Since 2018, the number of working private investigators in the United States has been expected to rise exponentially in the coming years. The continued development of the internet, ubiquity of information technology, and the budding applications in both the professional and private sector are all factors that have directly influenced this rise. The private investigation industry has seen a lot of professional transplants, in which individuals who previously worked in a similar or completely different industry have begun the process of getting their private investigator license and opening their own private investigation firms.
Two professional areas that are seeing a lot of transplants are journalism and law enforcement. In their pursuit of the truth behind a good story, journalists are realizing that they can apply private investigator methodology to their journalistic pursuits, and vice versa in applying journalistic integrity to private investigations. In the same process of application, law enforcement officers are finding a third act in their professional lives by transitioning from law enforcement to private investigations.
Private investigator methodology is often compared to that of law enforcement. This is because fact-finding and following leads typically demand the same approach. This makes former law enforcement officials often ideal individuals to become private investigators. Police officers and detectives in particular are natural doers—professionals who thrive on action and progress. As such, many law enforcement officials find retirement disagreeable, and seek to apply their professional knowledge to private investigations.
Police turned private investigators can continue their careers of service to the community. While police turned private investigators can also apply their due-diligence and methodology to corporate investigations, their expertise is best put to use helping families get justice. Former police officers know the system, and in many cases, they remain living in the communities where they served during their retirement—so not only do they know the system, but also THE system in local law enforcement that might have failed to get justice. The reasons why criminal investigations fall apart are not exhaustive. Sometimes local police departments do not have the resources at their disposal to carry out a comprehensive investigation. They might lack the manpower to properly exhaust every lead. As a result, evidence disappears, witnesses disappear or cannot remember details accurately, and the trail towards the truth goes cold.
Police officers and other investigating bodies often run into bureaucratic or jurisdictional issues that prevent them from moving forward with a case. And the lack of communication between departments in different jurisdictions allows suspects and subjects to move between jurisdictions. The result is the same—the trail goes cold. Private investigators are not members of law enforcement. They are not bound by jurisdiction. They are only bound by their limits of licensure. As long as a private investigator is licensed in the state in question, they can follow tips and subjects wherever they lead. Private investigators don’t need substantial evidence to follow someone, nor have to clear their next step with a bureaucratic ladder of command. Private investigators can strike when the iron is hot, and increase the chances that answers will be found.
Police officers’ knowledge of the system allows them to collect evidence and witness accounts with great detail and discipline. They know exactly what law enforcement would be looking for and how thorough to be. They can take special professional care that no evidence is mishandled for later use in a criminal trial, and preserve the integrity of witness testimony by serving as an expert in the courtroom. Testimony of a former police officer always adds another veneer of integrity to the case.
If you are a member of Generation X or older, you might have
noticed your workplace undergoing significant changes more often than usual.
The technology used in daily operations is being updated, streamlined, and
implemented from the top-down. The language of your workplace might be changing
and evolving. The new hires appear to look younger and younger every day. As millennials
age, we will see a rising trend in places of business being dominated by millennial
culture and influence, and that just might be the answer to a necessary major
overhaul of corporate culture throughout the United States.
The Baby Boomer generation used to be the largest generation
currently employed in the United States. As they start to retire and leave the
workforce, the road is paved and shiny for millennials to fill those positions.
Since 2016, millennials
have made up a majority of the American labor force, and American work
environments are seeing the signs of progression. Millennials are an inspired
and ambitious generation, despite their reputation for lacking initiative and
being obsessed with the latest tech. Their most notable trait however is their
standards for corporate culture.
Millennials—more than any other generation—are famous for
job-hopping. Over half of working millennials have reported that they are
usually open to new job opportunities. Not only are they less likely to remain
at any one position indefinitely, but they are also more focused on the comprehensive
definitions of an organization’s culture. If corporations throughout the country
wish to continue hiring new employees, they may have to take a harder look at
their corporate culture. “Clearly, many young professionals are thinking about
more than money and are willing to sacrifice a portion of their salary in
exchange for a career move that more closely aligns with their values or
passions or improves their work-life balance,” said Kristen
Robinson, senior vice president, Women & Young Investors, Fidelity
Investments.
