To ask an HR person on here a question?

[Poppu]

If you have been reported by an outside source to your company about something you’ve posted online - racist (use of n-word”, highly misogynistic, referring to women as “bitches” and saying you manipulate them to “get pussy” 🤮🤮

How long typically does an investigation take for it to be concluded? Would this be serious? Is it common for a person to be put on leave during the investigation?

What is the company social media policy? Does the person state on their profile where they work or what they do for a living?

People who use the AIBU just for traffic should be banned.

Id hope that sort of thing is so unusual that there's no such measure as a typical time for an investigation or any kind of common approach across all employers. I'm not even sure how there could be, wouldn't each case be unique?

Don’t know their policy but it was on YouTube (just a voice recording no face) but the channel is in their full name and their photo is a professional headshot (it’s the company one but doesn’t identify said company)

I am a HR Director. Policy aside, my common sense view would be to speak to the employee to make them aware of the complaint, and to ask for their view on it. I wouldn’t go straight into any formal procedure and I wouldn’t suspend them. If, after speaking with them, they said “Yes I did do that” then I would have to consider whether it has brought the company into disrepute and whether it is serious grounds for breaching the company’s moral code of conduct / values. At that point, I may then suspend pending investigation.

Depends on whether there was a clear link with the company or not. If it was on personal SM with no mention of employer, so no links unless you fished for them, it's much less serious from an employment perspective than if you do it while representing the company in some way. They may well suspend while investigating, this isnt unusual and isnt a sanction or sign they will find misconduct.
If you're the complainant, you probably won't hear the investigation outcome due to confidentiality/GDPR for the employee. So it may have been concluded already.

That’s crazy that I could say racist comments but my work wouldn’t care because I did it in my own time.

Its not that they necessarily wouldn't care, its just that employee protections mean they are restricted with regards to how far they can stray into employees private lives. There are usually policies about bringing the company into disrepute, but this relies on an ability to link the disreputable act with the workplace. There will also be policies about committing criminal acts, so if the racism could be defined as illegal then they could act. However the law does not typically allow employers to dismiss their staff for expressing views they may disagree with in their personal lives.

They also laughed about someone being r*ped and said they’d do it again. Is that ok?

No one is saying that any of this is ok. That is not what you asked.

And you are allowed to say rape on here.

We commenced disciplinary proceedings over some comments made on LinkedIn but due to the nature of that platform they knew colleagues would see them (ie creating toxic culture) and it was linked to our business. I’m not sure what we’d do if it was on a different platform and reported. We do work with vunerable demographics so have clear safeguarding policies, I suppose consult those. If we were a spanner factory (for instance) I wonder if that would be different.

OP, if they haven't linked their social media to their employer in any way then it depends on their profession and the employer's social media policy. E.g. a doctor posting a video like that would be breaching their professional code of conduct. If what they've posted isn't particularly linked to their profession or what their employer actually does (e.g. if they worked for a charity supporting asylum seekers it would probably be an issue) and isn't a breach of the employer's social media policy, there probably isn't much the employer can do.
Working in HR for many years, I came across lots of staff who I wouldn't have chosen to spend time with, some of whom I'm pretty sure we're racist, sexist etc, but I wouldn't have been able to sack them all.

Employers can't just take someone's word for it that an employee did this. They have to consider whether it could be a malicious false allegation. It's easy to fake a screenshot of something horrible on social media and then claim that the post was subsequently deleted.

Nobody is saying it’s okay, just that it’s possibly none of their employer’s business.

You can largely do what you like in your own time, your employer doesn’t own you. Provided this wasn’t done while representing the company, or with links to the company, it’s quite probably going to be nothing more than a chat with work.

It wasn’t a screenshot it was a voice recording on their YouTube channel which displays their full name and has their photo on it.

Either way you won't find out the outcome as it breaches the employees GDPR. They're unlikely to give you a timeframe either.

If you ask them what happened they may say something vague like the incident was investigated and dealt with.

There are too many different factors involved to guess how long and what the outcome would be.

Ex HR here, I can't say what the company will do, it depends on how far they want to take it but I do always remember a case we studied in depth.
A convicted peadophile was 'outed' and everyone refused to work with him, he kept telling people what he wanted to do to kids, there was a huge stand off so a lot of legal advice was sought.
It was concluded that he wasn't doing anything wrong in terms of his employment and there wasn't a reason that could be used to end him employment.
Just goes to show that employment law and the actual law don't always go hand in hand.

I agree with PP. How do you know about the complaint OP? If this is someone you know well, I’d be advising them to remove the channel sharpish.

Why are you asking strangers on the internet how long an investigation takes? Nobody here can give you a definite answer, and dragging it onto AIBU for traffic makes it look like you care more about gossip than the actual issue. If it’s that serious, report it to the police and let the company deal with their own process.

Someone was saying what they wanted to do to children whilst they were in the workplace? 😳

Yes, disgusting!

Of course not. But workplaces don’t own people. They are restricted in what they can do about what people do in their own time. As others have said it will depend on policy, link to the workplace, etc

I think the legal advice sounds a bit shoddy at best. I’d say telling people in the workplace he wanted to abuse kids amounts to misconduct and/or some other substantial reason justifying dismissal

Doesn't it depend on the work the employee does. Eg if they work for a company that promoted itself as being inclusive , diverse and supportive of women's rights then surely they wouldn't want a racist misogynist working for them?