Are you ready to safeguard your company against the threat of workplace violence? Close to half of human resources professionals in the U.S. say that their organizations have been impacted by workplace violence, and yet more than half of American workers agree that their employers haven’t taken appropriate steps to keep them safe on the job. When we consider that one in four incidents of workplace violence goes unreported, the picture painted becomes yet bleaker. But happily, you can break free of these statistics and lead the curve by combatting workplace violence with a simple but comprehensive strategy.
Being able to mitigate workplace violence begins with a clear understanding of the dangers, a smart assessment of your unique company’s needs, and a savvy management plan to ensure you never get caught off guard. With that in mind, today we’re going to cover the main thinking points to consider when designing a business workplace violence policy, from human resource oversight to regular corporate culture investigations. So let’s get you set up to keep your brand and employees protected.
What Is Workplace Violence?
Many employers mistakenly imagine that their responsibilities surrounding workplace violence only begin with physical harm, but that is not the case. In fact, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) defines workplace violence as the act or threat of violence, ranging from verbal abuse to physical assaults, directed toward people at work or on duty.
This means that workplace bullying, discrimination, harassment, and threatening behavior can all fall under the umbrella of workplace violence just as readily as physical assault or an active shooter. Perpetrators may be employers, employees, associates, customers, or clients—but they may just as well be any peripheral outsider whose negative actions spill into the working environment.
Establishing a Violence Prevention Plan
When it comes to establishing a workplace violence prevention plan, no two businesses are the same, and each will need to create a customized strategy. In most instances, expert guidance can be invaluable in tackling each area required to keep your employees safe. For example, outsourcing detailed background checks can prevent those with a history of violent or abusive behavior from making it into your team, while periodic corporate culture audits can ensure that bullying or harassment isn’t taking place right under your nose.
Crucially, first and foremost, you want to make your company a hard target for those inclined towards workplace violence. In this area, a violence and threat assessment combined with a zero-tolerance policy is a great place to start. Next, you want to confirm that your teams are trained and prepared for any danger, knowing to look for signs of threatening, sabotaging, or destructive behavior, thus minimizing possible damage or injury. Not only will these endeavors reflect your strong stance on corporate culture importance, but they may well protect your enterprise against potential litigation—or even possible loss of life.
Putting a Response Strategy in Place
Alongside honing on-site security, recruitment strategies, and ongoing policy training, it is also essential to be ever-ready. Key to this is encouraging reporting throughout every level of your enterprise, with an open-door policy for better human resources oversight and, for larger businesses in particular, potentially a tip line. With that mechanism in place, every reported incident—no matter how minor—must be responded to. Workplace investigations should be scaled depending on the seriousness of the matter at hand, thoroughly documented, and reported as company policy and the law dictates. Inaction can result in both peril and liability. Would you like assistance with sculpting a tailored workplace violence strategy for your business? The corporate team here at Lauth Investigations International are seasoned experts in averting dangers in the workplace so that businesses can thrive at their truest potential. If you’d like to learn more about background checks, corporate culture audits, violence and threat assessments, and countless other forms of workplace investigations services that we provide, reach out to our team today for a no-obligation chat about your needs.
It’s every company’s worst nightmare. The very individual trusted to balance the books and safeguard assets has decided to try their hand at embezzlement. If your accountant or another trusted individual with financial oversight has done your enterprise dirty, what can you do? Rather than panic, it’s time to roll out a four-part plan to seek justice and get back on your feet.
Embezzlement is one of the nastiest kinds of white collar crime because its very nature implies a vicious abuse of trust. When someone intentionally misappropriates the assets that were entrusted to them, the sense of betrayal can be just as brutal as the hole in your balance sheets—which may be modest or may run into millions of dollars.
Shockingly, white collar crime costs American businesses billions if not trillions of dollars each year. Starkly, this means that, yes, it really can happen to you. More optimistically, it means that victims are not alone, and corporate experts such as those here at Lauth Investigations International are seasoned in providing the critical support you need to weather the storm ahead.
Detecting Embezzlement Doesn’t Have to Be the Start of a Nightmare
When an accountant or bookkeeper engages in white collar crime, detecting their actions can be difficult—after all, they are the experts in making the numbers add up. However, this fact alone demonstrates why additional oversight, background checks, and security protocols are so vital in white collar crime prevention.
Once you discover that gaping hole in your company’s finances, there isn’t a moment to lose. Any delay at this juncture can provide opportunity for the thief in your coop to take their final spoils and deftly cover their tracks—so don’t provide them with the satisfaction. Instead, contact an expert corporate investigations company so that they can immediately jump on evidence gathering and guide you through self-protective next steps.
