Back in 2015, the chairman of the World Economic Forum at the time, Klaus Schwab, coined the phrase the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. He was trying to convey the dramatic changes ahead in the way that we live and work, driven by emerging technology and interconnectedness. These emergences denote a turning point for mankind, and one that he saw unfolding at a whirlwind pace. However, what Schwab couldn’t predict at the time was how the transformation was going to be realized in double-time, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Has your organization put together a survival strategy for navigating the pitfalls of pandemic corporate culture? If not, then now is the time, because without oversight, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll be paying the price later. Why? Because the mainstays that used to define the culture within any workforce have largely vanished—or at least they did for a while there—and the impact of that isn’t something that should be ignored.
While some of your employees might have come back to the office, global indicators like the “Great Resignation” tell us that the undercurrents of business have changed and things won’t be going back to the way they were before. The pandemic has well and truly pushed us into the arms of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, so now is the time for revamping corporate culture and embracing the potential of what is yet to come.
What Are the Technologies Driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
During the first industrial revolution, man harnessed the machine. With the second came mobility and the infinite possibilities of electricity. The third, also known as the digital revolution, saw us ask computers to do things beyond human capacity. So, what of the fourth? Our current shift sees us sharing our world with the Internet of Things, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, robotics, biotech, artificial intelligence, and so much more.
Normalizing technologies that were once conceptually sci-fi is exciting, but as they transform our daily lives, the need for businesses to keep up is at peak urgency. With faster, glossier, more complex tech comes far more intricate data-related security risks, more sophisticated criminality, and dramatic changes to the ways in which people consume and communicate.
Beyond the need for businesses to transform how they meet their customers’ evolving expectations, there is also an unmistakable need for companies just like yours to pay close attention to where the pandemic corporate culture that their team has moved into might go next. Make no mistake; if the performance and cohesiveness of your employees has taken a hit during the disruption of the last few years, a Corporate Culture Audit may well be your saving grace.
Revamping Corporate Culture to Meet the Fourth Industrial Revolution Head On
The businesses that cruised through the upheaval of Covid-19 unscathed may have been many things, but what they certainly had in abundance was united resilience and flexibility. The corporate culture of tomorrow—the one that will inherit and build upon the remnants of pandemic corporate culture—is going to need to have these qualities baked in, because dynamism is going to be a defining factor as these new technologies and forms of communication gather ground. If revamping corporate culture is your next vital step, the place to begin is understanding the foundations that you’re working with so that you can firm-up and remodel as required, and get ready to build towards the sky. A Corporate Culture Audit from Lauth Investigations is the ideal tool for this task, dispatching expert corporate investigators who will build a clear picture of your organization’s current status quo, and help you draw up plans for making that all-important foundation unshakable so that you can leap ahead of the innovation curve. If you’re ready to be the change, learn more about the power of Corporate Culture Audits, or explore your unique needs with our team today.
Well, it’s almost unanimous. Some 94% of entrepreneurs and 88% of job seekers say that a healthy culture at work is vital for success. Armed with those kinds of numbers, it’s pretty clear that forging and maintaining top-notch corporate culture should always be a high priority. But, what exactly is corporate culture? How can we tangibly measure it and—all importantly—how do we super-charge it, so that our businesses can thrive and prosper?
Defining Corporate Culture
Well, to get down to the nitty-gritty of it all, corporate culture—sometimes also known as organizational culture—encompasses an organization’s values, vision, ethics, work environment, practices, and behaviors. Together, these many facets can make a company stand out; either creating a welcoming or repellent space for employees, and helping to influence public perception for better or worse.
When a business achieves outstanding corporate culture, the results will not only appear upon the smiling faces of its engaged and happy employees, but also in the attraction of high-caliber recruits, the capacity for innovation, the cohesion of teams, and ultimately in surging profits. In contrast, when corporate culture stagnates and festers, it can become a breeding ground for employee misconduct, floundering brand image, high turnover, workplace theft, and even costly litigation. Yikes—best avoided, then.
