Under ideal circumstances, no one will ever have to hire a private investigator for their personal or professional crisis. In the event that the need for a private investigator should arise, prospective clients should know that there is a way to save money when vetting professional private investigators for their needs.
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Private investigators provide a valuable service to both businesses and private citizens by providing them with the intelligence they need to make complex decisions in their lives. That being said, individuals who are looking for a bargain bin deal when hiring a private investigator find themselves highly dissatisfied with the end result. These are sophisticated investigations that require the best tools and the best expertise available in pursuit of the truth. That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to save money when hiring a private investigator. The answer lies in the pre-investigation phase before you’ve officially contracted the private investigator.
Quality fact finding is the basis of any quality investigation. Private investigators spend hours at the beginning of an investigation combing verified databases comparable to the ones used by law enforcement every day. Private investigators run names of all relevant subjects through these databases in order to build comprehensive background checks on the subjects in the case. These background reports have to be cross-referenced with multiple sources in order to perform due-diligence. Private investigators must take extra care to ensure that they have found the correct person in the database before This can become expensive, both in billable hours and in the cost of these verified reports.
Clients who are looking to hire a private investigator can save money in these investigations by having a much information available as possible about all subjects involved at the onset of a case. When you hire a private investigator, private investigators will sit down with clients and begin taking an intake narrative. Here is the type of information you can have available to save the investigator some time and money.
Name
Ideally, you would know the full name of the subjects involved in the case. This is not always possible—clients may only have a first name, or a nickname, which will lead to more fact finding on the part of the investigator. Having a person’s full name (with the correct spelling) is one of the most relevant pieces of information you can have for an investigator at the onset of the investigation so it can be accurately cross-referenced during due-diligence.
Birthday
A subject’s birthday is the second biggest piece of information you can have when you hire a private investigator. A subject’s birthday is cross-referenced with their name and other pieces of information to ensure private investigators have identified the correct report in their verified databases.
Address History
It is not necessary to know the exact address of a subject in order for the information to be valuable to the private investigator. Private investigators can use an approximate location to cross-reference other information on the subject and develop additional leads.
Work History
Knowing a subject’s trade, the cities where they’ve worked, or what companies they’ve worked for can provide the same context as an address history. In a skip trace (subject location) investigation, a private investigator can use knowledge of the subject’s trade in order to predict where they might go next to find work. A subject’s occupation and how it affects their daily schedule can help a private investigator develop leads and identify possible surveillance locations.
Make and model of relevant vehicles
A subject’s vehicle, whether it is legally owned by them or otherwise is a useful piece of information for a private investigator to track a subject’s movements. Depending on the location of the investigation, it may be legal for a private investigator to track a vehicle’s movements with a GPS tracker. Using this information, private investigators can document a subject’s movements for the investigation.
Existing evidence
In addition to word of mouth information you might have regarding an investigation, the tangible evidence is also important. Any relevant documentation to the investigation, including financial records, court documents, social media screenshots, or voicemail and text records, can go a long way in saving a private investigator time during the onset of an investigation.
At the end of the day, the best thing you can do when hiring a private investigator is gathering as much information as you possibly have for a private investigator at the onset of the case. It saves billable hours, resources, and frustration in any investigation. When you have your information ready, you’ll need a private investigator who always sweats the details. If you have a personal or corporate crisis in your life, call Lauth Investigations International today for a private investigator who will leave no stone unturned. Call 317-951-1100 or visit us on www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com
Executives are finding that corporate diversity is not only the right thing to do but the prudent thing to do.
As the Black Lives Matter movement continues throughout the globe, corporate diversity is once again on the minds of leadership in the United States. Leadership has begun developing strategies to improve diversity in their structure. Regardless of the motivations behind resisting this change, leadership might not understand that corporate diversity is a measure that not only elevates BIPOC professionals, but will improve the quality of life within the corporation.
When leadership is singular in representation, it cannot
possibly consider all the needs of everyone in the organization. Leadership
that is composed entirely of White executives will have a functional blindness
or bias towards the needs of non-White employees. Not only will they leave
their non-White employees feeling undervalued, but corporations can be selling
themselves short on opportunity to improve business from within, and ultimately
from without.
New ideas
One of the most obvious benefits to having corporate
diversity—both at the executive level and below—is that diversity breeds
innovation and creativity. When a corporation continually relies on the same
thinktank of people who all come from similar backgrounds and have similar
experiences, you will eventually begin to see a patter in the same 15 ideas or
solutions generated by that thinktank. Workforces with diverse backgrounds see
a more diverse array of ideas, innovations, and solutions to challenges faced
in the workplace and in the market.
Better ideas
The more corporate diversity you have, the more likely your
team will generate ideas and solutions that will better serve your customer
base. Different skills and different histories of experience will lead to a
more unique brainstorm—from the conference room to the loading dock. According
to a study conducted by the Harvard Business Review, businesses with corporate
diversity are able to find solutions to problems faster than teams of employees
from similar backgrounds. The speed attributed to corporate diversity is due in
part to the fact that these corporations foster an environment that promotes a
free exchange of ideas, where everyone has a place at the table and their voice
is heard. That is the sort of corporate culture all businesses should be
striving for.
