I'll try to give the pertinent info here, but please feel free to ask questions so that all can get a better picture of the situation;
In spring of this year (2023), I, along with 2 other members of the department I'm in were accused of and investigated for an array of offenses ranging from watching & sharing pornography in the office, misogyny, harassment, etc by another employee in our department. These were wholly and patently false accusations and not a single one was corroborated.
No reparations were made by the company or by the employee who made these false accusations, nor were there any consequences for this employee. We were investigated 3 times within 8 weeks and we all felt that this rose to the level of harassment via HR complaint. We had no recourse and had to repeatedly defend ourselves from complete nonsense. We felt as though we were completely hung out to dry by the company as a whole.
I'll save filling in all of the ridiculousness of how this came about since it's not relevant to my main question, but after multiple separate interviews with HR, all of it was found to be baseless and the investigation was closed. The accuser left the company soon after. I'll also note that we were told not to talk about any of this amongst fellow employees given that it was an HR matter.
Now to the important bit; many months after the investigation was closed, the HR director asked a non-executive employee (not someone on the “need-to-know” list for these kinds of matters) to lunch and during it discussed in some detail the investigation and that they “believed' the accusations and that we treated the accuser poorly because of their gender. This employee the shared the details of this lunch as they thought this was very inappropriate and in no way relevant to their job duties.
The HR director is obviously entitled to their opinion, but sharing this detailed information with this employee and expressing their views on our character during lunch seems to me to be beyond the pale. Not to mention that our company handbook has some specific language that prohibits this.
This is the first verifiable first hand account that they've discussed this with other employees, but we have reason to believe that this is NOT the first time. The work environment since the initial investigation is completely different than before and there is a general air of distrust and suspicion for those of us dealing with the aftermath of the baseless accusations that were made.
I, along with the other employees implicated are strongly considering making a formal complaint about the HR director's behavior to the company. Do we have grounds for this?
Note: the company handbook & policy explicitly states that HR investigation details must remain confidential unless there is a “business reason” for it to be shared.