While working millennials have previously been characterized
as desperate hamster-wheel employees struggling to pay off student loan debt,
recent studies have shown that millennials are seeking a work-life balance that
is supported by their employer. Work-life flexibility can come in many forms,
such as flexible scheduling and remote working opportunities. The
Sloan Center on Aging & Work reported “a study of more than 19,000
employees showed that stress and burnout was lower among workers engaged in all
types of flexibility arrangements.”
What we know about the
cycle of corporate culture indicates that these employees who are having
more positive work experiences through work-life balance are then pouring themselves
back into their employment, furthering the health of the organization’s culture.
According to Gallup,
teams with high employee engagement rates are 21% more productive and have 28%
less internal theft than those with low engagement. When employees are engaged,
the wheels of the corporate machine turn fluidly.
Corporations can begin the process of improving their corporate culture by soliciting an independent corporate culture audit from firms in the risk assessment and private investigation industry. If your corporation is suffering from a corporate crisis, don’t hesitate. Even if the crisis seems relatively minor, it could be symptomatic of a larger problem within your organization. Call Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our brand-new Corporate Culture Audit (CCA) program. Our dedicated and qualified staff composed of former military and law enforcement officers will get to the bottom of your internal problems. With Lauth Investigations International, you can expect hands-on, comprehensive services, detailed reports, and expert recommendations. When it comes to your business or organization, you should only expect facts, not fiction.
Pervasive internal issues are the malignancies that
contribute to the decline of any corporation. While they come in many shapes
and iterations, issues like communication, employee engagement, and employee relations
can quickly derail a corporation’s mission. That’s why corporations across the
country are electing to undergo corporate
culture audits in order to get a full picture of what the internal issues
are so they can make concentrated efforts towards improving their business.
No two culture
audits will ever be the same—which is as it should be. Every company or
organization is fundamentally different from one other, not only due to its structure
and size, but because no workforce should be evaluated with the same measuring
stick as another. It’s imperative that the context of every single corporation
be fully explored. Full context can include, but is never limited to things
like corporate mission, vision, values, internal operations, structure, and
leadership.
Undergoing corporate culture audits is the first real step in addressing pervasive issues within the workplace. Think of it as an annual physical or checkup with a physician for your business. When you go to the doctor, you undergo an examination, and the specialists run tests in order to determine how healthy you are—a corporate culture audit is no different. A corporate culture auditor comes in and evaluates the level of functionality within your corporation so you can start implementing strategies to improve and grow your business. Here are some things that a corporate auditor might look at when they evaluate a corporation or organization:
Is everyone in the company invested in the same
things?
What are the valued differences between your
corporation and the competition?
What are the key measures of success within your
company?
What is the functionality of the leadership in
place versus the leadership required for success?
What are the environmental factors that are
contributing to the decline in culture?
What is the history of your company’s culture
from its foundation?
What are the subcultures that have formed in
your organization and what is their role within the company?
Corporate culture audits usually begin by speaking to
leadership. As the old adage goes, “The fish stinks from the head.” Many
problems within an organization can be traced back to problems with leadership,
and corporate culture auditors evaluate from the top down. Even if a CEO or
manager is engaged in supervision of daily operations, they may still be making
daily mistakes that contribute to stalls in the process.
Once leadership has been evaluated, auditors turn their
attention to internal operations. This involves looking at the chain of
command, the productivity flow (how the integral processes move from employee
to employee), and the quality of communication throughout the company. This
might involve interviewing department heads, reviewing meeting minutes, and
evaluating the environment of the workplace. This step is crucial, because regardless
of the leadership or employees in place, if the ecosystem of the workplace is
flawed, it can be difficult for even the most efficient, engaged employee to achieve
success.
Evaluating the environment and internal operations is
tantamount to establishing a bulletproof process for success—leaving the
workforce as one of the final pillars to be examined by the auditor. When you
seek a comprehensive picture of your employees’ level of engagement, it’s
important for auditors to identify the subcultures that are either contributing
or derailing your company’s mission and values. For example—there might be a
cluster of apathetic employees, who are not only disengaging together, but their
behavior actively encourages other employees to exhibit the same habits. This kind
of apathy can be a cancer in your corporation and may spread to other parts of
your workforce, further contributing to the decline of business.