Better culture
Diversity is more than a two-pronged approach, but it is important that you have diversity from the top down, and that every person feel as though they can safely bring ideas, concerns, or solutions to the table. By encouraging this diversity, you make sure every person on your team feels as though their voice is being heard. When employees feel heard and valued, the corporate culture of the entire business significantly improves. We know the effects of corporate culture move in a cycle. Employees are either positively or negatively impacted by engagement and validation from leadership, which in turn effects their own engagement, which directly impacts their level of output. As corporate culture improves, output increases. The elevation of those diverse voices has the capacity to save your corporation money in billable hours, workplace lawsuits, and engagement.
Corporate culture audit
At Lauth Investigations International, we pride ourselves on
using our intelligence services to connect business leadership with the
solutions they need to improve their company from within. If you suspect your
business is suffering due to a lack of diversity, call Lauth Investigations
International today for a free quote on our corporate culture audit.
Is there a way to stamp out employee malingering? The answer
is complicated.
Employee malingering is becoming a problem for some employers. As some states move forward with plans to open their states back up during the global COVID-19 pandemic, many are looking forward to life returning to some semblance of normalcy. While businesses make plans to reopen their doors, there are others that will keep the bulk of their operations remote with employees working from home in order to mitigate the spread of the disease. While many employers feel this precaution is still prudent, there is the additional layer of anxiety about whether employees are keeping their noses to the grindstone, or malingering.
Obviously, these are strange times. A majority of businesses
in the United States were forced to shut down direct business to customer
operations in order to prevent the spread of the disease. Employees who were
not furloughed or laid off due to COVID-19 have been forced to adjust to a new
working life devoid of work-life balance—their work is literally in the home—complete
with the distraction of children, family, pets, spouses, and other household
distractions. It is a stressful time, and it can be difficult to maintain focus.
Corporations and organizations should always prioritize their employee’s mental
health for the sake of their corporate culture. These predictable challenges
with suddenly working from home should not be considered employee malingering. However,
willful malingering can lay huge blows to daily productivity and ultimately
profits. Employers must have a way to verify whether or not their employees are
actually working.
Under more normal, stable circumstances, employers have the
benefit of face to face interaction for determining how engaged and productive
their employees are. In addition to output, supervisors can note how many
breaks they take, the quality of the work, and the level of communication from the
employee, both on and offline. However, remote working has made detecting
employee malingering almost impossible.
Telecommunication technology has played a vital role in facilitating
the continuation of the economy despite the quarantine. Meetings are held over Zoom,
employee time is tracked through invoices or through an online time clock of
sorts that allows employees to log their time worked and have their timesheets
stored on a cloud server. Short of a live camera feed that documents the
employee in front of the computer or on the phone, is there truly a way to
verify if they are actually working?
The idea of hiring a private investigator to surveil your
employees may sound strange or even wrong, but it’s a highly common business
practice that legally exposes the drain an individual employee might be having
on your company. Private investigators can track an employee’s movements during
the time they have invoiced or logged, ensuring that any errands outside the
home are work-related and have some value to the corporation. Private
investigators can document these movements with GPS trackers placed under their
car, photographing their activities in public to either prove or disprove
employee malingering. Private investigators are trained to blend in with their
surroundings, and conduct surveillance discretely to prevent their cover from
being blown, so in the event that no employee malingering is found, no one is
the wiser.
If you suspect your employee is malingering on your dime, reach out to Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our surveillance services. Call us at 317-951-1100, or visit our website at lauthinveststg.wpengine.com
Lauth investigators were contacted by the Client, a woman embroiled with a bitter battle with her ex-husband over child support.
Her ex-husband claimed that his arears were due to his lack of income and financial assets. The Client turned to Lauth to shed more light on the situation—was her ex-husband negligent in his arears, or would it be impossible to draw blood from this stone?  Â
The Investigation
Lauth investigators began by turning to verified databases to begin building a profile of the Subject, the Client’s ex-husband.
Using information obtained with the client, investigators combed these databases in search of property, vehicles, judgements, and other unseen assets. Investigators also checked the Subject’s credit history and pulled information regarding his small business. A criminal background check revealed that the subject had no history of run-ins with the law, and therefore should not have additional court fees or fines to pay in that regard. No other significant investments or brokerage accounts were discovered in the course of the investigation either.
The Solution
Lauth investigators compiled a comprehensive report to the Client, having found no credible reason why the Subject should be in arears on his child support. The Client declared they planned to take those findings to the court and Lauth closed the case.
Lauth was contacted by a money lender that had recently absorbed another lending company.
In a nutshell, the absorbed company would still operate under the supervision of the parent organization, and employees of the absorbed company would still be able to receive commissions when they reported loans they had made. The parent organization had recently been made aware that employees from the absorbed company had been falsely reporting loans in interest of receiving unearned commissions.
The Investigation
Lauth private investigators were tasked with fact-finding, observing, and documenting the entire process by which the Subjects got loans approved and moved through the system in order to fraudulently obtain commissions.
Lauth investigators formulated a plan to insert themselves covertly in their daily operations. A Lauth investigator contacted the Subject(s) and created a ruse in which the investigator required their services for a personal loan. Lauth investigators met with the Subject(s) under a professional ruse with recording equipment on their person. The entire meeting was recorded, and the investigator retained copies of vital documents to the investigation.
The Solution
Lauth compiled a thorough intelligence report regarding the internal operations of the lenders. Once the Client was able to confirm the information they had received was fraudulent, Lauth closed the case.