Indicators of Strong Corporate Culture
Challengingly, building corporate culture isn’t a case of following a cookie-cutter template. Every business is unique, and pursuing fantastic workplace culture shouldn’t come at the cost of what makes it so. Instead, whatever the personality of your brand and energy of your organization, the following can be found as markers of great corporate culture—qualities that mold to fit the central company character that incorporates them:
A broad culture of trust and respect
The regular expression of appreciation
High efficiency and performance
Strong multi-directional communication
Resilience in the face of challenge
Team collaboration and cohesion
Indicators of Corporate Culture in Crisis
When corporate culture begins to crash and burn, it can be easy to miss the signs. However, when that crisis reaches an advanced stage, there will likely be no area of your business that remains unaffected. If concerned about the corporate culture within your organization, keep an eye out for early indications of the following pervasive issues:
Poor timekeeping
A decline in performance
Escalating workplace theft
Communication silos
Workplace bullying or harassment
High staff turnover
The emergence of workplace cliques
Absenteeism or malingering
Incidents of fraud or white-collar crime
What To Do When Corporate Culture Gets Off Track
For any business that wants to stay ahead of the competition and attract the very best talent, shining a spotlight on corporate culture is a must. In fact, 86% of job seekers will avoid a company with a bad reputation, but the caliber of candidates that a strong corporate culture attracts can generate a 33% increase in revenue. So, what do you do if some of those warning signs above are starting to appear? A great place to start is with a Corporate Culture Audit. By making a sweeping assessment of all of the factors that both comprise and influence corporate culture, you’ll be far better equipped to identify strengths and weaknesses, and make a plan to move forwards. The undertaking of improving corporate culture must be approached with authenticity—it requires a proactive approach to addressing all aspects that are damaging team morale, and the establishment of new patterns of behavior and attitudes. This will ensure that any progress made becomes a solid foundation for the next step forwards.
Here at Lauth Investigations International, we take great pride in providing specialist assistance to businesses aiming to assess, improve, or triage their corporate culture. Our comprehensive Corporate Culture Audit serves as a health-check for contemporary businesses, and we are also ready to provide investigative assistance if any workplace misconduct or criminality is uncovered over the course of the process. Most importantly, our seasoned experts lay out a clear road-map for the corporate culture transformation you desire. Discover more about this unique service, or contact our team today to learn more.
In 2021, American businesses were struck by a phenomena that no CEO or human resources director could have seen coming. Historically, whenever economies have been hit by recession, employee turnover has dropped as workers hunkered down and rode out the storm. However, as the crisis created by the Covid-19 pandemic rolled on, something entirely new began to happen. Despite great turbulence and insecurity, employees started to quit in droves. Economists dubbed it the “Great Resignation”, and it’s not over yet—so what can employers do to avoid the costs that come with empty desks and deserted office spaces, and how can corporate investigations help?
What Happens When You Lose Your Workforce
Savvy employers know that high turnover rates represent a substantial financial burden for any business or organization. To put a crystallizing figure on this potentially catastrophic drain on resources, research from Employee Benefits News placed the cost of a lost employee at roughly a third of their annual salary. But behind the facade of this issue, there is yet more to consider.
According to a study from Adobe, this workplace exodus—or “Big Quit”, to use one of the media’s other favorite descriptors—appears to be being driven by Gen Z and Millennial workers who are feeling dissatisfied at work. Alarmingly, more than half of the Gen Z-ers that were surveyed reported planning to seek a new job within the next year.
But, business owners and human resource directors alike should know that dissatisfied employees open a floodgate of risk to other potential pitfalls, such as workplace theft, corporate fraud, malingering, FMLA abuse, and more. At this juncture, rather than waiting until workplace investigations are coming thick and fast, there’s a lot to be said for taking proactive action, and getting ahead of the Great Resignation-curve.
What’s Going On Behind the Big Quit-Curtain
To the eyes of any statistician, the Great Resignation is paradoxical. Normally, quit-rates climb when the economy is going strong and better prospects are abundant. But as the pandemic stubbornly sticks around, labor shortages and high unemployment should point to an opposite effect. So, what’s behind this sudden confidence in giving notice en masse?
Time spent under lockdown allowed the workforces’ brightest talent to weigh up what they truly want from life. Working from home and the more-flexible schedule that this afforded made employees see their careers through a fresh lens, while hesitance from the American government to provide worker protections, compounded by a rising cost of living and stagnated wages triggered a strike-like mentality—as dubbed “tang ping” in China, and seen around the world.
How Employers Can Break the Pattern
If dissatisfaction is the disease, then making new strides in employee satisfaction is the salve. Manifesting this means understanding your team’s inner workings—and that begins with eliminating damaging elements within your workforce, assessing corporate culture, and launching initiatives that will transform your business into one that attracts those aspiring to something greater in the post-Covid world, rather than one that employees might hope to leave behind.