Most importantly, at the conclusion of the audit, an
investigator will prepare a detailed report with very explicit recommendations
for how to fix the problems within the corporation or organization. This could
include items such as the termination of toxic employees, the revitalization of
internal operations, and necessary changes to a brick and mortar locations for
increased security or higher accountability. Once the audit is complete, the
burden of change lies with leadership to become beacons of change within the
internal structure. Corporate culture begins to improve when leadership
enforces changes from the top, allowing their example to trickle down through
the organization in the form of higher accountability and increased engagement.
If your corporation is suffering from a corporate crisis, don’t hesitate. Corporate culture audits are pulling more and more companies back into the black every day. Even if the crisis seems relatively minor, it could be symptomatic of a larger problem within your organization. Call Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our brand-new Corporate Culture Audit (CCA) program. Our dedicated and qualified staff composed of former military and law enforcement officers will get to the bottom of your internal problems. With Lauth Investigations International, you can expect hands-on, comprehensive services, detailed reports, and expert recommendations. When it comes to your business or organization, you should only expect facts, not fiction.
The owner of the dog in question, referred to as the Subject, was living on a few acres of property surrounded by a decorative fence the Victim of the dog bite alleges was easy for the dog to have jumped over. The Victim in the case reported she often walked past the Subject’s property early in the morning, approximately six or seven times prior, where she often witnessed the dogs “going crazy in the yard,” but never observed one loose from the confines of the property fence.
On the day of the incident, the Victim observed the gate to the property closed and one of the Subject’s two dogs residing inside the fence, but not the other. As she continued down the road, the unaccounted-for dog caught her by surprise, biting her on her backside and her arm. The scuffle was soon broken up by Witness A, who approached in their vehicle and honked their horn, scaring off the attacking dog. Witness A then drove the Victim to her residence, where she called 911 and was escorted to the hospital by an ambulance.
The Investigation
Lauth Investigations International Inc. was retained by Client X to contact neighbors of the Subject and witnesses to the incident to uncover if the dogs had ever escaped the fence before. Lauth’s investigators began their investigation by taking note of the lay of the land—both at the scene of the attack and the nearby geography—noting the Victim’s property was only a little over a mile up the road from the Subject’s property, or a twenty-two minute walk.
Lauth contacted the local sheriff’s department to obtain the victim’s police report regarding the incident, and also obtained an additional report for a similar dog bite incident, naming another possible resident of Subject’s house.
Photos were taken by Lauth Investigators of the Subject’s fence around the property. The Investigator did not observe any reasonable means for a dog to escape the fence. The next day, the investigator met with the Subject, the owner of the dog. The Subject insisted her dogs, who have since been euthanized, were friendly animals with zero history of violence and no propensities for aggression.
The Investigator later spoke to the neighbor, Witness A, who saw the attack in-progress. He recalled the dog was “snarling and growling,” and could only report he saw the dog approach from the right side of the road, which is the side on which the Subject’s property is located. He had never seen the dogs before, as he did not travel along that road often.
Witness B lives two houses away from the Subject and told the Investigator, contrary to the Subject’s statements, the dogs were very aggressive, with the propensity for excessive barking, unfriendliness, and a habit of charging the fence from the residence when cars or pedestrians would pass. She also advised it was not uncommon for at least one dog to be loose. When a vehicle left the Subject’s property, the gate to the fence would open, and at least one dog would often follow the vehicle. The gate would close behind the vehicle, leaving the dog loose from the property. At least six other witnesses, including the victim’s daughter and a mail carrier, reported aggressive behavior from the dogs in recent memory. The Investigator did speak to one witness who helped raise both dogs from birth and had never witnessed any violent behavior from the dogs.
The Conclusion
With witnesses to both the attack and aggressive behavior from the dogs, it was determined the Subject was negligent in keeping the dogs penned, despite numerous complaints for neighbors and passersby. Lauth Investigations has documented their testimony for litigative purposes, if any, in the future.
