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.”
Within the go-getter world of business, it may seem contradictory that an ethical outlook is essential for success. The hard truth is that when unethical attitudes are adopted in the name of profit, any progress will usually be undermined when the inevitable fallout finally comes knocking. That’s why it’s so important to be familiar not only with the legal hot water that poor business ethics can land you in, but also the brunt that will be born by your team, your company reputation, and ultimately your long term prospects. Read on to discover the need-to-knows on business ethics plus what to do if your organization’s morals have already gone astray.
Bad Business Ethics and Legal Repercussions
A range of laws established and enacted by federal and state governments operate as an ethical safety rail, protecting the economy and America’s citizens from the damage that can be done when business ethics go out the window. Of course, at times larger companies may decide that breaching these laws and paying the associated fines is profitable enough to leave their morals at the door. However, these kinds of decisions often result ultimately in criminal charges and litigation that may eventually even sink the ship. The question is, would you see the iceberg coming in time to course correct?
Poor Business Ethics Are a Poisoned Pill For Corporate Culture
There is nothing like spiraling ethics to destabilize the strength of a team and undermine employee performance, and yet the recent Global Ethics Survey revealed that pressure on U.S. employees to compromise their standards is the highest it has ever been. The sad fact of the matter is that without clear parameters within which to operate, employees can quickly step into loose cannon shoes, disregarding essential protocols and making costly errors in the name of proving their worth. Simultaneously, other employees who see colleagues or leaders bending and breaking the rules are likely to become demoralized. Team-wide trust can quickly be dismantled, with collaboration and creativity sacrificed in the name of hitting short-term targets.
This kind of disengagement and mistrust can rapidly set the stage for an acceleration of things like employee theft, malingering, workplace bullying, and even white collar crime. High-caliber employees who operate with integrity won’t stick around in such an environment, so turnover can be the next sign that the hull of your business ethics vessel has been breached. At this juncture, damage to corporate culture can begin to manifest very much like an infection, with knock-on impacts seen in every area, and complaints and losses leaving leadership and HR running around in circles.
A Crisis In How Your Company is Perceived
With information sharing on social media at an all time high and review sites like Glassdoor growing increasingly popular, you can be certain that news of a business ethics crisis won’t remain under wraps for long. In an era that sees consumers value integrity more than ever when choosing where to invest their hard-earned dollars, the repercussions can be severe is your company’s credibility comes crashing down. Once this particular dam has burst, restoring consumer confidence can be a lengthy and costly undertaking. The key is to strike while the iron is hot—if you know that business ethics are not up to standard within your organization, act now to ensure that the many potential impacts of unethical activities are not allowed to ripple outwards.
How a Corporate Investigator Can Help You Get Business Ethics Back on Track
Many corporate leaders imagine that corporate investigation services are something to call on when crisis point has already been reached and a breach or crime has occurred. While it’s true that this kind of reactive investigative work is a facet of what we do, the corporate investigator also has a powerful role to play in risk prevention and pursuit of optimal performance. Business ethics and corporate culture are intricately interlinked, and an investigation into one will almost always shed light on the state of the other. For any company wishing to raise their business ethics profile—whether aiming to prevent a downward spiral or mitigate damage already done—a Corporate Culture Audit is the best place to start. Our expert corporate investigators will illuminate the root causes that undermined your enterprise’s ethical status in the first place, and help you steer a course toward forging a thriving corporate culture that ensures productivity, innovation, and progress in all the right ways. Learn more about our comprehensive corporate auditing services today, or connect with our team to discuss your unique needs.
In the wake of the so-called “Great Resignation” triggered the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses across America are struggling more than ever to recruit and retain the talent they need to drive profit and progress. What many don’t realize is that while the pandemic may have knocked over the first domino, toxic workplace culture is often the true culprit that keeps them tumbling. So much so, that research indicates that the impact of a vacuum in corporate culture is ten times that of perceived under-compensation when it comes to an employee deciding to quit.
When leaders think that they can pay off the problem without tapping into workplace culture from the employee perspective, it remains impossible to slam on the breaks of runaway turnover. So what is the key to fixing workplace culture and restoring employee retention once and for all? In these instances, a Corporate Culture Audit is the ultimate resource. Only when the holes in workplace culture are seen and understood can the work of repair begin.