If a few bad actors are drawing down morale within your team, turning to trusted investigators to undertake swift and effective corporate investigations will certainly help in turning the tide. However, if there is any doubt as to the retention capacity of your workforce, the place to start is undoubtedly a Corporate Culture Audit. This comprehensive assessment will identify the current standing of employee morale, the many facets that could be undermining work-ethic, and all that may be setting the stage for employee losses tomorrow.
Leadership can stave off the effects of the Great Resignation by investing in their corporate culture via audits and investigations as appropriate. Expert corporate investigators from Lauth Investigations will not only deliver an in-depth assessment of the current corporate culture, but also a clear and detailed plan on how to correct any weak-points, build profitable momentum, and foster the kind of culture that draws, rather than repels, the great innovators that you’ll be counting on tomorrow. Learn more about our broad-spectrum Corporate Investigations offering, as well as our renowned Corporate Culture Audit program—or contact our team today to discuss your unique needs in greater depth.
Health concerns have been a dominant issue for businesses around the globe of late. Whether employees have been testing positive for Covid-19 and having to self-isolate, or hitting the wall through burnout due to universal stressors, the impact on staffing has been pervasive—and many employees have found themselves scrambling to know what to do, leading to both cases of presenteeism and employee malingering alike.
While the very necessary navigation of absences due to the coronavirus is a challenge that must unavoidably be risen to, the abandonment of strong employee policy should not become a peripheral cost. Both presenteeism and employee malingering can drive damaging effects that any business would struggle to recover from. Here, we will explore why—no matter how unusual the circumstances—these issues shouldn’t fall from your radar, as well as how corporate investigation services can help you to course-correct when things have already gone awry.
Presenteeism: The Unseen Drain on Resources
Presenteeism can be defined as the act of choosing to go to work when you’re sick or chronically unwell. A more old-school mode of thought might not see a problem—or may even encourage this behavior—but research tells us that presenteeism triggers a domino of effects that wouldn’t be welcome within any organization. Perhaps more relevant to today’s sporadic work-from-home policies, is a growing trend for presenteeism during teleworking: a phenomenon that is far harder to monitor.
Within an office setting—or any shared workplace—the results of presenteeism span far beyond an employee exhibiting low-value performance or costly errors in judgment. It has also been found to correlate with increased longer-term sick leave, stress-related absences, and mental health problems among employees. It should also be considered a possible canary, pointing to an erosion of corporate culture, sapped morale, and overburdened staff. Looking to the struggles faced during the present pandemic, it’s also worth noting that presenteeism tends to rise when layoffs are anticipated.
The Malignant Spread of Malingering
Just about everyone finds themselves battling a health challenge at some point in their careers, and employers have a duty of care to support their team through illness, until they are able to get back on track. However, a small number of nefarious characters see opportunity in feigned illness, and may take up malingering as a way to avoid performing their duties or coming to work at all.
An employee pretending to be ill so that they can cruise on sick pay or being dishonest about their illness to avoid unwelcome responsibilities, is certainly worthy of discipline or even dismissal. However, just as is the case with presenteeism, proving that a member of your team is misrepresenting the facts can be immensely challenging. To act on your suspicions, you must be able to demonstrate clear and documented evidence of malingering before a judge—should the need ever arise. This is no small responsibility, making turning to corporate investigation services for assistance a prudent step.
How Corporate Investigations Specialists Can HelpMany businesses don’t realize the vast array of services that corporate investigators can provide in the name of keeping productivity on track. In the case that malicious presenteeism or malingering is underway, a skilled and discreet corporate investigator can launch a covert operation to catch an employee in the act. From surveillance and monitoring, to in-depth background checks and digital research, a seasoned private investigator will know how to efficiently reveal the truth, so that your company can find resolution.
When it comes to pervasive presenteeism as a symptom of corporate culture gone wrong, the only way to find resolution is to step back for a broader view. To provide such a bird’s-eye perspective, turn to Lauth Investigations for an innovative Corporate Culture Audit. While you may have your doubts about the health of your employees, a Corporate Culture Audit will reveal the health status of your business as a whole—revealing operational issues that are impacting morale, uncovering employee misconduct, and outlining a strategy to oil the wheels and get your businesses back up to speed.
Imagine the scenario: an employee comes to you and alleges that a pillar member of your leadership team has repeatedly addressed them using racial slurs. Or perhaps, a low level manager expresses concern that they have been repeatedly overlooked for promotion because of their sexual orientation or identity. What do you do? You launch a discrimination investigation.
