3 steps for honoring employees' confidentiality requests.

Sometimes it's impossible for HR to honor an employee's request to keep a conversation confidential. For example, harassment complaints must always be acted upon and moved up the chain, regardless of an employee's wish to keep the matter quiet.

However, there may be times when an employee wants to discuss a co-worker's questionable behavior, but does not want a full-blown investigation conducted. It is not necessarily unreasonable to honor the employee's wishes--up to a point.

If the behavior does not rise to the level of illegal harassment and you decide you can honor an employee's request for confidentiality, take these three steps to protect both the employee and the company.

1 Document the circumstances and the basis for your decision. Spell out that you advised the employee to disclose any future problems to...