Templates
Investigation report templates
Free workplace investigation report templates with complete filled-in example reports. Covers the full report, the summary report, and the findings memo — each with a worked example and a section-by-section writing guide.
The investigation report is the document that survives. Interviews fade, notes get lost, and the investigator moves on — but the report is what a tribunal, an arbitrator, an opposing counsel or a regulator reads two years later, and it is judged on whether a stranger can follow the reasoning from allegation to finding without having been there.
Each page here gives you a blank template with the sections in the order they should appear, and guidance on what belongs in each — including the parts investigators most often get wrong, like stating a standard of proof and separating what a witness said from what the investigator concluded. The full investigation report additionally carries a complete filled-in example written against a realistic fictional scenario.
4 templates in this section
Workplace Investigation Report Template & Example
A complete workplace investigation report template with a filled-in example report, plus a section-by-section guide covering scope, evidence, credibility, standard of proof and findings.
Template + worked example + .docx
Short Investigation Report Template & Sample
A short-form investigation summary report template for straightforward matters, for when a full report is more process than the complaint warrants, without dropping what makes a finding reviewable.
Template + worked example + .docx
How to Write a Workplace Investigation Report
How to write an investigation report: the drafting order that works, the register that survives quotation, and worked before-and-after passages from a draft.
Template + worked example + .docx
Investigation Report Review Checklist: 12 Checks Before You Sign
A pre-issue review checklist and record for a draft investigation report: twelve checks, with a filled-in example that finds five defects three days before signature — including one that editing could not fix.
Template + worked example + .docx
Which report to write
The choice is not about how serious the matter feels. It is about who will read the document and what they will do with it. Write the full investigation report when the findings may support discipline, when more than one or two allegations are in play, or when there is any realistic prospect the document is read outside the organization. Its length is not padding — the sections that make it long are the ones that make it defensible: scope, methodology, evidence considered, the accounts as given, the analysis, and the findings kept separate from all of it.
Write the short-form report when the matter is narrow, the facts are largely agreed, and the audience is a single decision-maker who needs the outcome and the basis for it. The short form is not a lesser document; it is the same discipline compressed. What it drops is elaboration, not reasoning. If you find yourself dropping the reasoning to make it fit, you have chosen the wrong form.
If you have never written either, read the filled-in example on the full investigation report page before you draft, then work from the guide on how to write an investigation report — the template gives you the structure, and the guide gives you the drafting order and the register, which are where first reports actually fail. Once your own draft is done, the pre-issue review checklist is the set of questions to put to it before you sign — it is a reviewer's record rather than a report, and it is where the defects that survive a careful first draft get caught.
The distinction the whole document turns on
An allegation is what someone says happened. Evidence is what was gathered about it. A finding of fact is what the investigator concluded, on a stated standard, from that evidence. Reports fail when these three collapse into one another — most often in a summary section that reads as though the allegations were established simply by being recorded.
The practical test is whether a reader can tell, from the sentence alone, which of the three they are looking at. "The complainant stated that…" is an account. "Witness B's calendar entry for 14 April shows…" is evidence. "I find that…" is a finding. An investigator who writes all three in the same register has produced a document that cannot be relied on, however careful the underlying work was.
Write for the stranger who reads it in two years
You will not be there to explain it. Everything the report depends on has to be inside the report: who each person is, what each document is and where it came from, what you asked for and did not get, and why.
The omission that causes the most trouble is the unexplained gap. A witness who was not interviewed, footage that was not obtained, a line of enquiry not pursued — each is a perfectly defensible decision and each looks like carelessness if the reason is not written down. Record the decision at the time you make it, in the evidence log, and carry it into the report.