When was the last time you did a health check of your organizational culture? When sat in the executive suit, it can be easy to imagine that the rest of the workplace is a hive of productivity; a well oiled machine. But what if your organizational culture is eroding right in front of you, and you haven’t even noticed?
Employees like knowing that their voices are being heard. So much so, that a recent Salesforce study revealed that this factor alone can infuse your team with a staggering 4.6x capacity to yield their best performance.
To tune into how morale really is on the work floor, an increasing number of businesses turn to organizational culture surveys. Today, we’re going to look for the qualities that should be built into your surveying strategy if you choose to take this route. We’ll also examine when a corporate culture audit may be a better fit for your business needs. So lets get right down to it.
Why Keeping Up With Company Culture is More Important Than Ever
The instability of the last few years has certainly taken its toll on business culture—not only across the United States but around the globe. Where rolling out organizational culture surveys annually would have once been considered an aspirational achievement, these days it doesn’t really make the cut.
The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, transitioning too and from working from home, climactic stresses, and economic uncertainty triggered by the war in Ukraine all add new layers of complexity to your organization’s cultural vulnerabilities. The good news is that keeping tabs on your team with tools like organizational culture surveys or corporate culture audits can enable you to stay ahead of challenges and build in the resilience that will ensure your business thrives no matter the bumps in the road.
Key Features To Look For in Organizational Culture Surveys Software
If you decide to go the organizational culture surveys route—or even combine multiple culture monitoring resources—what kinds of features do you need at your disposal? Digital survey building tools can be exceptionally handy, especially when they have been created with this kind of use in mind. You’ll want to be able to curate tailored questions that are relevant to your business and add company branding as a starting point, but let’s look at what else you’ll need.
Consider whether you’ll want to roll out different types of surveys, such as those looking at Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) which measures how likely your team are to recommended your organization as a good place to work, or pulse surveys which are—as they sound—brief and frequent in nature.
Finally, you’ll want to consider what kinds of analytics you’ll want at your disposal. The right survey software should allow you to track results over time so you can identify the evolution of corporate culture and zero in on teams and departments individually. You may also want access to benchmarks data, letting you compare your business culture’s performance to that of other companies.
When a Corporate Culture Audit Is the Better Option
Surveys certainly sound good on paper, but they need to be structured and strategically targetted if they are going to be an effective tool. Factors such as survey exhaustion—when employees get tired of seeing all those tick boxes—or bias unintentionally built into your survey can compromise its efficacy. If organisational culture surveys aren’t getting you the results you’d hoped for, it might be time to call on something a bit more comprehensive. If you haven’t surveyed your organizational culture before, it may be better to launch into the practice with a more insightful process than a survey alone. Similarly, if you are experiencing an escalation of signs of eroding corporate culture such as clique behavior, employee thefts, high turnover, workplace bullying, and even white collar crime, then organizational culture surveys are going to be akin to applying a band aid to a broken leg.
When the scope of an heir search crosses international borders, finding the right collaborator becomes key. Ultimately, you need an heir search expert who can deftly navigate a diversity of legal jurisdictions on your behalf and draw together the caliber of documented facts that will ultimately be accepted in a court of law. So who should you speak to? Let’s break down the ins and outs of finding the right genealogist or investigator for resolving international estate matters.
What Are the Qualities To Look For in an Heir Search Expert?
Due to an unfortunate lack of concrete standards laid out for those who can claim to be a professional genealogist in the United States, finding the right support to navigate international estate matters can be something of a minefield. Making the issue all the more complicated is that, when probate is opened and filed with the court, the details of an estate enter the public record. So, bereaved families and those serving them may well find themselves fielding vying candidates.
Particularly in the case of international estate matters, it is crucial to choose the right genealogist or investigator to assist. Not only should they be fully credentialed and forthcoming about their pricing and processes, but they should also offer the robust resources required to handle a broad investigation efficiently. This should include a weight of experience in conducting searches overseas, including the capacity to carry out vital record searches and the connections to obtain key records internationally.
For multi-faceted international estate matters, is it wise to identify an heir search expert within a company that affords them the support of multilingual research staff and investigators ready to go boots-on-the-ground abroad where necessary. Crucially, an under-qualified genealogist, while seemingly an enthusiastic option at first glance, can lead you down a road of time wasted, poor communication, and lacking results. Of course, the final puzzle-piece in identifying the right heir search expert is court-related experience. Don’t forget that they must be able to document and evidence their findings to a legally sound standard and may be called upon to testify to that effect.
