Well; there are tons of HR books with general advice and probably dozens about what you're discussing here.
The general consensus is that there is no right approach [1] but that there are a lot of best practices and no-brainers and that it seemed that very few of them were in place here.
As for my advice; there was just no escalation strategy at all here. HR is just like anything else with costs increasing exponentially the longer something goes undetected. That's why good HR isn't even so much about policy (although setting rules, no matter what they are, does help a lot,) but more about setting up structures so that you can resolve conflicts at an earlier stage.
[1] You can even see it in their statements where the first was the 'minimize legal risk' school of thought whereas the second was 'maximize empathy' kind of thinking.
The general consensus is that there is no right approach [1] but that there are a lot of best practices and no-brainers and that it seemed that very few of them were in place here.
As for my advice; there was just no escalation strategy at all here. HR is just like anything else with costs increasing exponentially the longer something goes undetected. That's why good HR isn't even so much about policy (although setting rules, no matter what they are, does help a lot,) but more about setting up structures so that you can resolve conflicts at an earlier stage.
[1] You can even see it in their statements where the first was the 'minimize legal risk' school of thought whereas the second was 'maximize empathy' kind of thinking.