Step 1: Rapid Corporate Investigations
Before you begin the process of recovering the health of your business, it is critical not only to understand the scale and nature of the crime but also to gather the concrete proof that will be required to out-maneuverer its perpetrator.
Within the realm of workplace investigations, this calls for a specific skillset. The corporate investigator may need to deep-dive into forensic accounting, look at CCTV footage, interview employees, conduct background investigations on suspects, and much more. Urgency is key for ensuring that the trail doesn’t go cold.
Step 2: Pursuing Asset Recovery
Depending on the nature of the crime and of your enterprise, asset recovery may be a timely process that runs through the courts or it may take place behind closed doors. Either way, the caliber of your evidence and the integrity of the investigations that generated it will be your ultimate assets. For example, our seasoned corporate investigations team is ever-ready to build and document an air-tight case, advise on legal obligations, and even provide expert testimony should the need arise.
Step 3: Planning For Financial Shortfalls
It can be brutally unfair, but following white collar crime, asset recovery can take time and is often only partial. This makes planning to plug any financial shortfalls key. This might make cash crisis management, restructuring, or debt restructuring strategically important as you keep your organization’s head above water.
Step 4: Safeguarding Against Future White Collar Crime
No matter the scale of losses following a white collar crime, no business will want to repeat the experience. Now that you know who to turn to for effective corporate investigations support, you have gained more than the capability to react to a rogue accountant. If you partner with Lauth Investigations International, you also have an essential toolkit for criminality prevention.
We can assist with critical violence and threat assessments—examining both on-site and virtual security measures. We can help you ensure that no other snake manages to slide into your team with comprehensive background checks, drawing on many of the same databases used by law enforcement. Finally, we can help you build a strong and united corporate culture that is hostile to those who would do you harm. A corporate culture audit can weed out and prevent risk of white collar crime, employee theft, workplace violence, and more—all while forging a more synergistic and productive environment that nurtures success. Learn about this and more by contacting our team today. From crisis-fueled corporate investigations to effective crime prevention, we’ve got you and your assets covered.
Have you ever noticed how defending against certain kinds of corporate threats can seem obvious but others less so? For example, data theft can be prevented with top-notch digital security and physical inventory theft with security teams and CCTV systems. These dangers are easy to imagine and anticipate, but others are ominously shadowy. White collar crime is a shadier case because the enemy often lies within—a trusted member of your team who decides to line their own pockets illegally.
Sure, white collar crimes might be non-violent, but they can dent or sink companies just as readily as bombs do ships. So what is the most important factor when aiming to block a white collar crime stealth attack? The answer might surprise you.
There are numerous practices and procedures that can act as layered lines of defense against white collar crime: human resources oversight, coordinated access control, dual-authorization for asset transfers, background checks for recruits, and more. However, a single factor can be more relevant than any of these, and that is corporate culture.
To understand why, ask yourself a few simple questions. What leads a person to want to rip off their employers, customers, or shareholders? What allows a team to decide not to report the nefarious activity of a colleague? When corporate culture sours, employees on any level can experience resentment, entitlement, or simply little enough emotional investment that they’re willing to turn a blind eye. So let’s explore how to avert these scenarios effectively through the strengthening of corporate culture.
Why You Should Care About the Culture Within Your Business
White collar crime can sound dramatic and unimaginable when we see it in the news, but in reality, more than 35% of U.S. businesses have felt the very real sting in its tail. For businesses that have allowed a toxic workplace culture to stew, the bad news is that white collar crime is just one of the potential symptoms of a corporate curdle. Others include employee theft, malingering, rapid turnover, FMLA fraud, bullying, harassment, discrimination, workplace violence, and more.
In a melting pot of bad corporate culture, you can be sure that by the time you start to spot red flags popping up everywhere, productivity will have plummeted and untold damage may have been done. However, it’s never too late to turn the ship around.
In contrast, a strong corporate culture is home to effective communication, high-caliber talent, shared goals and values, strong company loyalty, engaged and mutually supportive teams, and—critically—a universal sense of responsibility that makes the working environment hostile to those with criminal intentions.
Undoubtedly, it is very difficult to run a scam or scheme in an environment where everyone has their eye on the ball. Critically, employees who feel nurtured and supported within the workplace are far less likely to consider biting the hand that feeds them. With that in mind, let’s explore how to rapidly course-correct your corporate culture and keep it on track.
Combat White Collar Crime With a Corporate Culture Audit
Understanding not only how vital corporate culture is to the successful operation of any business but also how urgent addressing eroded workplace culture can be, we developed a comprehensive service to support proactive clients within the corporate sphere. The Lauth Investigations Corporate Culture Audit serves as a critical health check for businesses and a primary line of defense against white collar crime.
