Run any business long enough, and eventually, you are bound to encounter the challenges that come with incidents of employment violations. Unlike many cases of criminal activity in the workplace, this kind of employee misconduct may not lead to litigation. However, it could still represent a significant threat to the financial and functional stability of your enterprise, making it vital to remain alert and take action at the first sign of trouble. When you first suspect a significant threat to your business, it’s crucial to consult a workplace investigator.
So, how might employers measure this threat? Well, an employment violation can be described as any action or behavior that defies the policies, rules, and standards set by the company in question or the laws to which it is bound.
This type of employee misconduct can range from malingering and time theft through to harassment and discrimination, non-compete violations, company asset misuse, and more. Essentially, the scale and scope of employment violations can vary substantially, but when appropriate workplace investigations are launched, an employer is well positioned to protect themselves.
It’s easy to imagine kick-starting a swift and effective investigation after a possible employment violation has been reported, but a concrete complaint or witness testimony isn’t always a necessary trigger.
If as an employer, you are concerned that your workplace has become a home to shady comings and goings, disingenuous attitudes, or dishonest conduct, waiting can be a risky gamble. However, setting a proactive workplace investigator on the trail of potential violations might just save your enterprise from a perilous storm in the making.
How a Corporate Investigator Reveals Employment Violations
Before action can be taken against the perpetrators of any employment violations, evidence must first be gathered. While in-house HR investigations can carry you so far in this regard, collaborating with a professional workplace investigator will mean gaining access to a far wider and more efficient array of skills, means, and expertise.
For example, a corporate investigator from Lauth Investigations International will be able to perform comprehensive background checks on suspects, delving into many of the same databases used by law enforcement. They will be able to legally and safely carry out surveillance operations, with all the necessary equipment, and utilize digital forensics techniques whenever necessary.
In certain cases, a licensed workplace investigator may go undercover within a company to uncover employment violations in action. On the other side of the same coin, when operating with acknowledged presence, they will be able to draw from specialist training when conducting interviews with both victims and suspects. Meticulous documentation, utmost discretion, and procedural excellence are all par for the course. Together, these factors offer outstanding peace of mind to employers as their worries are meticulously and efficiently addressed.
If you are concerned about employment violations taking place within your business or team, a corporate investigator from Lauth Investigations is only a call or message away. Discover more about our extensive corporate investigations and human resources services or get in touch today to discuss your needs in detail.
Take a moment to imagine the kind of workplace where productivity stalls, employees become resentful, and misconduct runs amok. What do you see? As Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie famously said, “There is little success where there is little laughter.”
As seasoned corporate investigators, we know that the kinds of professional environments where such negative symptoms have taken hold are usually not much fun to be in. When corporate culture has gone sideways, the atmosphere is likely to be strained at best. At it’s worst, it’s potentially downright toxic. So, how might leaders and CEOs shape a healthier alternative?
As counter-intuitive as it may seem to those who have long prayed at the altar of strict and formal productivity, encouraging fun in the workplace can work wonders for nourishing employee happiness, fuelling purpose, and inspiring greater engagement. However, fun at work should be balanced and constructive if its value is to be maximized. Read on as we discuss the power of fun in the workplace and its role in improving corporate culture.
The Advantages of Encouraging Fun at Work
If you feel unsure about whether your employees perceive their working environment as a fun and friendly space, a corporate culture audit can be an ideal starting point for ensuring future camaraderie. However, before we look at the structural foundation required for effectively harnessing employee enjoyment, let’s look at the advantages that it can provide for ambitious businesses on the move.
Reduces Absenteeism and Turnover
When employees don’t enjoy their time at work, they are more likely to seek opportunities to avoid it. So much so, that studies show workers who have fun at work take notably fewer sick days than their counterparts. What’s more, when fun becomes an organic part of the working day, it has also been found to reduce turnover.
Improves Teamwork and Collaboration
Encouraging employees to collaborate in play allows them to flex the synergistic muscles that will also allow them to work together on behalf of your business. In this regard, creating shared fun goals offers greater value than encouraging competition. When intra-office rivalry gets out of hand, it can prevent teams from thinking and functioning as one. Meanwhile, effective team building can improve work ethic and innovation by as much as ten times.