As an employer, you have a legal obligation to nurture an environment that is free of discrimination’s many ugly faces. So, in these instances, the only correct course of action is to launch a workplace discrimination investigation.
Discrimination can manifest in many ways: hiring, firing, and promotion decisions; the withholding of raises, perks, or bonuses; verbal abuse or microaggressions; or the forging of a biased or bullying atmosphere. Ultimately, whenever mistreatment in the workplace is driven by bias towards a personal characteristic or status—be it sexual orientation, age, disability, race, or others—it likely falls under the umbrella of anti-discrimination laws. This means that your duty to launch a corporate investigation is triggered, and now is the moment for action.
Knowing What to Do In the Face of a Workplace Discrimination Complaint
There’s no doubt that a swift response is required in the face of a workplace discrimination complaint, but so too is caution. Failure to act leaves the door open to a human rights complaint or civil suit from the victim, but acting over-zealously opens a neighboring door to the same actions from the accused. The place to start is in turning to your own HR policies, which should always be clearly outlined, up to date, and well communicated.
Historically, courts have considered employees bound by their written policies, so digression is a dangerous game. From there, the best investigative strategy can be identified—informed by the knowledge that discrimination can be nuanced and multi-faceted, making it harder to evidence and document. Keeping discrimination investigations in-house can be another risky route, as it makes way for accusations of bias. In many instances, turning to a trusted and impartial corporate investigations service can be the most sturdy and cost-effective course of action.
The Benefit of Having a Corporate Investigations Specialist in Your Corner
Whenever a distressing accusation emerges within a workplace, fast resolution and damage-control are always going to be on everyone’s minds—whether that means concluding with termination or not, a discrimination investigation is vital. While closing the case file may seem tempting and within reach, all workplace discrimination investigations should be mounted with the potential for litigation in mind. A court may look unfavorably on investigations conducted by those who are under-trained or inexperienced, while inadequately documented efforts may topple even the most ethically conducted corporate investigation.
A private investigator who is well seasoned within the corporate world will offer expert support in conducting interviews, navigating confidentiality, communicating with lawyers, and weighing mitigating factors from a legal standpoint. They will also have complete and comprehensive knowledge of state-relevant legal obligations and how to form a case-file that is ready for scrutiny—as well as being able to step in as an expert witness should the need arise. Of course, the role of corporate investigations services need not begin there, but can actually serve at the prevention stage, safeguarding organizations against peril of considerable losses.
A Corporate Culture Audit Provides Armour Against Workplace Discrimination
One of the best resources in the corporate culture toolkit when it comes to tackling workplace discrimination is to stop a hostile work environment from reaching boiling point—and ideally even prevent it from forming in the first place. In this endeavor, a corporate culture audit serves as a health check for workplace prosperity. This proactive form of corporate investigation lets you know if your organization is working as a well-oiled machine, or if a variety or opportunities for improvement have been going undetected—gradually eroding employee wellbeing, performance, and trust. The dedicated corporate investigations team at Lauth Investigations is here to serve you, so learn more about the role we can play in bringing your workplace discrimination investigations to successful resolution, as well as the transformative powers of our innovative Corporate Culture Audits. Alternatively, contact the team today to discuss your unique needs in detail, and receive a free no-obligation quote.
If your enterprise or organization is riddled with issues like employee theft, sexual harassment, hostility, or fraud—and internal corporate investigations aren’t throwing up a bean—then it’s pretty clear that you’re going to have to call in the corporate private investigations cavalry. But, what if if you haven’t spotted any obvious warning signs but nothing is going as smoothly as it should? That’s where a corporate culture audit can come in handy.
Sometimes, the signs that corporate culture has slid sideways are glaringly obvious, but at others, they can be a little more demure. If you know that your business is not meeting its true potential, a corporate culture audit is just the solution for the job. This proactive and comprehensive assessment offers up a health check for all areas of your businesses, providing evidence-based strategies that will help you turn the corner once and for all. If this has piqued your interest, then lets dig a little deeper. Read on for seven indicators that you should take as a sign that urgent action is needed.
1. Pervasive Problems Have Become a Broken Record
If the same old loss reports, harassment complaints forms, or underperformance records just keep on sliding across your desk, then it’s time to raise the alarm. Ask yourself: Have you been pouring resources into internal corporate investigations and disciplinary actions, or perhaps sucking up holes left by minor but repeating corporate theft?