Some of our clients use this resource as a preventative measure, periodically reviewing their current corporate culture standing and setting a course for continuing improvement. Others use it as a fire extinguisher—a means to press pause on a situation that has gotten out of hand and take strategic steps toward a far more solid position. Our corporate investigations team provided tailored auditing, addressing everything from assessing operational efficiency, shared values, and communication practices to uncovering unseen wrongdoing and potential white collar criminality in the workplace. If we illuminate something that you weren’t expecting, we can also assist with swift, discreet, and effective corporate investigations to deliver justice and better protect your interests. To have a team of corporate culture and white collar crime experts in your corner, reach out to Lauth Investigations International today—because prevention is even more powerful than cure.
Following the release of a report by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform, more is known than ever about Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder and the role he played in perpetuating a toxic work culture within the franchise. The 97-page report has outlined for the public how Snyder “permitted and participated” in the Commanders’ toxic culture, including the obstruction and obfuscation of a congressional inquiry through evasion, witness intimidation, and remaining obtuse when questioned by the committee.
In addition to highlighting Snyder’s level of participation in disrupting the congressional inquiry regarding the toxic work culture, the report also indicated that the NFL, describing them as also sharing in the blame when it came to the subversion of the congressional inquiry. The chairperson of the committee, Rep. Carolyn Maloney told ESPN, “We saw efforts that we have never seen before, at least I haven’t. The NFL knew about it, and they took know responsibility.” Maloney’s went on to characterize the NFL’s actions as performative, describing a “coordinated effort to hide what they acknowledged.” Maloney is referring of course to the NFL’s effort bury an investigation into the toxic work culture of the Commanders, led by attorney Beth Wilkinson.
According to the committee’s congressional report, Wilkinson’s investigation found multiple allegations of harassment and abuse against other teams, and that the NFL prioritized the interests of league owners over those of their own employees, with multiple reports of failure to protect employees who could not report misconduct without fear of retaliation. The report stated, “Rather than seek accountability, the NFL aligned its legal interests with Mr. Snyder’s, failed to curtail his abusive tactics, and buried the investigation’s findings.”
Despite these findings of a toxic work culture against the organization and Dan Snyder, the NFL has declared their commitment to courses of action that directly contradict the findings of the report, with NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy releasing a statement that said the NFL is “committed to ensuring that all employees of the NFL and the 32 clubs work in a professional and supportive environment that is free from discrimination, harassment, and other forms of illegal or unprofessional conduct.”
Following the release of the congressional report, head coach Ron Rivera told DC News Now that he has continued to encourage his players to “focus on what’s in front of them, not the distractions,” as they move forward.
To say that Elon Musk has had a turbulent fourth quarter in 2022 would be an understatement as he continues to face new challenges and find innovative ways to remain divisive in his capacity as Twitter’s new chief executive officer. Since purchasing the company for a record $44 billion in 2022, the landscape of the platform has been nothing short of chaotic as Musk declared war on Apple for gouging their advertising campaigns and allegedly continues to champion free speech as the new CEO. The public’s reaction to these events have ranged from the vindicated to the horrified, but in all the pageantry of the possible flame-out, there are human beings who are being forgotten in the chaos—what remains of Twitter’s staff.
Back in October, Musk’s deal to purchase the platform finally went through after months of back and forth in a “will he, won’t he” corporate dance. Once he became the CEO of Twitter, however, he immediately fired half of the staff, as well as CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal, and announced that that he would be championing free speech on the platform in a way that he alleged had not previously been done before.
It wasn’t long before Twitter engineers began coming forward about some of the changes Musk was making. One engineer, Eric Frohnhoefer, got into a public argument with Musk on Twitter, which culminated in Musk apparently firing him through a tweet—and it did not stop there. Musk went on to fire as many as 20 other engineers who had spoken out against his actions either publicly or on the platform’s internal Slack channels. To the remaining staff, Musk sent a company-wide email with vague implications that operations were about to get more difficult, and demands employees commit to working “long hours at high intensity,” or face termination.
Since purchasing the platform, Elon Musk continues to rot the corporate culture of Twitter from within. It’s horrific enough to have public feuds with employees and increasing demands on a reduced staff, but some of the latest reports regarding work conditions at Twitter are nothing short of disturbing. The BBC reported just yesterday they had received photos of Twitter office space that had been converted into actual bedrooms. The photo shared by the BBC showed a double bed and a dresser along with a pair of slippers. There was also a photo of couches at Twitter HQ being used as beds.
Scott Wiener, a California state senator commented to the BBC, “It’s clear that he doesn’t really care about people. He doesn’t care about the people who work for him.” The photos have prompted an investigation by the San Fransisco Department of Building Inspection into whether or not violations are being made. An official from the department told CBS News, “We need to make sure the building is being used as intended.”
