The media and financial worlds saw the grueling impact of poor workplace culture this week as media giant Fox News has finally agreed to pay $1 million in penalties after a workplace culture investigation concluded following allegations of sexual misconduct within the network. The allegations ended in the departure of Fox’s co-founded Roger Ailes, and anchor, Billy O’Reilly. The chairperson and commission for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, Carmelyn P. Malalis, stated in an interview on Tuesday, “This is the largest civil penalty that has ever been levied by the City Commission on Human Rights. We need to send a message in order to deter future acts of harassment or retaliation.”
Part of the success of the settlement is the clause that prevents Fox News from requiring confidential arbitration in cases where an employee files a complaint under the Human Rights Law. This action prevents Fox News from privately hashing out the legalities of such complaints behind closed doors with little to no public accountability, giving the corporate culture little to no reason for change. Corporations, especially highly visible ones like those resembling Fox News, must have the oversight in place to ensure problems like sexual harassment allegations do not have the consequential chance to gut the company from within. With an appropriate structure in place, a workplace culture investigation can draw problems like employee misconduct out into the open as if drawing poison from a wound.
Stories like the one about Fox and their workplace culture investigation are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, seeking a workplace culture investigation in order to excise malignant sources of disruption from your company’s daily operations is an investment in the longevity of the company. Employers who are vigilant about their workplace culture can expect to see an increase in productivity as employees become more engaged in their jobs as the result of healthy corporate culture. However, it’s headlines like the ones associated with the Fox settlement that also have employers recoiling at the idea of a workplace culture investigation. After all, the investigation could very easily turn up problems that will continue to cost the company time and money in correcting. Employers may be expected to pay out large sums in court as the result of any subsequent legal action, and the bad press associated with workplace culture investigations are undesirable in the corporate world. However, the longer corporations and employers ignore the issues surrounding workplace culture, the more devastating they can expect the impact will be once the problem is forced into the open through circumstances such as whistle-blowing, criminal investigations, or involvement from another state or federal entity. In the case of Fox, the fallout from sexual harassment allegations should have come as no surprise to internal staff who have fielded these allegations over and over again. In any case however, the hope that the publicity of a workplace culture investigation will once and for all force the company to overhaul their culture and improve the lives of their employees and the longevity of their company.
If you have need of a workplace culture investigation, consider Lauth Investigations International for your needs. We are staffed by former military and law enforcement personnel with diverse experience in workplace culture investigations. We carry a glowing A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and regularly receive grateful reviews from out clients. Call 317-951-1100 for a free consultation or visit us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com
How do your employees actually feel about you? Answer this burning question with a corporate culture audit.
It’s a question many business owners and employers may ask themselves often. There’s no shortage of dark humor regarding the 9 to 5 grind and the bosses who are at the top looking down. The relationship between an employer and their workforce is crucial to the overall productivity of day-to-day operations. When trying to improve employer-employee relations, you may require the surreptitious expertise of an undercover private investigator to conduct a corporate culture audit into your business.
Many businesses believe they can get an accurate picture of their business from within by tasking internal employees with getting to the root of the problem. However, what internal investigators lack is objectivity. They have their own biases regarding the people they work with, and the ability to remain 100% objective is tainted by their associations. Not only that, but in any subsequent action, the motivations of such an internal investigator may be called into question. It’s best to stick with an investigator who has no stake—directly or indirectly—in the outcome.
When it comes to your business, you don’t know what you don’t know. Think of a corporate culture audit like a medical checkup for your business. An independent professional comes into your business, either straightforwardly or undercover, and begins with a conversation with leadership and human resources. Just like an intake for a physical, the professional would ask questions about the functionality of the business, what day-to-day operations are like, and what patterns of disruption are regularly occurring. Once the intake is complete, the corporate investigator or private investigator will develop a plan to pull the corporation out of its pattern of disruption.
A corporate culture audit is a great way to take the exact temperature of employee morale. Corporate investigators can engage employees in diverse questions about the business, how much they enjoy their job, and what their level of engagement in the job itself is. Judging the level of engagement is important because an employee’s level of engagement in their job will have a direct impact on how well they do their job, which in turn has a direct impact on the level of productivity. Corporate culture investigators can pinpoint the problems in an organization that cause employees to disengage from their jobs and consequently raise the level of productivity in the organization.