Why Improving Retention Should Be High on Your Agenda
Not only can a company expect to have to fork out 200% of an employee’s salary to replace them after they head for the door, but the problem is more pervasive than that. Recent research reveals that employees jumping ship often convince their co-workers to go with them. In fact, so rife is this issue that 38% of employees say they have encountered a coworker who encouraged them to leave their current positions with them. Allowing workplace culture to erode is a sure-fire route to a domino-effect that escalates exponentially.
Going beyond the core issue, it’s also worth considering the fact that poor retention can be only one symptom of a far larger problem. When workplace culture has degraded, productivity is likely to plummet, customer care collapse, and misconduct issues ranging from malingering to employee theft and even white collar crime become far more likely to occur.
What Investing in Workplace Culture Looks Like
If retention issues sit among a cluster of warning signs that workplace culture has gone awry, what is the solution? Job satisfaction is key, but boosting this metric is not as simple as flipping a light switch—it calls for assessing workplace culture holistically. Factors such as strength of communication, leadership styles, achievement recognition, development opportunities, and supportive environment-creation all play their part.
Equally, rooting out negative behaviors and habits is essential if they are to be tackled decisively. Re-evaluating company values and improving development programs will only go so far if workplace bullying and time theft is commonplace. Correcting workplace culture cannot be a band-aid solution—it needs to be approached accurately and comprehensively with no stone left unturned.
Building a Road Map to Stronger Workplace Culture
According to Harvard Business Review, satisfied employees reward their employers with 31% higher productivity, 37% higher engagement, and no less than triple the creativity. If you want your team to excel and innovate, the process begins with understanding your current workplace culture standing.
To aid in this process, Lauth Investigations is proud to serve businesses across the country with comprehensive Corporate Culture Audits. With our assistance, a clear picture of the state of play can be realized and a course can be set towards the kind of high-caliber corporate culture that will enhance employee retention, increase performance, and grow your bottom line. Are your ready to get started? Discover more about the process or reach out to our dedicated corporate investigations team to discuss your needs.
When running a business, there are a number of threats, both internal and external, that could quickly unravel the entire corporate structure, and some in leadership may be uncertain of how to proceed. Whether it’s fraud, employee misconduct, or IP theft, without the proper background in oversight of these challenges, the solution may not be obvious. That’s why many businesses choose to invest in themselves by virtue of retaining a private investigator. Hiring a private investigator for different types of corporate threats is the best way to ensure that leadership is getting the full picture when it comes to making decisions for their businesses.
Private investigators are uniquely suited to investigating corporate threats—both internal and external—because of their autonomy, experience, and their objectivity as a third-party. Different types of corporate threats demand investigators with specific backgrounds, but the base skills needed to neutralize a corporate threat are within a private investigator’s toolchest. Private investigators can have different specialties, like child custody or infidelity, so when vetting candidates for retainer, it’s important to inquire about their specific experience. Types of corporate threats that private investigators can neutralize typically fall into one of two categories: Internal or external threats.
External threats:
Theft – Businesses with physical locations and material capital to steal can find themselves vulnerable to thieves if they do not have the appropriate security measures in place.
IP Theft – When your copyrighted intellectual property is at risk from outside entities, documenting the evidence is crucial and uniquely suited to a private investigator’s skillset.
Security risks – Security risk do not only constitute property, but also the physical safety of all staff working in an office or worksite. Whether the risk is a disgruntled employee or an active shooter, private investigators can survey weak points in business security.
Cyber attacks – Threats to security can also come in through the network. Working together with experts, private investigators can cover those holes in security.
Internal threats:
Internal theft – When capital is disappearing within an unbroken sphere of security, a private investigator can get to the bottom of disappearing property or money within any business or organization.
FMLA and Workman’s Compensation Investigations – Sometimes a staff member’s integrity may be called into question when it comes to FMLA or worker’s compensation claims, but with surveillance operations, private investigators can uncover the fine details of those comprehensive investigations.
Non-compete violations – If there is a reasonable suspicion that a non-compete agreement being violated, private investigators can document that perpetrator’s actions for any impending court action.
Executive misconduct – The more power an employee has, the more damage they’re able to do within their organization, so it’s crucial that due-diligence is performed in investigating claims of executive misconduct.
Harassment and discrimination – Harassment and discrimination are two of the most powerful malignancies in any workplace, and must be dealt with swiftly. In these circumstances, to have an independent third-party like a private investigator to determine who is responsible for the incident.
