As never before, today’s consumers expect the brands they buy into to lead by example when it comes to equality and social justice. Any organization that allows workplace discrimination to run rampant is not only going to face the potential of legal repercussions, but also substantial reputational damage that is hard to bounce back from.
In contrast, when companies choose to take a hard moral line, express their values openly, foster strong corporate culture, and tackle any internal challenges head on, they can come out wearing a badge of honor in the eyes of their audience. So ask yourself, is your organization setting a shining example, or are you asleep at the wheel?
What Is Workplace Discrimination?
While workplace harassment of any kind should always be taken seriously, discrimination carries a particular weight. In essence, discrimination describes the unfair treatment of an applicant or employee on the basis of their skin color, race, national origin, religion, gender, sexuality, age, marital status, or handicap. In dealing with an issue that lands under both Federal and State employment and labor laws, employers are responsible for ensuring that discrimination does not find a home within the teams for which they are responsible.
Discrimination may arise in the behavior of a single rogue employee, or it may present as a pervasive aspect of a corroded corporate culture. It is also vital to be aware that prejudice and discriminatory behavior can emerge upon any rung of the corporate ladder, from low-level recruits right up to the C-suite.
Swift and Appropriate Action
In many cases, an employer may be entirely unaware that a member of their team possesses problematic qualities. However, ignorance can be unforgiving; when a complaint arises, the fallout can escalate quickly. If alleged discrimination is reported as a crime, those at the helm of HR for the company may find that they are not only navigating their own internal workplace investigations, but that law enforcement agencies are on the scene as well. Pressure to arrive at a fair and just resolution can mount even further if the workplace discrimination complaint arrives in the public eye.
When employers navigate discrimination complaints poorly, they not only risk untold damage to team morale and company perception, but also legal culpability for allowing discrimination to go unaddressed. In the midst of such a challenging situation—particularly when the accused is in a leadership role—HR personnel and upper management can find mounting an impartial workplace investigation particularly challenging. In this scenario, calling on the aid of an external expert can ensure the integrity and legal solidity of each step yet to be taken.
Hiring a Private Investigator When Discriminations Complaints Arise
Given the gravity of this type of complaint, bringing in the cavalry in the form of a private investigator can be invaluable. Highly skilled corporate investigators from Lauth Investigations are ready to offer the skill set required to deliver a fair and moral outcome. A seasoned investigator will take the lead on corporate investigations, reviewing background histories, interviewing witnesses, and documenting patterns until a full picture emerges. With surveillance capabilities and the capacity to go undercover at our fingertips, we will find the right strategy to reveal the information you need.
Private investigators specializing in corporate investigations are adept at working delicately alongside law enforcement, while maintaining confidentiality, and sensitively safeguarding both employee well-being and brand identities alike. We are poised to aid in the navigation of legal matters, and can help organizations deliver justice while avoiding potential employee retaliation litigation. Learn more about how we can assist when workplace discrimination complaints arise, discover the bountiful rewards of Corporate Culture Audits. We are always on hand, so contact our team to discuss the unique needs of your organization.
Private investigator abuse is an unethical practice by which private investigator services are used to harass and intimidate others. This can come in many forms, like visible surveillance operations, and fact-finding/blackmail. Hiring a private investigator in a time of personal or corporate crisis is one of the greatest ways to get answers. Private investigators are trained, licensed professionals who use their diverse skillsets to get answers for their clients. These services are designed to give individuals context and peace of mind when they are making complex decisions in their corporate or personal lives. However, not every client who hires a private investigator does so in search of truth. Some clients seek to abuse intelligence services as a means of intimidation or harassment, and it is a practice private investigators must quash. Private investigator abuse is a real form of harassment that is utilized every day by both high-profile clients and private clients, and only serves to bury the truth further where clarification is needed.
