Hiring is one of the most critical decisions a company makes, directly impacting its bottom line, workplace culture, and legal standing. Yet despite best efforts, organizations often encounter the costly consequences of a bad hire. Whether it’s an employee who lacks the skills they claimed to have, engages in unethical behavior, or creates conflict within teams, the repercussions can be severe and long-lasting.
According to a 2024 report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost of a bad hire is estimated at $14,900, factoring in recruitment expenses, training, lost productivity, and potential legal costs. Another study from Glassdoor found that a single mis-hire can cost an organization up to 30% of that employee’s first-year earnings. CareerBuilder adds that 74% of employers admit to hiring the wrong person for a position, highlighting how common and costly this issue truly is.
So, how can companies avoid these pitfalls? The answer lies in investigative due diligence—a deeper, more comprehensive approach to pre-employment screening that goes well beyond resumes and standard interviews. Firms like Lauth Investigations International specialize in uncovering critical information about candidates that traditional hiring processes often miss, helping companies protect themselves from the costly aftermath of a bad hire.
The Hidden Costs of a Bad Hire
Before diving into investigative due diligence, it’s important to understand the broader impact of a bad hire:
Financial Loss: Beyond salary and benefits, companies incur costs for recruiting replacements, onboarding new hires, and lost productivity during transition periods. A disengaged or underperforming employee can also negatively affect team output and morale.
Cultural Disruption: A misfit employee can create tension, reduce collaboration, and even drive valued employees to leave. This “domino effect” can undermine years of culture-building efforts.
Legal Exposure: Some bad hires expose companies to legal liabilities—whether through harassment, discrimination, theft, or breaches of confidentiality. These risks often result in costly settlements or litigation.
Damaged Reputation: Poor hiring decisions can harm a company’s reputation internally and externally, impacting customer trust and future recruitment efforts.
Given these high stakes, relying solely on resumes and interviews, which can be easily manipulated or incomplete, is increasingly risky.
Why Standard Hiring Practices Are Not Enough
Resumes provide a candidate’s educational background and work history but often lack verification of claims or context regarding performance and behavior. Similarly, interviews are limited by the candidate’s presentation skills and the subjective impressions of interviewers.
Standard background checks—such as criminal record screenings and reference calls—are helpful but insufficient for high-stakes or sensitive roles. They may miss red flags like undisclosed litigation, financial troubles that could suggest vulnerability to fraud, or lifestyle factors that may impact job performance or ethics.
This gap is where investigative due diligence becomes invaluable. By conducting a more thorough vetting process, companies can uncover risks early, preventing costly mistakes.
How Lauth’s Investigative Due Diligence Goes Deeper
Lauth Investigations International employs a range of specialized investigative techniques designed to provide a 360-degree view of candidates, far beyond traditional screening:
1. Litigation History Checks
A candidate’s involvement in past lawsuits—whether as a plaintiff, defendant, or witness—can reveal important insights into their character, judgment, and potential risks. Lauth’s investigators access court records, legal databases, and public filings to identify any relevant litigation history that could impact a candidate’s suitability.
For example, undisclosed involvement in employment-related lawsuits or financial disputes might signal a risk for future workplace conflicts or ethical breaches. Early detection of such histories allows employers to make informed decisions or include protective clauses in employment contracts.
2. Financial Screening
Financial stability can be a significant factor, especially for positions involving fiduciary responsibility, access to company assets, or handling sensitive information. Lauth conducts discreet financial screenings that look beyond credit scores to identify issues like bankruptcies, liens, or patterns of excessive debt.
Candidates experiencing financial distress may be more susceptible to fraud, theft, or other unethical behaviors. By assessing financial risk factors, Lauth helps companies safeguard their resources and reputations.
3. Lifestyle Audits
While respecting privacy boundaries, Lauth’s lifestyle audits evaluate public online activity, social media presence, and other available information to identify behavior or affiliations that could raise concerns. This includes evidence of substance abuse, violent behavior, discriminatory attitudes, or associations with extremist groups.
For instance, a candidate’s public social media posts might contradict their professed values or professional image, indicating a potential risk for workplace conflict or reputational harm. Detecting such discrepancies early enables employers to ask critical questions during interviews or reconsider a candidate altogether.
Case Example: Avoiding a Costly Mis-Hire
In 2024, a national financial services firm engaged Lauth Investigations to assist with vetting a candidate for a senior accounting role. The resume and interviews portrayed an ideal fit, but Lauth’s investigation uncovered a prior undisclosed lawsuit involving allegations of financial misconduct and a history of unpaid debts. The candidate also posted inflammatory content on social media, which could have jeopardized the firm’s public image.
