produces Better Outcomes
A common objection is that a trauma-informed approach weakens the investigation — that attending to psychological safety means accepting accounts uncritically or avoiding scrutiny. This misunderstands what trauma-informed practice requires.
It does not mean automatically believing the reporter. It means conducting a thorough investigation in a way that is fair to everyone involved — and that does not allow a participant's distress to be misread as a credibility problem. When reporters feel safe and respected, they provide more complete accounts. When witnesses trust that the organisation responds fairly to those who come forward, they are more willing to cooperate. The evidentiary base improves. Findings are more reliable. Outcomes are more defensible.
When reporters trust that raising a concern will be handled with care, they also come forward earlier — before issues escalate into formal disputes, legal claims, or workers compensation events. The downstream cost savings of early intervention are substantial.
Seven Principles for Trauma-Informed Investigations
Safety — physical, interpersonal, and emotional — is the foundation. Interview settings, language, and the degree of information provided to participants all shape whether people feel safe enough to engage fully.
Trust in the integrity of the process is built through consistent, honest communication — not assumed from formal authority.
Voice means allowing participants to tell their story in their own way, without being forced into a structure that doesn't fit their experience.
Collaboration addresses the inherent power imbalance. Giving participants agency over timing, location, and format — even small choices — restores some sense of control to people who may feel acutely vulnerable.
Emotional support means ensuring access to appropriate resources, including a support person and EAP — not counselling from the investigator, but genuine recognition that participation in a formal process is stressful.
Empowerment requires transparency at every stage. Opaque processes compound the harm already done. Language that implies blame or judgement before findings are reached makes it worse.
Diversity requires investigators to understand what each participant brings to the process — including their cultural, historical, and gender context — and to actively monitor the biases they themselves carry into it.
The Critical Question
The question worth asking is not whether your organisation has a grievance policy. Most do. The question is whether the people responsible for enacting that policy — managers who receive initial disclosures, HR professionals who manage the process, investigators who conduct interviews — have the understanding and capability to do so in a way that does not cause further harm.
Under Australia's Positive Duty — introduced under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 — organisations are required to proactively eliminate unlawful conduct including sexual harassment and sex discrimination, regardless of whether a complaint has been made. The Australian Human Rights Commission's guidelines make clear that how organisations respond to complaints is part of that duty. An investigation process that re-traumatises a reporter or causes further harm is not a neutral administrative failure — it is a potential breach of the Positive Duty, WHS psychosocial obligations, and as the ART decision shows, can ground a workers compensation claim against the employer.
Organisations that treat trauma-informed practice as a genuine capability investment — not a compliance formality — are better placed to respond to workplace harm in ways that are fair, legally defensible, and genuinely protective of the people in their care.
Felicity Menzies is the CEO and Principal Consultant of Culture Plus Consulting, a specialist practice focused on building respectful, safe, and inclusive workplace cultures across corporate and government organisations in Australia. Culture Plus Consulting provides workplace culture diagnostics and tailored interventions — including trauma-informed investigations training and trauma-informed focus group facilitation.