Turn to an Heir Search Expert From Lauth Investigations International
Lauth Investigations International is a sizable multi-disciplinary firm that takes great pride in an exemplary 30-year track record for uncovering truth and serving clients in complex, multi-jurisdictional cases. Because—in addition to providing heir search services—we also specialize in locating missing persons, asset fact-finding, conducting corporate investigations,and much more, we are uniquely positioned to draw from countless resource pools in the name of setting international estate matters.
Our heir search expert services span locating missing, unknown, or estranged parties for notice of fund distribution in probate or intestacy matters. We can aid in the determination of beneficiaries abroad ahead of trust termination, reconstruct family trees, and provide expert witness testimony in court. In certain instances, we also pick up where a lesser-skilled genealogist has left off, verifying and completing third-party searches to bring them to a swift and rightful conclusion.
Whatever your heir search needs, we invite you to discover a trusted collaborator and a team capable of seeing international estate matters through to successful closure. Connecting with an heir search expert from Lauth International Investigations comes with no obligation and can help you shed light on the best way to proceed. Why not learn more about our comprehensive Heir Search Service, or reach out to our team today for tailored advice?
As part of an ongoing series, Lauth Investigations International is highlighting how poor corporate culture in professional sports starts at the top, and how changes in leadership can change an organization for years to come.
Even those who just casually follow sports news are already aware of the low threshold of behavior required of professional football players to remain in action. The standard of reprisal against football players for bad behavior has rarely even approached the level of appropriate, depending on the misconduct in question—but the Cleaveland Browns have set a new low in dealing with the fallout of Deshaun Watson and the sexual assault allegations made against him by 24 women who refused to be silenced with hush money. Despite these claims (which Watson continues to deny), it seems that at least the repercussions he will face within the NFL will be woefully lacking.
Initially, an arbitrator proffered that Deshaun Watson would face a 6-game suspension from the Browns in light of the allegations made against him, but those stakes were raised when the NFL instead decided to almost double that suspension to 11 games—and threw in a $5 million fine on top of that. While $5 million may seem like a girthy number, it’s nothing compared to the record-breaking contract offered to Watson valued at $230 million to be the team’s quarterback.
When asked about this decision, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam commented that they became “comfortable” meeting with Deshaun Watson following those allegations by the 24 massage therapists, and still decided to award him the contract. Haslam defended this decision by citing the precedent he set with running back Kareem Hunt after he was booted from the Chiefs after video footage surfaced of Hunt knocking a woman to the ground and kicking her. “We strongly believe [Deshaun Watson] deserves a second chance,” Haslam said, “We gave Kareem Hunt a second chance and that worked out pretty well.”
Haslam’s decision to give Deshaun Watson a second chance has already emboldened fans to show support for him in some truly tasteless ways. Outside the Browns’ stadium, one man was selling t-shirts in “support” of Deshaun in the Browns colors that read “B*TCH GIVE ME A MASSAGE!”. In another classless display, a man and a little boy appearing to be his son were also standing outside the stadium holding signs that read “F*CK THEM HOES,” AND “FREE WATSON,” respectively.
The prices that sports teams have willingly paid to keep athlete misconduct quiet and fans happy is far too high. Winning does not fix everything. The willingness to trivialize the literal dozens of accusations against Deshaun White that have been levied in recent months is the kind of inaction that breeds dissatisfaction and malcontent amongst players, employees, and fans themselves. From leadership to fandom, these actions can have very negative ripple effects throughout the organization. To learn more, visit our corporate culture audit page.
As part of an ongoing series, Lauth Investigations International is highlighting how poor corporate culture in professional sports starts at the top, and how changes in leadership can change an organization for years to come.
Vince MacMahon
The world of wrestling has changed significantly for the first time in nearly 40 years. Vince MacMahon, the man whose name is synonymous with the professional wrestling world, has finally retired from the world of what he calls “sports entertainment.” However, after a checkered history in front of the camera as a fictionalized version of himself and behind the scenes as the WWE’s CEO and creative director, those working in the WWE have reported a ‘night and day’ change in the federation following the exit of Vince MacMahon.
Since taking over the business from his father, Vince MacMahon has been largely credited with uniting the professional wrestling world by buying up competing factions of wrestlers throughout the United States and merging them under one banner, what we know today as the WWE. In 2021 alone, the WWE reported more than $1 billion in revenue in their fourth quarter report. At the age of 76, MacMahon announced his impending retirement on July 22 in the wake of a report released by the Wall Street Journal that he had made over $14.6 million in hush money to various women to quell allegations of sexual misconduct.
Following his retirement from the WWE, MacMahon’s daughter, Stephanie MacMahon has been named chairwoman of the company, becoming a co-CEO alongside Nick Kahn, the former head of CAA’s television department. Stephanie MacMahon’s husband, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who rose to wrestling fame in the 1990s, will now be in charge of talent relations and creative—a position previously heavily supervised by Vince MacMahon himself.