Employees may not always be honest when asked to provide feedback on leadership in a corporation or organization, especially if such forums are not anonymous. They may fear for their job security, or retaliation against them for being honest. Regardless of the motivation, a covert or anonymous feedback forum is one of the many things that a corporate culture auditor could facilitate. In addition to the anonymity of such a measure, employees may also feel more emboldened to accurately describe their feelings to a third-party. In this way, employers can get a real picture of how their employees not only feel about the business, but also about themselves as an employer.
Corporations in 2021 cannot afford to shirk the exposure and customer relations benefits of the internet and social media. A social media presence allows a corporation to cultivate a personality with their customer base through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now TikTok. While Facebook itself has options for buying adspace to users, most platforms have the inherent value of free advertising, provided the corporation is able to build a following and maintain a visible presence. Social media itself opened up new opportunities for jobs in IT and social media management. However, the same level of access that allows companies to maintain daily contact with their customers can also ruin a company in a matter of weeks, and yet, the urgency to monitor these online metrics is lukewarm. 96% of businesses believe brand and reputation can affect revenue, yet only 44% monitor that impact. (CareerArc)
Prior to the new millennium, reputation management services for corporations used to be restricted to press coverage in analog newspapers and exposure through television and radio. Now in the age of the internet, the annals through which a company can be maligned have expanded exponentially. 69% of jobseekers would turn down an offer from a company with reputation problems (StatusLabs)
Through the years, Americans have seen bad actions on a company’s website or social media pages completely tank a company’s reputation, impact stock prices, and lead to sharp declines in profits within a single quarter. With billions of users on Facebook, international companies in particular are at risk of having their entire brand tainted by a mere tweet containing less than 140 characters.
Building a glowing reputation online may seem like a shallow solution to a large issue, but the ubiquity of the internet and social media has completely changed how corporations relate to their customer base. Here’s why online reputation management matters:
Online reputations can build consumer bases through integrity, transparency, and direct communication among customers, employees, investors, and the new industry of brand influencers that have developed over the last 10 years. Consumers are willing to pay more for a product if the company selling it has a good reputation. (University of Technology Sydney)
An online reputation allows a company to meticulously cultivate and maintain an image by engaging on social media. Consumer bases can be updated regularly on products and services, as well as deals on products and sale opportunities.
Draws in top-tier talent and interest from individuals who wish to work for the company, which can keep hiring costs down, and avoid a cyclical pattern of turnover that drags down the corporation’s bottom line.
Online reputations can drive sales and improve quarterly reports. By the same token, a negative online reputation can lay waste to a corporation that has previously maintained excellent consumer relations.
No online presence is a missed opportunity—but a negative online presence is a malignancy within a corporation that has the potential to rot it from within. Therefore, executives, managers, and employees alike must always be looking for opportunities to build a positive online presence. Before leadership sets out to hire a reputation management firm, there are internal measures they can take first:
Improve content marketing
Invest in customer experience
Invest in employee satisfaction
Swiftly and comprehensively address internal issues
Maintain a strict level of integrity
Online presence
Social media: A company’s social media presence must be carefully cultivated and maintained in alignment with the corporation’s mission and values.
Social media in the workplace: The social media of all persons who officially represent the company must be devoid of any disparaging posts regarding their employer.
Review sites: When exaggerated or fraudulent reviews of a company appear on one of the many review sites associated with a company’s culture and products, it can drag down the overall rating of a business, and create false impressions regarding the quality of their services. One bad review can cost you up to 22% of potential customers. The risk increases to 59.2% for three bad reviews. Four or more negative posts drive this number to 70%. (Moz)
When internal measures do not pull a corporation out of the hole created by a negative online reputation, it might be time to consider hiring a reputation management services firm. These firms can evaluate the level of damage inflicted by the negative reputation, and develop multi-pronged approaches to remedying those factors. This includes brand revitalization, social media cleanups, and white hat tactics to get negative reviews removed from a corporation’s social media and review pages. If you have need of reputation management services, please consider Lauth Investigation’s International. We have more than 20 years’ experience in managing corporate crises, and can work with clients to develop comprehensive solutions to rebuild their reputation. We are staffed by former military and law enforcement and carry a glowing A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau. Call 317-951-1100 today or find us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com.
With the corporate landscape being indefinitely altered by the current COVID-19 pandemic, it can be easy to let other priorities fall by the wayside. Internal daily operations are already disrupted by COVID-19 restrictions and limited personnel, and personnel at all levels are already experiencing heightened levels of stress and disorder. It’s not difficult to understand how a corporation’s corporate culture could decline in these stressful times. However, improving corporate culture and improving it for your employees can have beneficial ripple effects that save you money and grief in the long run.
