On Workplace Investigations, the Metaverse and Career Development (Part II)

Welcome to AccelPro Employment Law, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation about workplace investigations, the metaverse and how dolphins can fit into someone’s career story. Our guest is Lindsey Wagner, who founded Moxie, which offers workplace training and investigations to deter costly investigations and provide creative resolutions through mediation. (Listen to part one of our discussion.)

Workplace investigations have changed rapidly in the last decade, and more changes are coming, perhaps nowhere more challenging than in the metaverse. Preparing for such changes, both as an intellectual exercise and as a way to help clients, is part of what Wagner loves about being an employment attorney. 

“How are we going to handle those issues?” she asks. “It’ll be a fun and exciting topic. One of the things about employment law in general is it always keeps you on your toes, and it’s changing every day. There’s never a boring day.”

This is the second part of our interview with Wagner. In part one, we talk about best practices in investigations, how to avoid them in the first place and how to resolve them once they’re completed.

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Interview References:

• Lindsey Wagner’s Moxie profile.

• 8:28 | Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,  § 7, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq (1964). US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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TRANSCRIPT

I. INTO THE METAVERSE

Matt Crossman, Host: We’ve talked at length (in part one of our interview) about the trends and what’s happening in investigations. What’s next here? What other innovations do you see coming?

Lindsey Wagner: Like in every industry, there’s going to be a huge change with regard to artificial intelligence and investigations. What sort of ethical issues surround using AI to draft opinions and draft reports and so forth? What sort of confidentiality issues exist in that use of software? 

There’s also technology to tell if somebody’s telling the truth or if they’re lying from their voice and so forth. What are the ethics involved with using that sort of software as part of an investigation?

One of the other things that’s coming along is investigations in the metaverse and doing investigations for discrimination that’s happening in the metaverse. How do you identify the individuals that are making the discriminatory remarks? How do you verify their identities if they’re using avatars? 

That’s going to open up a whole new realm of issues for workplace investigators.