The change in leadership is already showing signs of strengthening the company’s corporate culture where it was previously buckling amidst MacMahon’s reported misconduct. According to Mike Johnson from the PWInsider, “One department where that change has been described as ‘massively night and day’ has been inside the company’s production end…there isn’t anyone yelling at the production truck or the announcers anymore since Vince MacMahon, who was extremely heavy-handed verbally over the course of TV productions, is no longer here.”
Since MacMahon’s departure more than a month ago, there have been reports of a dramatic uptick in morale throughout the WWE, with the work environment being characterized as less hostile. The feeling of “walking on eggshells” has disapated with at least one production employee reporting that the change in leadership has “allowed them to ‘feel like it’s fun to work here.”
When someone dies under unexplained or unexpected circumstances, families can feel fraught with anger and frustration. How could such a thing have happened? When will those responsible be brought to account? While patience may feel like a resource that is impossible to muster at this difficult time, the work of the death investigator is critical to the conviction of the guilty and the protection of the innocent. For true justice to be served, the truth must be brought to light.
With that in mind, today we are going to look at what the death investigation process involves—because understanding what is happening and why can take some of that distinctly painful bite out of the process. If you are facing such a challenging reality as you read this, hopefully our guide will provide at least a little vital peace of mind.
How a Death Investigator Serves the Bereaved
All too often, when someone dies, the circumstances surrounding the tragedy remain unpleasantly murky. Was it an unfortunate workplace accident or a dreadful case of negligence? What it a wrongful death or a homicide? An accidental overdose or a suicide? These harrowing questions can have dramatic implications for survivors, ranging from whether criminal proceedings might follow to whether a much-needed life insurance policy will pay out.
It is the role of the death investigator to reveal critical facts so that every question mark can be eliminated. At various stages of the the death investigation process, this mantle may be carried by a coroner or medical examiner, a law enforcement officer or agent, or a private investigator tasked with following clues that would otherwise be left to go cold.
It is important to know that, no matter the conclusions drawn as the investigatory process unfolds, there are always options available to continue pursuit of the truth. The first step, however, is to allow the coroner or medical examiner to do their work—so what exactly does that entail.
The First Stages of the Death Investigation Process
When somebody dies in a way that is unexplained, unexpected, violent, or due to an potentially infectious disease or pathogen, the very first action taken is to investigate the death scene, and this responsibility falls primarily upon the local coroner’s or medical examiner’s office.
A coroner or medical examiner will make an assessment as to whether police should be involved—if they aren’t already—and will document the scene, taking photographs and gathering evidence. They may also be the ones who track down next of kin to inform them of what has happened. Once this stage of the investigation reaches the appropriate point, they will arrange the removal of the body.
If it is considered pertinent, the coroner or medical examiner will conduct an examination of the body and potentially also order a post-mortem. A certified forensic pathologist will conduct the post-mortem exam, and may send samples to a lab for analysis in order to reveal more about the cause of death.
Once the coroner or medical examiner is ready to draw a conclusion on the manner of death, they will issue a death certificate. From there, if foul play is suspected, police or federal investigators will continue to investigate circumstances surrounding the death in order to build a case for prosecution and bring potential perpetrators to justice.
As the Death Investigation Process Progresses
If no crime is detected and nothing about the death warrants further investigative intervention by the state, the case of your loved one will be officially closed. If the police investigation evolves into a homicide, negligence, or wrongful death investigation, resources will be applied based on the scope and nature of the crime—hopefully moving towards resolution and the desperately needed answers that survivors are bound to be waiting for.
Unfortunately, at times, those left behind after a death are left feeling underserved by the authorities, dissatisfied with a coroner’s conclusion, or infuriated when the police seem to move onto other cases. If this is your reality, an independent death investigator from a private investigations firm can be the best candidate to pick up pursuit of the facts and right any wrongs that may have occurred along the way.
When investigating a death of any kind, a private investigator from Lauth Investigations International will comb through every piece of information available and roll out every resource in their toolkit to bring to light what others have missed. National licensure means that we can hunt through information databases on a par with those used by law enforcement—gaining insights that would never be available to survivors seeking answers alone.
By reexamining witnesses, analyzing evidence afresh, and pursuing new physical and digital leads, we can continue to fight for justice on your behalf, whether other avenues are exhausted or ongoing. If your loved one’s case remains open with the police, a private investigator can enter into collaboration with the authorities, bringing fresh eyes and enthusiasm to the search. So, if you require assistance with a death investigation, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our dedicated team are waiting for your call and can give no-commitment guidance on your options. Get in contact today to learn more about how we can help.