Culture might be a buzzword within the corporate world these days, but is it really relevant in the construction industry? In truth, great company culture means much more than having beanbags in the office or going on quarterly team building excursions. Instead, it describes how employees feel about their role, their employers, and their co-workers—and the reality is that the culture of any company dictates how smoothly its operations will go. Just as a building needs a firm foundation, the team driving your construction company does too. It’s time for construction culture to become the new “it” term on the block, because when culture’s in your toolkit, the results will speak for themselves.Why You Should Care About Construction Culture
True talent is hard to come by in the construction industry. So much so that 80% of construction companies have a hard time filling specialist craft positions. If I tell you that 46% of job seekers consider the culture they’d enter an important factor, and 86% will actively avoid companies with a bad reputation, might that grab your attention? Going further, there’s so much more to construction culture than attracting and retaining the talent you need to push your company forwards. Establishing this conceptual grail means unlocking your team’s potential for collaboration, commitment, passion, and high-caliber work. If you’re still not convinced, perhaps the potential 202% increase in performance yielded by this kind of jump in engagement will whet your whistle.
So what makes an outstanding company culture—or more specifically, what would great construction culture look like? Well, there’s no clear cut and singular recipe for success, but common themes include the forging of diverse and inclusive teams that, commitment to worksite and employee safety, strong communication, clear values demonstrated by leadership, an environment that allows individuals to feel heard, and opportunity for employee progression. Hammering that last point home, research reveals that 94% of employees would stay in their current role longer if they saw opportunity for professional development.Forging Iron Clad Construction Culture
We’ve covered the reasons to prioritize culture in your construction company, but before we tackle how to tackle the task, what happens when construction culture is neglected? Time and time again, it is our experience that eroding company culture means a fast track to high turnover, employee theft, malingering, workplace discrimination, white collar crime, and worse. Fraud alone costs construction companies around the world an estimated $860 billion annually. So the chances are, if you don’t take the proactive step of calling in an investigator to course-correct company culture proactively, you’ll likely be calling them later to investigate crimes that are breaking down the business you worked so hard to build up.
So, you’ve got the picture—company culture is just as important an investment for your construction company as the latest machinery or cloud-based work order system. But where do you begin? Well, as is the case for so many things in life, it’s vital to understand where you’re starting from. The best way to get the lay of the land is with an industry-tailored culture audit from Lauth Investigations International. Our specialist investigators will perform a detailed analysis of your construction culture, assessing factors such as communication, shared values, company history, caliber of leadership, marketplace positioning, undetected misconduct, and more. From there, we will provide you with a clear and concise road map to get your culture back on track. If you’re ready for guidance on how to move your team onto firmer footing and realize the rewards that come with prioritizing culture in the construction industry, contact our team today.
Working from home became an adjustment for most people at the beginning of the pandemic—and although COVID numbers are falling—many businesses are still maintaining a remote working structure in these turbulent times. While remote working has had it’s undeniable advantages, corporate leadership remains wary of how it might effect their business in the long run.
In addition to a decline in cases of COVID-19, some of the benefits that corporate leadership has seen in recent years under remote working are
Increase in productivity
Savings on physical locations
Reducing the carbon footprint
There have also been great strides amongst companies who’ve gone remote who now have access to talent in all four corners of the globe. The pool of talent for their company is no longer restricted to driving distance of their location. They can hire the very best professionals available as long as the nature of their job is conducive to remote working. This remote working structure has also allowed professionals more time to spend with their families.
However, working from home isn’t a successful strategy for some, like parents with young children, or distractions at home that do not make it an ideal environment for productivity and innovation. These professionals don’t mind the commute and would rather have the space dedicated to their working life so that they can maintain firm boundaries between their work lives and their home lives. This has left many in corporate leadership unsure of how to proceed in a manner that works best for everyone.
This is what brings us to “the hybrid model” of working life. This means that in applicable jobs, employees would adopt a hybrid form of working in which they were in the office 2-3 days per week, then spend the rest of the work week performing tasks at home. Even just reducing time in the office to just 2-3 days per week, employers can save a fortune on daily operations costs, as well as the time lost spent in travel to the office and tasks like getting up to get a cup of coffee, or running to the copy room. In this way, employers get to maintain a working environment that works for everyone, and employees get the work life balance that our national economy has craved.
If you have concerns that your company may benefit from a change in working structure, contact Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our corporate culture audit program. The program can be customized for businesses of all sizes and industries and can provide the crucial clarity necessary to improve daily operations. Call 317-951-1100 today for a free quote or visit us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com.