Either way, the nature of the problem—be it small or large—is fundamentally insignificant. Whether rooted with internal processes or personnel, until you get to the source of the pattern and address it, the cycle will not be broken. In contrast, when corporate culture is corrected, operations and employees alike can begin to truly flourish.
2. Accountability Has Fallen Out of Your Team’s Vocabulary
If your workplace meetings and exchanges tend to tumble into a charade of shrugging and finger-pointing, you can be certain that corporate culture has grown sickly. Engaged, happy employees within a healthy workplace environment are far more likely to step up and take responsibility for their actions. When everyone seems more interested in deflecting accountability, it comes with the cost of slumping productivity, and wasted time on all levels.
Particularly perilous, when leadership is behaving badly a mindset of “If the boss is doing this, it must be okay.” sets in. Grappling with executives and leaders who aren’t holding themselves accountable can be particularly challenging for internal corporate investigations, but an external investigator is perfectly poised to make impartial assessments, and suggest effective remedial options.
3. A Contagious Form of Apathy Has Struck
We all have our better days and our worst days in terms of productivity, but when activities have mysteriously slowed to a snails pace office-wide, you can be certain that a hidden cause awaits discovery. A healthy corporate culture shines with engagement, elevating the experience of both employees and customers. If your team instead exude a vibe of sapped energy and drained morale, then whatever lies behind it needs to be identified and neutralized before your profits and reputation take a hit.
4. The Employee Ethics Compass is Spinning
When we talk about employee ethics, we mean something universally shared rather than the cumulation of individual moral stances. It’s down to companies and organizations to establish a clear framework of values that employees can get on board with. This means more than talking the talk—the walk has to be walked too.
If employee ethics have lost their clarity, your team are likely to exhibit signs of an identity crisis—with cohesive productivity paying the ultimate price. One of the elements tackled by a corporate culture audit is assessing collective understanding of and quality of mission statements and values. From there, worthy common goals and a shared sense of purpose can be established.
5. Your Workforce is Lacking in Diversity
When it comes to corporate culture, one of the biggest red flags to be alert to is a lack of diversity in the workforce. What’s more, allowing homogeneity in terms of race, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation to become the status quo means actively stunting your organization’s ability to develop and grow.
Statistics tell us that the most common version of this picture is cisgender, straight, white men in leadership roles—recruiting, promoting, and mentoring others who tick the same boxes. However, a rut in terms of diversity can take many forms, and all are equally limiting. Employees who are able to bring a variety of experiences and perspectives to their team provide the strongest path towards innovation, evolution, and staying ahead of the competition. Not something to let slide!
6. Employees Are Working in a Pressure-Cooker Atmosphere
It’s true that the capacity to work under pressure is a prerequisite for plenty of job roles. However, all forms of baked-in stress needs to be effectively counter-balanced to avoid workforce burnout. Employees who are running on empty will not only lose engagement, but they may also begin to fall into a mentality that raises risk of corporate theft, misconduct, workplace bullying, or even white collar crime.
Employers who safeguard their employees’ wellbeing—harnessing workplace support, benefits, paid-time-off, and vacations—are more often than not rewarded with a team that can fire on all cylinders whenever required. Specialist corporate investigations can help to highlight an impending burnout that hasn’t been spotted by leadership, before major damage is done.
7. Poor Investments in People Keep Sending You Back to the Drawing Board
All too often, leadership can be entirely unaware that they are stuck repeating bad recruitment and promotion practices. Inescapably, investing in the wrong people is always a huge drain on resources—as the hiring, on-boarding, and training stages are repeated again and again.
Muddying the water further when individuals don’t meet expectations, focus frequently remains solely on retention strategies. While this is an important part of forging a strong corporate culture, investing in the right people from the get-go is also crucial if terminations and turn-over are going to be brought into line. In this area, a corporate culture audit may extend from examining recruitment and promotion policies into carrying out corporate background checks.
Corporate culture audits are a fantastic way to gain comprehensive insight into the health-status of your business—something that is often impossible to achieve from within. The results of our investigations will allow us to provide expert guidance on how to bolster the wellbeing of every aspect of your business. With a trusted corporate investigation specialist on hand, you can also be confident that investigations can be scaled as necessary, for impactive and cost-effective results. Learn more about Corporate Culture Audits from Lauth Investigations, or contact our team today for a free quote.