Corporate culture is a manifestation of how daily operations, corporate policy, enforcement of that policy, and interpersonal relationships between employees affect one another and the company’s mission. Decline in corporate culture can come in many forms, including but not limited to employee theft, sexual harassment claims, executive or white-collar misconduct, or chronic turnover in personnel. All symptoms of declining corporate culture can have disastrous long-term effects on a corporation’s daily operations, hurting productivity and the bottom line. That’s why there is a key list of important items to consider when making a plan to improve your corporate culture.
Clarify your mission statement
Improving corporation culture begins with having a clear mission statement. Corporations with a clear mission statement have an increased chance of success because all personnel are aware of the company’s goals and how they are going to achieve them. Not only is the mission statement clear to the employees, but its’ also clear to the public and shareholders in the interest of boosting faith in the mission and daily operations.
Good corporate culture keeps employees happy
Improving corporate culture is one of the best ways to retain employees and increase the longevity of a good team. Corporations with poor corporate culture experience high rates of turnover. That means increased disruptions to daily operations, high costs in screening prospective replacements for the position, and further disruptions to daily operations.
Decreasing employee apathy
Good corporate culture keeps employees employed while also mitigating the symptoms of employee apathy, which can cause further losses, both financially and in personnel. Employee apathy can look like many things, including poor hygiene, patterns of absence or tardiness, excessive breaks, and lack of accountability when they do not meet expectations. This employee apathy is not always an isolated incident, and can easily spread like a disease within the workforce. Improving corporate culture means creating an environment and a system that encourages transparency, trust, respect, and dignity for one’s employees, and can decrease or erase employee apathy.
Increase productivity
The cause and effect of improving corporate culture balances a corporation on many levels. As employee apathy goes down, employees not only become more focused, but engaged in the quality of their work in innumerable ways that benefit the company. Productivity will ultimately increase as a result, leaving leadership with more options to improve corporate culture. This cycle has the potential to repeat again and again.
Open your ears
When improving your corporate culture, it’s imperative to foster an environment of trust and open discussion when it comes to problems within the organization. Having an open and honest forum where employees feel comfortable discussing problems with proactive leadership means pervasive issues in an organization won’t be allowed to thrive and cause further ripple effects within your company. Always be open to suggestions and make employees feel like their voices are being heard.
Corporate culture is more than protecting your employees from each other and the perils of internal daily operations. Employers must also be willing to protect employees from abusive clients.
When employers think of corporate culture, their grasp of it may only extend to the internal operations of the business. It’s true that the factors that effect corporate culture exist primarily in the workplace itself. Corporate culture in general is the daily manifestation of how operations, policies, and enforcement of those policies effect both personnel, workflow, and the overall success of the company. Succinctly, corporate culture measures how easily employees are able to thrive in a particular work space.
There are plenty of internal issues that could cause corporate culture to decline, including unsafe practices, poorly-enforced policies, and problem employees with a repeated, pervasive pattern of misconduct in their position. One factor that most employers choose to gloss over or ignore completely is the factor of toxic clientele in the business. Many industries operate around the sacred creed of “the customer is always right.” No matter how dissatisfied or irate a customer or client becomes, it is the duty of the employee to rectify the situation in any way possible. Low to mid-level employees are often expected to take the brunt of the customer’s anger and accept responsibility for mistakes that might not be their fault. As long as the customer leaves the business appeased, the ends justify the means. However, this often has a lasting effect on employees that can affect the business in the long term.
Corporate culture moves in a cycle. As leadership with power, employers are control of how that cycle begins and ends. When employers take care of their employees—pay them a fair wage, give them a safe environment to do their jobs, and enforce policy in a way that seeks to improve the culture—employees feel valued and are more inclined to fully engage in their jobs. Full engagement from employees results in higher productivity with a higher quality of work. That benefit is then passed on to the customer or client, resulting in returns for the business. This pleases leadership, incentivizing them to further reward their employees—thus the cycle begins anew. Employers are the members of the corporation with the most power to disrupt this cycle.
