An employee comes to you with a complaint. Maybe it is about another employee. Maybe it is about a manager. Maybe it is vague. The specific content matters less in the first 72 hours than the process your company follows in response to it.
The six-step process
Receive and acknowledge in writing
The moment a complaint is received, acknowledge it in writing to the employee. Not to agree with it, not to promise an outcome — to confirm it was received, that it will be taken seriously, and that the employee will hear back within a defined timeframe. This eliminates one of the most common retaliation arguments: that the complaint was ignored and adverse action followed the silence.
Do not tell the subject of the complaint
This is where most small companies create their worst exposure. The manager who hears about a complaint against them and begins preparing a counter-narrative. The owner who mentions it informally. Both create record contamination that makes a legitimate investigation impossible and a retaliation claim easier to construct.
Determine scope before acting
Is this a formal investigation or an informal inquiry? Does it involve potential legal exposure — harassment, discrimination, retaliation, wage and hour? Does it require a neutral investigator outside the reporting chain? Treating every complaint as a conversation and every conversation as resolved is a liability that compounds with every complaint that goes undocumented.
Document the process, not just the outcome
What was investigated. Who was interviewed. What was reviewed. What was found. What action was taken and why. An investigation without contemporaneous documentation is, legally, no investigation at all. The record is the investigation.
Make personnel decisions after the investigation closes
The most common retaliation claim sequence: employee complains, company takes an adverse action before the investigation is complete, employee files a retaliation charge. Timing is the entire case. Do not adjust the complaining employee’s status, schedule, or performance documentation until the complaint process is formally closed and documented.
Close the loop in writing
Tell the employee that the matter was reviewed and what the outcome is. Document that conversation and the date it occurred. This closes the intake record and prevents a subsequent claim that the complaint was never resolved.
Retaliation was the most frequently filed EEOC charge for the seventeenth consecutive year in FY2024 — representing 47.8% of all charges filed and totaling 42,301 retaliation charges. Most retaliation claims do not arise from the original complaint. They arise from what the company did in response to it.
EEOC FY2024 Enforcement Statistics · 42 U.S.C. §2000e-5Key Data Points
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