Armed with this information, the company decided not to proceed with the hire, avoiding potential financial losses, legal exposure, and reputational damage. This case underscores the value of investigative due diligence in mitigating risks standard hiring processes might overlook.
Benefits of Partnering with Lauth for Investigative Screening
Risk Mitigation: Identifying red flags before hiring reduces turnover costs and potential legal liabilities.
Confidence in Hiring Decisions: Comprehensive reports provide HR and leadership teams with objective, verified information.
Customized Investigations: Lauth tailors investigations to the specific role, industry, and client needs, ensuring relevant and actionable insights.
Confidentiality and Compliance: Investigations are conducted discreetly, adhering to all applicable privacy laws and regulations, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
Conclusion
The true cost of a bad hire extends far beyond lost productivity. It encompasses financial loss, cultural disruption, legal exposure, and reputational harm that can affect an organization for years. As hiring environments become increasingly competitive and complex, relying solely on resumes, interviews, and standard background checks is no longer sufficient.
Investigative due diligence, as practiced by Lauth Investigations International, provides a critical layer of protection-uncovering litigation history, financial red flags, and lifestyle concerns that might otherwise go unnoticed. By investing in these deeper vetting techniques, companies can make more informed hiring decisions, safeguard their workplaces, and ultimately save millions in potential costs associated with bad hires.
In the end, the question isn’t just about finding the best candidate on paper—it’s about protecting your organization’s future with thorough, reliable, and discreet investigative support.
Corporations that have seen a decline in their corporate culture are turning to internal investigation and risk assessment firms for help in 2020. The discourse around corporate culture has evolved significantly over the last few years, with employees voicing their desire for work-life balance and how corporate culture directly impacts their decision to stay with a company. Leadership is better-educating themselves on how their actions feed into the cycle of corporate culture, and how they can improve employee retention by making meaningful changes that grease the wheels of success in their business or organization. However, many corporations have their anxieties about conducting internal investigations in a fishbowl—where employees are able to see the methodology in motion—and how this will impact their workforce and their business.
Corporations can find themselves open to scrutiny from both
their employees and their customer-base when they announce an impending
internal investigation. Some corporations, for a myriad of reasons, opt to have
internal investigations under a cloak of classification in order to protect the
integrity of the investigation—however, in the interest of transparency, many
corporations opt for a visible investigation, warning employees, shareholders,
customers, or all of the above, of an impending internal investigation. This
means that the investigating bodies will be under a microscope of scrutiny
within the corporation, as their methodology, decorum, and their practices will
a source of debate around the proverbial watercooler.
Regardless of who is contracted to conduct the internal
investigation, or under what level of declassification, if there is visibility
of an investigation, there is a delicate balance of transparency and
professionalism needed in pursuit of the truth. One of the most difficult tasks
an internal investigator has at the inception of the investigation is
establishing a rapport with relevant parties, such as leadership and the
workforce in order to garner frankness from persons who will be crucial to the
fact-finding process.
Investigators must establish credibility with the client and
relevant subjects in the case. This means ensuring those individuals are aware
that the investigator shares their values and is only interested in identifying
problems to improve the business—not damage it—indicating a high level of
accountability that will have a ripple effect throughout the corporation or
organization.
In tandem with establishing credibility, investigators must
be straightforward about their objectives, outlining what the client hopes to
achieve and their proposed methods of reaching that goal. Investigators must
never make promises they cannot keep by making declarations before they know
the facts. Corporate investigators must always pursue a resolution to a
business’s problem that does not impair their long-term goals—by the same
token, it is imperative that the investigator informs the client that there
might be some negative consequences as the result of their findings, such as
turnover, further inquiries, or bad publicity.
Objectivity is key in any internal investigation. It’s one of the reasons some companies elect to have a private investigator or risk assessment firm conduct their investigation, as opposed to an in-house investigator or member of house counsel. No employee with a stake in the outcome of the investigation, even indirectly, may be 100% objective in identifying pervasive issues in an organization. In addition to that objectivity, an independent investigator—unknown to the corporation or organization—investigators can move through a workplace undetected. This will take the edge off of the “fishbowl” factor that is common with internal corporate investigations. Private investigators can adopt a persona and conduct their investigations without the eyes of concerned coworkers; interviewing employees, collecting evidence, evaluating the location, and reviewing internal communications can all be conducted in plain sight.
Internal corporate investigations with a “fishbowl” factor can be an inherent challenge for corporations. Above all, it’s important to remember that employees are your greatest asset, as they feed into a cycle of corporate culture that can successfully stimulate your business or organization. An appropriate level of trust and care must always be taken when subjecting your workforce to an internal investigation. When employees feel valued, they will become empowered and engaged to give their best to the benefit of your organization.