In dealing with clients, the professional landscape is seeing a disappointing lack of employers willing to protect employees from abusive clients. After all, they should be courting their business, but there should be a hard line that clients can cross that give leadership the option to “fire” a client. As awareness of policy enforcement and how it effects the workplace continues to develop, more professionals are posting their experiences with toxic clients on social media. Houston Golden, one of the founders of a company known as BAMF, posted about his experience with a toxic client on his LinkedIn profile. “I fired my biggest client for calling my employee ‘retarded.’ She called me at 9:47 PM. “Houston, I don’t know if he’s under-paid, untrained, or just simply retarded. Do you have anyone that can replace him?” I was shocked…” Golden felt the client had crossed a line, and as a result, discontinued doing business with her. This is a measure that saves other employees from being exposed to deplorable behavior, and such action from an employer is a message to other employees that such behavior will not be tolerated, and the happiness of employees is more important than an abusive client.
When employees feel valued by leadership, they commit themselves to their duties in a meaningful way. The ripple effects of a workforce that feels valued will extend to the bottom line. Employees give 110% and the business sees a profitable return on their daily operations. This is what a healthy corporate culture looks like. If your corporation is having a problem with its corporate culture, call Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our corporate culture audit services. Call 317-951-1100 or find us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com.
The United Way investigation was triggered by a list of former employees who singed an anonymous letter detailing a hostile work environment.
If you follow the mission and directives of nonprofit organizations, you’ve likely heard of United Way Worldwide. According to their website, the nonprofit “advances the common good in communities across the world. Our focus is on education, income and health—the building blocks for a good quality of life.” However noble their mission statement, United Way has been in the news recently as former employees have come forward with reports of a hostile work environment, prompting an internal investigation.
The United Way investigation began when former employers decided to take a stand against a toxic corporate culture. The allegations of a toxic, hostile work environment came in the form of a letter that was signed by an anonymous group of former United Way of Summit and Media, citing pervasive problems such as racism, sexual harassment, and nepotism. While the word “anonymous” raises eyebrows in conjunction with whistle-blowing, it bears pointing out that these former employees claim they will be subject to retaliation. The letter was sent to United Way board members on July 31, prompting board chairman Mark Krohn to announce the onset of an internal investigation.
Harassment and bullying are just one of the allegations made by the former employees who signed this letter, and this has led to one United Way board member already resigning. One of the first dominoes to fall in the United Way investigation was former board member Elizabeth Bartz, who was in charge of running government affairs in Akron, Ohio. Leadership from the United Way of Summit and Media began investigating Bartz after there were allegations that she had verbally abused employees on social media. Bartz used Facebook Messenger to send a private message to another former employee, calling them a “toothless piranha” and accusing them of attempting “to ruin UW” with their allegations of bullying in harassment—ironically by engaging in bullying and harassment. This led to Bartz’s resignation.
Bartz’s reaction to the anonymous letter might actually validate these anonymous claims by former United Way employees. However, according to an article by the Beacon Journal, these anonymous former employees are feeling ignored after an investigator reported that the allegations in the letter “were mostly unsubstantiated.” A former employee who claimed to speak for the group told the Beacon Journal, “It’s clear it’s not an objective report…We can’t keep talking if we’re not going to be valued and our experiences are going to be diminished. It’s pretty disheartening when someone says they were sexually harassed and they are told it was ‘he said/she said.”
The frustration and feeling of defeat expressed by these anonymous employees are the effects of poor corporate culture in motion. Like a piece of antique furniture with termites, poor corporate culture can rot a company from within. Looking at the list of grievances these former employees are citing—racism, sexual harassment, nepotism—these are all enormous and complex problems that are not created in a vacuum. The corporate culture of the workplace must be an environment where these issues are able to thrive in order to develop a pattern of behavior. When employees make claims about these types of internal issues, it is in the best interest of the corporation to submit to an independent corporate culture audit.
If your corporation or organization is experiencing repeated instances of internal difficulty, it might be time for a corporate culture audit. A corporate culture audit is a program that examines the internal policies of a corporation or organization, how those policies are enforced, how they effect the employees, and how those employees relate to each other as a result. If the corporate culture in a company is good, that positivity is baked into the internal operations, employees feel valued by their organization, and therefore will remain engaged and invested in maintaining productivity. Pervasive, repeated internal problems may not stem from a single factor, but the entire corporate culture of the workplace. Think of a corporate culture audit like a medical check-up for a business or organization. Lauth’s investigators evaluate the culture from leadership down, identifying the major factors in disruption, and advise leadership on how to improve their business from within. For more information on our corporate culture audit program, click here.
