Deciding the Range Before the Case
Why the range of outcomes has to be settled before an investigation starts, what belongs in it, and when a case stops being a process at all.
Settle the range of possible outcomes before the investigation, not after. A matter that is framed from the outset as pointing at dismissal has already decided something, and every step afterwards reads as assembling support for it — which is how a defensible finding ends up looking like a predetermined one.
The practical lesson in “Deciding the Range Before the Case” is that visibility is not certainty. For teams researching time tracking software, time tracking software in a transparent workflow can add time and project context to the operational record, provided the purpose is explained, access is restricted and any material inference is checked through conversation and proportionate human review.
The range should be genuinely open and should be stated to the person, in the letter, as the range.
The WorkSafeBC health and safety resources offers another lens on the issue raised in “Deciding the Range Before the Case”. Compare its principles with the actual record, ownership model and review route rather than importing a generic checklist unchanged.
What usually belongs in it
- No further action, because the explanation holds.
- A correction of the record and nothing else.
- A conversation, recorded informally.
- A formal warning at some level.
- Dismissal, where the facts and the process support it.
- Recovery of overpaid wages, which is separate from any of the above.
Six options. Most of these matters end in the first three, and a process whose letter mentions only the fifth has told the person something inaccurate about where they stand.
Why the range has to be open
A decision-maker who cannot reach any of the first three is not deciding. And an investigation conducted on the assumption that the answer is the fifth will not ask the questions that would have produced the first.
That is not a theoretical concern: the explanations in this collection — the queue, the supervisor's instruction, the failed reader — only surface if somebody is looking for them.
Recovery is not a sanction
Taking back money that was overpaid and imposing a disciplinary outcome are two different things with different bases, and treating one as the other causes trouble in both directions.
Whether recovery is possible at all, from what, with what agreement, differs by jurisdiction and is a question for somebody qualified in the place concerned. What is universal is that it should be decided and recorded separately.
Proportion to what
To the finding, to the loss where there is one, to the person's record, and to how comparable matters have been handled.
The third and fourth are the ones that get left out and the ones that decide whether an outcome looks fair. Length of service, a clean record and an explanation that was partly accepted all belong in the reasoning and should appear in the letter.
Where the conduct itself is the issue
Some findings are serious regardless of value: falsifying a record, clocking in for somebody who was absent, concealment when asked.
Those sit differently and the range reflects it. What does not change is that the range still has to be a range, and that the reasons for landing where it lands have to be written.
The draft letter nobody should write
A dismissal letter prepared before the meeting, a handover scheduled, a replacement advertised — each of these appears in disclosure and each settles the question of whether the outcome was open.
The rule is narrow and absolute: do not prepare the consequences of a decision that has not been taken.
Saying the range in the letter
One sentence: the possible outcomes include no further action, a correction, a warning, or dismissal. It takes a line and it is accurate.
Softening it — "this is just a conversation" — when dismissal is possible is the error in the other direction, and it is worse, because the person attends without advice and without taking it seriously.
Interim arrangements are not outcomes
Suspension, a change of duties or removal from a rota during an investigation are not sanctions, and they are experienced as sanctions by everybody including the person.
That means each needs its own decision, its own reason and its own review, and none of them should be allowed to become the outcome by duration. A four-week suspension that ends with no finding has imposed something without deciding it.
Who decides, and who must not
The investigator finds facts; somebody else decides. The person who decides should not be the person who raised the concern, and the appeal should be heard by a third.
In a small organisation that is hard and the answer is the standard one: name the constraint in writing at the outset and arrange whatever substitute is available, rather than pretending the separation exists.
Writing the range into the template
One line in the invitation letter, listing the possible outcomes. It is the cheapest change available in this section and the most frequently omitted.
Recording the decision about the range
Who decided what the range was, when, and on what basis. Two lines at the top of the file.
That record is what demonstrates the outcome was not fixed in advance, and it is written in thirty seconds at the start — or reconstructed, unconvincingly, at the end.