Workplace Investigations

There is no specific law governing workplace investigations in Brazil, but Law 14.457/2022 states that companies must have rules that relate to sexual and other forms of harassment in their internal policies, address the rules for receiving and processing accusations, assess the facts, and discipline any individuals directly and indirectly involved in acts of sexual harassment or violence.

If the investigation has any connection with anticorruption matters, the investigation procedure must comply with Law 12846/2013 (Brazilian Anticorruption Act) and Decree 8420/2015.

As a result, Brazilian employers usually follow the rules determined by internal corporate policies, which often result from international regulations and principles that differ from the Brazilian ones, which inadvertently expose the Brazilian subsidiary to liability. The answers below will highlight common examples of this, when appropriate.

While there are no specific laws that regulate a workplace investigation, there are several laws that companies should consider when conducting a workplace investigation concerning alleged employee misconduct.

One key example is the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA). The WPA provides legal protection to a whistleblower if their allegations are raised in good faith and are in the public interest as specified under the WPA. If the WPA applies, certain obligations apply to the company, including but not limited to the following:

• the obligation to protect the confidentiality of the whistleblower’s identity;
• protecting the whistleblower if the whistleblower suffers or is likely to suffer serious harm to life or health as a result of whistleblowing and the whistleblower requests protection; and
• refraining from taking retaliatory action on the whistleblower.

Therefore, if an employee raises allegations of another employee’s misconduct, the company should review whether the allegations fall under the WPA.

There are also special laws that impose obligations on the company if there are certain types of allegations (eg, sexual harassment, workplace harassment).

In addition, when collecting and reviewing employees’ electronic data, such as emails or files stored in work laptops or company servers, which may contain personal information, the company should comply with data privacy laws discussed in more detail in questions 7 and 8.

Companies may also have internal policies (eg, whistleblower protection policies, Code of Conduct) that may apply to workplace investigations, aside from the requirements under Korean law.

There is no specific legal regulation for internal investigations in Switzerland. The legal framework is derived from general rules such as the employer's duty of care, the employee's duty of loyalty and the employee's data protection rights. Depending on the context of the investigation, additional legal provisions may apply; for instance, additional provisions of the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection or the Swiss Criminal Code.