Regardless of the industry, all businesses should be
vigilant with regards to employee theft. Employee theft can come in all shapes
and sizes, from an administrative assistant pocketing some extra Post-Its to
hardcore embezzlement on behalf of leadership. It can be easy to dismiss
repeated instances of employee theft as isolated incidents, implementing
disciplinary action or termination, and moving on with the work week. However,
many executives and managers may not realize that repeated instances of employee
theft could be indicative of a much larger problem in their corporation or
organization.
From a position of leadership, it’s easy to dismiss a single instance of employee theft; the employee is the one who made a choice to steal from their company or organization, and that employee was wrong for doing so. Discipline or termination typically follows, and leadership walks away feeling confident that they’ve removed a bad apple from their barrel. However, pervasive issues with employee theft are symptomatic of a systematic problem within the business or organization that go beyond a single employee’s bad judgement.
Why do employees steal?
The three most common reasons employees steal are not very
difficult to understand.
employees feel as though their employer has wronged them, or their compensation is inadequate.
employees believe that employers insure such losses—therefore it is a victimless crime.
employees know they will not be held accountable if they are caught
All of these reasons may characterize the employee as “disgruntled,” a term with a cultural context that often absolves the employer of any misconduct. When a corporation or organization has repeated instances of multiple employees committing theft, it’s a sign that the corporate culture of the workplace is less than healthy. A single employee pilfering staplers is not symptomatic of unhealthy corporate culture, but 5 employees pilfering staplers is a sign that employees do not feel valued, and therefore do not respect their employer.
The cycle of healthy corporate culture always begins with happy employees, because when employees are happy, they are more engaged, and contribute positively to the productivity of the organization. This pleases leadership, which incentivizes them to make decisions that raise morale, such as rewarding success with pay-raises, benefits, and thoughtful, constructive collaboration. The cycle begins anew with happy employees. Poor corporate culture means that undervalued employees will contribute negatively to workplace productivity. One of the ways poor corporate culture manifests is through employee theft—and it’s not just about profits or staplers. When employees are disengaged from their duties, they’re more likely to take extraneous breaks, or taking longer breaks than permitted, which is theft of company time. This often comes from a rationalized perspective, in which the employee does not feel their own time is valued within the organization, and therefore will place the same perceived value on company time.
Whatever the type of theft, repeated instances of employee theft cannot be ignored. It may be a sign that your business or organization needs a corporate culture audit. A corporate culture audit is like a check-up—when you go into the doctor for a standard check-up, they evaluate all of your major bodily functions for signs of disease or deterioration, and a corporate culture audit is no different. When investigators conduct a corporate culture audit, they evaluate all of your business’s internal operations, hiring processes, and principle employees for roadblocks that hinder productivity and contribute to poor corporate culture. The identification of these pervasive issues will lead to investigators providing leadership with expert recommendations to dislodge the blockage, allowing the cycle of corporate culture to right itself through cause and effect.
If you think your business or organization needs a corporate culture audit, call Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our Corporate Culture Audit program. For over 30 years, Lauth has been providing corporations with solutions to stimulate their business. In pursuit of truth, call 317-951-1100, or visit us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com.
Every corporation needs an excellent in-house attorney to fight complex legal battles in their stead—someone to act in the best interests of the company and its future. In addition to the everyday intricacies of business litigation, house counsel may also have to field lawsuits from current or former employees who have a legal objection to something that happened during their tenure at the business. When employee lawsuits become a pervasive issue at a business, not only is the cost in billable hours exponential, but the legal judgements that result from these litigations can be devastating for companies. While litigation in general can be characterized as the cost of doing business, companies with healthy corporate culture experience a much lower rate of employee lawsuits. So, how can healthy corporate culture reduce the chance of a lawsuit?
Corporations across the United States are starting to understand the value of healthy corporate culture. Employee lawsuits aside, unhealthy corporate culture can have detrimental, snowballing effects that occur when employees are unhappy in their capacity and unengaged in their work. This is why corporations must improve their culture from within, so that employee retention and productivity remain high. Corporations also have millennials making up the majority of the workforce in the nation, complete with a set of values that propels them to seek a better work-life balance. This means that millennials are less likely to stay in a job where they are unhappy, and will simply seek a more amendable opportunity that allows them to have the work-life balance they desire.
When employees do not feel heard or valued by their employer, they’re far more likely to file a lawsuit related to their grievance. And unfortunately, no company is safe. In 2010, 99,922 EEOC charges were filed in the state of Florida alone, a datapoint that makes leadership wonder not if they’ll be the target of a lawsuit, but when. Employee lawsuits can drag out over months or even years, exponentially getting more expensive. The average settlement in an employee claim or lawsuit is $40,000. That expense alone can be devastating to a company, but that does not account for the disruption to daily operations, and the fact that litigation costs are on a steady rise. In 10% of cases, settlements result in $1 million or greater, a sum that could be the beginning of the end for many medium to small corporations.