Keeps Workplace Stress in Check
While pressure is bound to ebb and flow in most working environments, stress levels don’t need to follow in its footsteps. In fact, facilitating employee enjoyment can help keep elevated stress and tension at bay, supporting a healthier corporate culture over time. When we consider that 55% of Americans feel stressed each day, it becomes clear that introducing a little fun in the workplace is an excellent way to ward off burnout.
Making the Most of Fun in the Workplace
There is a delicate balance to strike when it comes to achieving optimal employee enjoyment at work. Fun activities should be structured, inclusive, and delineated from work duties. They must also accommodate the option to opt-out for those who might feel uncomfortable.
Complementing this, a supportive, friendly, and communicative atmosphere should be forged around professional duties. This makes unity, optimism, and proactive problem-solving core features of all collaboration. Would you like to understand employee enjoyment, engagement, and corporate culture more fully? Consider a corporate culture audit for your team and allow our expert advisors to set your team on track for success.
Everyone wants to feel safe and secure at work, and there are plenty of reasons for employers to prioritize workplace safety and culture. For employees, fewer peripheral worries make it easier to fully enter a flow state and productively engage, which means happier teams and boosted profits, to name just a couple of the potential rewards on the table.
Meanwhile, serving as food for thought for leadership, forging an ironclad safety culture at work will also help with retaining the best talent and reducing workplace risks. One recent worker survey found that 97% of respondents considered safety culture a major factor in choosing where to work, while another identified that workers who feel psychologically safe are less likely to be injured during their workday.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the nuances of corporate culture play an essential role in shaping a sense of safety at work. Why might that be? Well, strong, impassioned, engaged, and emotionally invested teams are not only more productive, but also more mutually supportive and attentive to procedures and the well-being of others.
As corporate investigators here at Lauth Investigations HQ, our work extends beyond aiding businesses experiencing the challenges arising after a negative incident in the workplace. It also includes proactively helping them to reduce risk while increasing every metric of corporate success—from the bottom line to team-wide morale and ultimate employee safety.
Workplace Safety Culture Checklist
To foster a stronger safety culture at work and boost those vital and welcome business-heath metrics, we provide corporate culture audits to a spectrum of American businesses. But first, what does a safety culture at work look like? Here’s a safety culture checklist to help get you started.
1. Strong Hiring Practices
As corporate investigators know all too well, ensuring workplace culture and safety begins with careful recruitment. It’s important that employers enjoy confidence that their latest recruits have a glowing professional track record and no skeletons in the closet. Employee background checks are an excellent tool when striving to better safeguard your team and brand. 2. Shared Mission and Values
Encouraging the kind of employee engagement that allows teams to work mindfully and safely begins with creating a shared sense of not only mission and purpose, but also the whys and values driving employees’ daily actions.
3. Clear Policies and Procedures
Implementing best practices when it comes to procedural safety and behavioral policies is an absolute must for employees aiming to encourage employee confidence. Among these should be communication channels, allowing employees to raise concerns whenever they arise.
4. Critical Risk Assessments
Working environments can be complicated places, with many moving parts, teams, and factors in play. An expert workplace risk assessment can help to reveal potential safety vulnerabilities, for greater peace of mind among both teams and leadership.
5. Ongoing Training and Awareness
Company values and policies, mission statements, and procedures are all but useless if they remain in an employee handbook that nobody takes the time to read. It is crucial that leadership revisit these touchpoints in regular training and showcase them daily in order to keep team awareness high.
6. Unbeatable Corporate Culture
When corporate culture is thriving, it’s easy to see it in the dynamism of a workforce, energetic productivity, positive working relationships, and well-oiled efficiency. But what creates great workplace culture? It is the sum of many parts, including on-point safety practices, free-flowing communication, team alignment on objectives and values, and more factors besides.
Many companies don’t realize that their company culture has declined until a worrying pattern of dipping profits and employee misconduct have manifested. However, it’s entirely possible to get ahead of such perils and reinforce corporate culture with a corporate culture audit. Discover more about how a corporate culture audit works today or contact our team to learn more about how corporate investigators could support your business today.
Research suggests that 75% of employees have stolen from their place of work in the past, making corporate theft a priority issue for any business owner or CEO with self-preservation high on their agenda.
Every employer likes to imagine that they’ve hired a trustworthy team rather than created a den of thieves. However, unfortunately, as many as 95% of U.S. companies get caught out at least once by an enemy lurking within.
Meanwhile, workplace theft runs up an annual bill of $50 billion annually for American businesses. Fortunately, a strategic corporate theft investigation can stop employee theft in its tracks and make it less likely to happen in the future.
