If your enterprise or organization is riddled with issues like employee theft, sexual harassment, hostility, or fraud—and internal corporate investigations aren’t throwing up a bean—then it’s pretty clear that you’re going to have to call in the corporate private investigations cavalry. But, what if if you haven’t spotted any obvious warning signs but nothing is going as smoothly as it should? That’s where a corporate culture audit can come in handy.
Sometimes, the signs that corporate culture has slid sideways are glaringly obvious, but at others, they can be a little more demure. If you know that your business is not meeting its true potential, a corporate culture audit is just the solution for the job. This proactive and comprehensive assessment offers up a health check for all areas of your businesses, providing evidence-based strategies that will help you turn the corner once and for all. If this has piqued your interest, then lets dig a little deeper. Read on for seven indicators that you should take as a sign that urgent action is needed.
1. Pervasive Problems Have Become a Broken Record
If the same old loss reports, harassment complaints forms, or underperformance records just keep on sliding across your desk, then it’s time to raise the alarm. Ask yourself: Have you been pouring resources into internal corporate investigations and disciplinary actions, or perhaps sucking up holes left by minor but repeating corporate theft?
Either way, the nature of the problem—be it small or large—is fundamentally insignificant. Whether rooted with internal processes or personnel, until you get to the source of the pattern and address it, the cycle will not be broken. In contrast, when corporate culture is corrected, operations and employees alike can begin to truly flourish.
2. Accountability Has Fallen Out of Your Team’s Vocabulary
If your workplace meetings and exchanges tend to tumble into a charade of shrugging and finger-pointing, you can be certain that corporate culture has grown sickly. Engaged, happy employees within a healthy workplace environment are far more likely to step up and take responsibility for their actions. When everyone seems more interested in deflecting accountability, it comes with the cost of slumping productivity, and wasted time on all levels.
Particularly perilous, when leadership is behaving badly a mindset of “If the boss is doing this, it must be okay.” sets in. Grappling with executives and leaders who aren’t holding themselves accountable can be particularly challenging for internal corporate investigations, but an external investigator is perfectly poised to make impartial assessments, and suggest effective remedial options.
3. A Contagious Form of Apathy Has Struck
We all have our better days and our worst days in terms of productivity, but when activities have mysteriously slowed to a snails pace office-wide, you can be certain that a hidden cause awaits discovery. A healthy corporate culture shines with engagement, elevating the experience of both employees and customers. If your team instead exude a vibe of sapped energy and drained morale, then whatever lies behind it needs to be identified and neutralized before your profits and reputation take a hit.
4. The Employee Ethics Compass is Spinning
When we talk about employee ethics, we mean something universally shared rather than the cumulation of individual moral stances. It’s down to companies and organizations to establish a clear framework of values that employees can get on board with. This means more than talking the talk—the walk has to be walked too.
If employee ethics have lost their clarity, your team are likely to exhibit signs of an identity crisis—with cohesive productivity paying the ultimate price. One of the elements tackled by a corporate culture audit is assessing collective understanding of and quality of mission statements and values. From there, worthy common goals and a shared sense of purpose can be established.
5. Your Workforce is Lacking in Diversity
When it comes to corporate culture, one of the biggest red flags to be alert to is a lack of diversity in the workforce. What’s more, allowing homogeneity in terms of race, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation to become the status quo means actively stunting your organization’s ability to develop and grow.
Statistics tell us that the most common version of this picture is cisgender, straight, white men in leadership roles—recruiting, promoting, and mentoring others who tick the same boxes. However, a rut in terms of diversity can take many forms, and all are equally limiting. Employees who are able to bring a variety of experiences and perspectives to their team provide the strongest path towards innovation, evolution, and staying ahead of the competition. Not something to let slide!
6. Employees Are Working in a Pressure-Cooker Atmosphere
It’s true that the capacity to work under pressure is a prerequisite for plenty of job roles. However, all forms of baked-in stress needs to be effectively counter-balanced to avoid workforce burnout. Employees who are running on empty will not only lose engagement, but they may also begin to fall into a mentality that raises risk of corporate theft, misconduct, workplace bullying, or even white collar crime.
Employers who safeguard their employees’ wellbeing—harnessing workplace support, benefits, paid-time-off, and vacations—are more often than not rewarded with a team that can fire on all cylinders whenever required. Specialist corporate investigations can help to highlight an impending burnout that hasn’t been spotted by leadership, before major damage is done.
7. Poor Investments in People Keep Sending You Back to the Drawing Board
All too often, leadership can be entirely unaware that they are stuck repeating bad recruitment and promotion practices. Inescapably, investing in the wrong people is always a huge drain on resources—as the hiring, on-boarding, and training stages are repeated again and again.
Muddying the water further when individuals don’t meet expectations, focus frequently remains solely on retention strategies. While this is an important part of forging a strong corporate culture, investing in the right people from the get-go is also crucial if terminations and turn-over are going to be brought into line. In this area, a corporate culture audit may extend from examining recruitment and promotion policies into carrying out corporate background checks.
Corporate culture audits are a fantastic way to gain comprehensive insight into the health-status of your business—something that is often impossible to achieve from within. The results of our investigations will allow us to provide expert guidance on how to bolster the wellbeing of every aspect of your business. With a trusted corporate investigation specialist on hand, you can also be confident that investigations can be scaled as necessary, for impactive and cost-effective results. Learn more about Corporate Culture Audits from Lauth Investigations, or contact our team today for a free quote.