The risk of a lawsuit can be even greater depending on the state in which it is filed. According to the Hiscox Group, a majority of states carry around a 10% change of having an employee lawsuit filed against them. However, in Georgia, the probability is 19%. In states like New Mexico, California, and Nevada, the probability can be as high as 55%. The area with the highest probability of litigation is the District of Columbia, with a terrifying 81% chance. The reason for the wide range in probabilities is two-fold: First, the legal standards in each state regarding discrimination and hostile work environments can vary. Secondly, the states with higher risks have more binding laws regarding litigation that can create extra hurdles for companies at the state level. This is why corporations must stay current on employment legislation, especially if they have locations across multiple states/jurisdictions.
So, how can corporations protect themselves against litigation from current or former employees? In-house counsel fields lawsuits when they are filed, but did you know there was a more proactive method to combatting employee litigation? The answer is simple: healthy corporate culture. When a corporation has a healthy corporate culture, it means that the employees feel valued by their employers in their capacity within the organization. It means that employees who feel valued are engaged, thereby greasing the wheels of internal, daily operations. This increased productivity means progress for the company, and the cycle of healthy corporate culture begins anew with leadership rewarding engaged employees for their hard work.
Research shows that the number one reason behind employee lawsuits is retaliation. In an average scenario, the employee reports an internal issue, usually regarding a form of discrimination. Following the inclusion of the investigation, when the employee cannot track for upward mobility, or a form of unwarranted disciplinary action occurs, they assume the reason is for reporting the previous issue. This can result in that employee filing a lawsuit for receiving unfair treatment on behalf of their employer. When organizations have healthy corporate culture, this is far less likely to occur.
If your company or organization needs a corporate culture overhaul, call Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our corporate culture audit program. We can help you improve your business from within and decrease the likelihood of employee lawsuits. When it comes to your business, you should expect facts, not fiction.
The word whistle-blower can trigger many different feelings for Americans. Much of the nation has very dichotomous feelings about whistle-blowers, either lauding them as heroes, or vilifying them as saboteurs. Individuals at the center of these whistle-blower stories are cast in different roles depending on the route that external media decides to take. While spectators decide for themselves whether the whistle-blower had good intentions or otherwise, the real question we should be asking is what kind of corporate culture within their organization allowed these events to transpire?
Whistle-blowing is not to be confused with “leaking,” another term that often appears in these narratives. In short summation, whistle-blowing is actually defined under the Whistle-blower Protection Act, describing a disclosure of information that an employee “reasonably believes” demonstrates “a violation of law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; a gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific threat to public health and safety.” These actions amount to misconduct, and are actionable. “Leaking” describes the act of indiscriminately releasing company information, regardless of whether or not that information constitutes some degree of ethical violation. The term “leaker” can also be ascribed to a legitimate whistle-blower in order to discredit them.
In reality, it is a myth that most whistle-blowers are “snitches” who go directly to external sources like the press or watchdog groups to report their organization’s problems. In most cases that have been denoted as “whistle-blowing” there are documented attempts by the whistle-blower to try and resolve the issue within their corporation or organization. It’s when those attempts to resolve the issue internally are exhausted that whistle-blowers often find themselves without recourse, and go to the media in order to get their story out there.
This is why those who work in corporate ethics and corporate compliance recommend a healthy corporate culture in order to prevent whistle-blowing from occurring in the first place. Healthy corporate cultures promote a climate of excellent communication in the pursuit of a common goal (usually outlined by a corporation’s established values or mission statement). When an issue is brought to the attention of leadership, and they are inspired by a company’s mission statement to do something about it, that is where true corporate progress occurs. The effects of a healthy company culture can actually be cyclical. When an employee reports an issue or misconduct to leadership, they might expect to receive some push back. However, when that employee is carefully heard, and taken seriously, it can foster a sense of value in the workforce, as they now know they are agents who can effect change. This inspires a higher level of engagement in employees, which leads to higher rates of productivity, which in turn leads to happier leadership, who are then more inclined to reward employees for their hard work. That all increases morale on behalf of the entire workforce, leading to a healthy company culture.
When the goal is teamwork and collaboration, there is no need to turn to external sources to shed light on an issue. A healthy company culture will create a climate where internal issues can be discussed and resolved through teamwork—not through media attention and public outrage. Whistle-blowers are not heroes or villains, depending on who you believe, but rather a symptom of dysfunction within a corporation or organization that cannot afford to be ignored.