Preventing Employee Theft by Strengthening Corporate Culture
When we think about theft prevention, it is easy to focus solely on locking down assets and ramping up security protocols, but there is another area of concern that shouldn’t be overlooked. Research shows that unhappy employees are more likely to behave unethically towards their employer. Employees that feel valued and grateful are less likely to be dishonest.
This provides yet another reason to add to your list of why corporate culture is worth investing in. A great place to start when it comes to building a stronger workplace culture is with a corporate culture audit, providing clear oversight of the current status quo and a clear path to improve and enhance culture for the better.
Of course, not all would-be thieves will be deterred by a place within a happy workplace. This makes comprehensive corporate background checks an essential addition to the employer’s toolkit. It also makes vigilance among leadership essential, and swift action a smart move when the need to launch a corporate theft investigation arises.
Workplace theft can vary dramatically in scope and scale, ranging from minor losses of things like stationery from a few slippery-fingered team members through to widespread and coordinated theft of expensive equipment, retail stock, sensitive data, financial assets, and more. While the proportion of the issue will certainly shape the urgency of the response, all employee theft should be taken seriously before it contributes to a negative shift in corporate culture.
A corporate theft investigation should focus on the achievement of four main objectives. The first is to identify the perpetrators, the second is to secure evidence of their activities. The third is to recover lost assets where possible, and the fourth is to respond appropriately, ranging from disciplinary action through to prosecution of those involved. If you are concerned about employee theft in your place of business and are unsure how to proceed, our dedicated team of corporate investigators here at Lauth Investigations is ready to assist. We will guide you through every step of the investigatory process, from conducting undercover operations to interviewing witnesses and compiling evidence for legal proceedings. Discover more about how we investigate workplace theft or contact our team today.
When an employee makes a report of workplace discrimination or harassment, it is important for the employer to conduct a thorough investigation. However, with the delicate nature of Equal Employment Opportunity investigations, leadership or human resources may not have the breadth of experience or resources to exercise due diligence. That’s why many companies initiate the process of hiring a private investigator for an EEO investigation.
A private investigator can bring a number of skills and experience to a corporate EEO investigation. They can:
Conduct interviews with witnesses. A private investigator is trained to conduct interviews in a way that gathers accurate and unbiased information. They can also interview witnesses who may be reluctant to speak to the company’s human resources department.
Gather documentary evidence. A private investigator can review documents, such as emails, text messages, and social media posts, that may be relevant to the investigation. They can also obtain copies of documents that are not in the company’s possession, such as medical records or employment records from previous employers.
Conduct surveillance. In some cases, a private investigator may need to conduct surveillance to gather information about the incident. This may involve following the alleged harasser or observing their behavior.
Write a comprehensive report. At the end of the investigation, the private investigator will write a comprehensive report that summarizes the findings. This report will be used by the company to determine whether discrimination or harassment has occurred. Leadership will then plan a proper course of action.
The Benefits of Hiring a Private Investigator for an EEO Investigation
There are a number of benefits to hiring a private investigator to conduct an EEO investigation. These benefits include:
Impartiality. A private investigator is not affiliated with the company, so they can provide an impartial and objective view of the situation. Their perspective will also come in handy should any litigation arrive as the result of the investigation.
Experience. Private investigators have experience conducting investigations, so they know how to gather evidence and interview witnesses.
Confidentiality. Private investigators are bound by confidentiality, so they can ensure that the investigation is conducted in a confidential manner.
If your company receives a report of workplace discrimination or harassment, it is important to conduct a thorough investigation. By hiring a private investigator, you can ensure that the investigation is conducted in a fair, impartial, and confidential manner.
Here are some additional tips:
Get recommendations from other businesses. Ask other businesses in your industry if they have experience hiring a private investigator for an EEO investigation and if they were satisfied with the results.
Interview several investigators. Interview several private investigators to get a feel for their experience and qualifications.
Get everything in writing. Before hiring a private investigator, get everything in writing, including the scope of the investigation, the fees, and the confidentiality agreement.
By following these tips, you can ensure that you hire a qualified and experienced private investigator to conduct your EEO investigation. If you need require assistance in an EEO investigation, please contact Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on how we can bring you the best in verified intelligence. We are staffed by former military and law enforcement personnel and carry a glowing A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.
