On HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor gave Lynnette Heath, CHRO at nVent, a case with fault on both sides. A company installs productivity monitoring software on its remote employees’ laptops. One employee finds it, leaves it in place, and starts working on a decoy window while he handles personal matters. When HR raises the low productivity the footage shows, he flips the conversation.
The monitoring was never disclosed, he says, it breaks state surveillance law, and it amounts to an unlawful search. The company says the laptop is its property and the policy update went out by email. The employee never clicked the acknowledgment box. Lynnette did not start with the monitoring software. She started with what the employee chose to do once he found it.
Why the Integrity Question Comes First
Lynnette’s first move is to collect facts, not to rule. She would put questions to IT, the manager, HR, and the employee, four workstreams in her words. She wants to know how the productivity was measured and whether the cited law says what the employee thinks. She has often had employees quote laws that turn out to say something else.
Then she separates two problems. In her view, the employee made a conscious effort “to hide something from the company.” That is an integrity violation, and she called it a huge one. She has handled cases where the underlying policy breach was not serious enough to end employment, but the effort to hide it was. “We have a zero tolerance when it comes to integrity violations,” she said.
Deliberate deception can rise to the level of gross misconduct even when the original lapse would not. In those cases, the cover-up weighs as heavily as the lapse.
What Fair and Consistent Actually Require
Lynnette was candid about her own opinion of monitoring software. It does not matter. What matters is the risk profile the company chose and whether the tool is used the way the policy says. HR’s job is to uphold that decision and check that it is applied correctly.
Her test for the outcome is consistency. Fair means treating this person the way the company would treat anyone else in the same circumstance. It does not mean the employee will agree. Rebecca added that inconsistency is where bias and discrimination claims find their opening, which is why a fair HR investigation follows the same path for the same type of case.
Lynnette also refuses to treat the manager’s report as the whole picture. A saying she hears from her boss holds that every story has three sides: the manager’s, the employee’s, and the truth somewhere in between. Each party brings a bias. Tools built to weigh interview credibility exist for exactly that gap.
What Actually Works
Tie the Productivity Claim to a Measured Bar
“Low productivity” is a claim, not a finding. Lynnette asks what the employee is measured against, how the bar was set, and whether peers in the same role are held to the same expectations.
She would walk in with the record. In a transactional role, that might be three years of output, a strong first stretch of remote work, and a clear drop since. Then the question becomes what changed. Clear performance standards for remote workers make that conversation about data rather than suspicion.
Hold the Conversation to Its Purpose
Deflection is common. Some employees steer toward the monitoring software; others steer toward a manager they call terrible. Lynnette acknowledges the new issue, offers to look into it, and returns to the topic at hand. “For now I want to talk about this,” she said.
She also listens for what deserves follow-up, because “both things can be true.” An employee can have a difficult manager and still be underperforming. She checks peer metrics without sharing individual data and asks whether a roadblock stands in the way. That is the core of a tough conversation at work: listen fully, then bring it back.
Make the Policy Impossible to Miss
The employee’s strongest argument is that nobody told him. Lynnette’s response is to look at every way the policy was communicated, not just the one checkbox he skipped. At nVent, employees cannot log in without clicking through the acceptable use policy. Her IT colleagues pointed to annual training and to the message every new hire hears with the laptop: it is company property.
Disclosure rules also vary by state. New York, for one, requires private employers to give written notice of electronic monitoring at hiring and to get the employee’s acknowledgment. That law asks for notice once, at hiring. Lynnette’s approach goes further: the policy sits in the employee handbook and comes back at every login, so nobody can say it was one email they never opened.
Where Employee Relations Fits
Rebecca called the setup an example of buying a solution and writing a policy for the worst behavior. Lynnette partly agreed. Monitoring can feel easier than asking frontline managers to know their people, check in often, and understand how productive each person should be.
The cost is connection. Lynnette describes herself as someone who extends trust from the start: “you have to lose my trust, not earn my trust.” A tool that watches everyone sends the opposite message. Gallup research by Randall Beck and Jim Harter found that managers account for at least 70 percent of the variance in engagement scores across business units. Handing the manager’s job to software erodes the strongest lever on how engaged a team is.
At nVent, a people leader goal sets expected touchpoints, and leaders are measured on it every year. AI can take other work so managers have time for career conversations, which are “those personal touchpoints AI should not take over.” The company has added AI coaching tools for managers that help them prepare before they sit down with an employee. She also warned against the extreme: a manager’s span of control stretched to 100 people because AI fills the gaps.
Investigations that start from software alerts still need a human record of what was said and decided. ER teams that run consistent workplace investigations can show the same process applied every time.
Frequently Asked Questions About Employee Monitoring Investigations
It can be. Lynnette treats deliberate deception as an integrity violation separate from the monitoring policy. At nVent, integrity violations carry zero tolerance, even when the underlying policy breach would not justify termination.
Not on its own. Lynnette would review every way the policy was communicated, including training, onboarding, and login prompts. State law matters too: New York requires written notice of electronic monitoring at hiring and an employee acknowledgment.
Acknowledge the new issue, commit to looking into it, and return to the original topic. Lynnette’s view is that both stories can be true, so the deflection may deserve its own follow-up.
No. Lynnette says her personal view does not matter. HR upholds the risk decision the company made and checks that the tool is used the way the policy describes.
Not in Lynnette’s view. At nVent, AI coaching tools help managers prepare, but career and performance conversations stay human, and a people leader goal measures those touchpoints every year.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Lynnette Heath’s framing starts with the job description. “My function is HR, but I am a business person,” she said. At strategy planning, she tells fellow executives that the plan in front of them “is not the HR strategy. This is the people strategy that we all own together.”
That view explains her approach to this case. The company’s risk decision is upheld, the employee is measured against the same bar as peers, and dishonesty is treated as its own violation. Software can flag a pattern. Her standard that no employee should be surprised by an outcome starts with the manager, not the tool.
See how AllVoices helps HR teams investigate conduct cases consistently, from the first report to the final decision.