Private investigator abuse and harassment completely fly in the face of private investigations—and independent, objective look at a complex situations concluding with comprehensive solutions. Intelligence services should be used just for that—finding empowering facts and intelligence. It is the pursuit of the truth, meant to be used to restore balance and perspective in a given set of circumstances. Once a private investigator turns over their findings to a client, with few exceptions, a private investigator cannot be held ethically responsible for what the client does with that information. However, when clients use private investigators on regular basis to harass and intimidate others, this is a misuse of the practice. Private investigators are typically independent contractors who can choose who they work for and when they work, meaning that they do have choices when it comes to using their professional talents to harm others. When the job is about bringing facts to light, it seems incongruent to use these services to keep things in the shadows.
When private investigator abuse occurs on the international stage, it further detracts from the true nature of private investigations, validating every trope in film and television of private investigators as parasitic, seedy characters with dishonest intentions. Since 2018, the world has heard the cry of #MeToo when it comes to exposing sexual abusers in the workplace and private life. Among the men who were accused of sexual misconduct, the most famous is arguably Harvey Weinstein, the American movie producer whose crimes of sexual assault and rape got him convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison. When allegations about Weinstein first broke, he set to work weaponizing private intelligence against his accusers. Ronan Farrow, an American journalist, first reported in The New Yorker that Weinstein was using private investigators of the firm known as Black Cube to dig up information on the numerous actresses and other women who claimed Weinstein assaulted them. The investigators combed through the accusers’ personal lives, building psychological profiles and aggregating information on them that could be used to intimidate or silence them, and it didn’t stop there. Donning the guise of a women’s rights advocate, one of the highly-trained operatives met with one of his accusers, Rose McGowan, attempting to aggregate information from her on the case. That same operative also pretended to be another of Weinstein’s victims in order to speak with a journalist and get names of the women involved. Weinstein’s attempts to subjugate the justice system by frightening his accusers into silence on such a massive level was patently private investigator abuse.
Harvey Weinstein is not the only high-profile clients that utilizes private investigator abuse to intimidate and control others. The Church of Scientology is also a documented culprit of using private investigator abuse to control members of their church and members of the church’s clergy. In recent years, documentaries and docuseries like Going Clear and Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath have brought to light the private investigator abuse utilized by the Church of Scientology. It’s difficult to qualify how high-ranking members of the church weaponized private investigators without going into detail about the doctrines of Scientology. Suffice it to say that when individuals decide they wish to leave the Church of Scientology, it was common practice for high-ranking members of the religion’s Sea Organization to send private investigators after individuals who had left the church, using manipulation, blackmail, and extortion to bring these straying members back the flock. In the same way Harvey Weinstein used private investigators to silence his victims, the Church of Scientology also has a documented history of using private investigators to harass and intimidate their detractors. In one episode of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, Leah Remini herself and former Sea Organization executive Mike Rinder are followed by a pair of private investigators while shooting footage in the field. What’s particularly disturbing about the Church of Scientology’s private investigator abuse is that no one is immune to this seedy form of harassment. Ron Miscavige, the father of the church’s leader, David Miscavige, claimed in an interview in 2016 that his own son had also placed private investigators on his father’s trail after Ron Miscavige and his wife escaped from Scientology in 2012. David Miscavige instructed the private investigators to follow his father and ensure that he would not go to press with information about the church following his departure. Miscavige put the private investigator in such a position that on one occasion, during a surveillance operation, the private investigator observed Ron Miscavige having what looked like a heart attack from across the street. The investigator immediately sought counsel from the client on how he should proceed, and Miscavige allegedly told the private investigator to let Ron succumb to the heart attack. According to a police report, stating that David Miscavige told the investigator “…if it was Ron’s time to die, let him die, and not intervene in any way.” This is the implicit extreme of private investigator abuse, in which the client puts the private investigator in the position of being indifferent to human life in the name of getting a more desirable result.
The simple answer to preventing private investigator abuse is that professionals must know when to say no to a client who wants to contract them for nefarious purposes. The free market means that professionals are free to choose where they work and how they apply their trade. Knowing that knowledge is power, it then behooves the private investigators of the world to take careful consideration when deciding to take a case and perform due-diligence in assuring that their clients are above board in the retention of private investigator services.
