Sexual Harassment & Corporate Culture Audits

Sexual Harassment & Corporate Culture Audits

Sexual harassment in the workplace can create a hostile environment for employees and decrease workfroce morale.

The #MeToo movement has fundamentally changed the conversation around reporting and documenting allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace. Victims of this harassment have previously been restricted by a pervasive culture of silence and shame within the workplace—a culture where reporters are vilified and characterized as dishonest people with an axe to grind. Now, with many victims of sexual harassment publicizing their experiences in the workplace, more and more people are feeling empowered to seek justice for their treatment.

The Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reported in their annual fiscal report that sexual harassment filings had an overall increase of 13.6% from 2018. The EEOC also denoted that they secured nearly $70 million for the victims of sexual harassment through enforcement on behalf of administration. These are just a few ways that the EEOC is attempting to make themselves the new champions of workplace harassment reporting in effort to improve the culture around reporting and enforcement. The EEOC seeks to empower employers to create a corporate culture within their organization that does not demonize reporting and encourages thorough investigations of all claims. By fostering this open and transparent workplace culture, employers create spaces for their employees that are safe, respectful, and thriving environment.

For a myriad of reasons, employers may have difficulty in performing due-diligence on sexual harassment claims. Whether the employer does not find the complaint credible, or as a result of oversight, when no investigation is conducted into the complaint, the organization opens itself up to subsequent litigation and a public relations nightmare. However, there are affirmative defenses for employers who can document their attempts to create a safe environment for their employees. One of the ways employers can document this is by submitting their organization to a corporate culture audit.

A corporate culture audit is one of the best investments that an employer can make in 2019. These audits are typically conducted by independent risk assessment firms and in some cases, even private investigators. In essence, a corporate culture audit is basically a check-up for a business or organization—not unlike taking your car in for scheduled maintenance. An auditor will enter the work environment and conduct a series of assessments based on a previously-set agenda. The goal of the auditor is to review internal processes and the physical location (if applicable) and identify issues that could have negative consequences for the corporation or organization, such as faulty investigation procedures for internal complaints.

Not only can these audits protect businesses and organizations in the aftermath of a sexual harassment claim, but corporate culture audits can also improve your business from within. What we know about the cycle of corporate culture indicates that when employees feel valued, they are more engaged and more productive as a result. The audit also evaluates the organization’s internal operations for efficacy and efficiency. By identifying flaws within internal operations, corporations can modify those procedures to increase productivity. Corporate culture audits are an invaluable opportunity for organizations to bolster their business and improve the overall health of the workplace.

If you want to give your business a tune-up, call Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our corporate culture program. We are an independent private investigation firm specializing in corporate investigations and crimes against persons. We have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and scores of 5-star ratings on Google. Call today and learn how we can improve your business from within.

Corporate Culture Audit: What to Expect During an Audit

Corporate Culture Audit: What to Expect During an Audit

corporate culture audits

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.

When Technology is Taken Hostage

When Technology is Taken Hostage

We expose more of ourselves on a daily basis than at any other time in history. Most people have some form of social media an enterprising sleuth could build a profile based off of just by pressing the “older posts” button. There’s been a lot of news about wiretaps lately, but something under most people’s radar are the Smart TV’s and toys that have been listening to their owner’s conversations.

While it’s scary enough to consider how many things in your home could be listening in on you this very moment, what’s even more concerning is how quickly you can lose control of these devices and extorted to get them back. And it’s not just individuals having their devices and data taken from them, it’s also hit schools, hospital and private businesses hard over the last year.

One of the most common forms of extortion today is the use of “ransomware” to lock people or companies out of their electronics and data. Ransomware is a term for a particular kind of hacking that’s been on the rise as internet reliance has increased. Victims of ransomware typically receive a message on their device’s display saying something to the effect of “pay us this money and we’ll give you back your data.”

In an interview with CNN, South Carolina public school administrator Charles Huck, highlighted the dilemma presented by ransomware when he said, “You get to the point of making the business decision: Do I make my end-users — in our case teachers and students — wait for weeks and weeks and weeks while we restore servers from backup? Or do we pay the ransom and get the data back online more quickly?”

If the targets of ransomware want their systems or data back then they don’t have much choice, but to pay the fee. The hackers have repeatedly targeted hospitals since their technology working is literally a case of life or death there is significant pressure on the hospitals to simply pay the ransom.

When Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center had some of it’s communication devices taken over by hackers last year, the criminals demanded $17,000 to be paid in bitcoin. The hackers asked for that amount, because it’s low enough most places will pay under the impression it’s the quickest way to get it all over with.

“The malware locks systems by encrypting files and demanding ransom to obtain the decryption key. The quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems and administrative functions was to pay the ransom and obtain the decryption key,” Chief Executive Allen Stefanek said when the LA Times asked why they paid the hackers. “In the best interest of restoring normal operations, we did this.”

 

One of the scarier things about ransomware is this is only the beginning. The FBI reported ransomware to be a $1 billion industry in 2016. In a follow-up story CNN reported:

At that rate, ransomware is on pace to be a $1 billion a year crime this year. The FBI told CNN that the number “is quite high” because a few people “reported large losses.”

The agency also said that the losses could even be bigger once other related costs from these extortion schemes are factored in. Plus: Some victims may choose to pay and not report the crime.

Paul Roberts, founder and editor of a website called The Security Ledger told CNN, “The ransomware criminals understand this. Their business in some ways is a volume business so they don’t set their ransom so high that you can’t pay it. They set it at a level so they can get their money and move on to the next victim.”

This crime has even made its way into consumer electronics like smart phones and TVs. Last Christmas a photo of an LG TV stricken with ransomware went viral.

The hackers demand far less money to relinquish control of personal devices, but $500, especially if it’s on Christmas Day after you’ve spent money on gifts, is still a lot. In December, Slate reported:

“Ransomware works by taking over a system until a user pays a fee, often in the form of cryptocurrency or digital gift cards. One recent high-profile ransomware attack shut down much of San Francisco’s public transit system while another targeted a Hollywood hospital. More mundane ransomware has been reported on Android devices since at least 2014, and Frantic Locker first began to show up on phones in 2015.

Keep your systems operating systems up to date and don’t download files that aren’t from  trusted site to help avoid ransomware. If you do all these things and still end up under attack, contact your systems administrator or the manufacturer of your device. Take precaution, because ransomware isn’t going away anytime soon.

 

David Schroeder, Blog Writer, Lauth Investigations International

Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofits

Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofits

image001 Currently, the corporations that have the most information about their rival companies and organizations are the ones that have a financial and competitive edge over their competition. When this data is collected legally, it is known as competitive intelligence. However, many big businesses are opting for more unethical and unlawful ways of gathering information, which is when competitive intelligence turns into corporate espionage. According to a recent report written by Gary Ruskin of Essential Information, the amount of corporate spying that occurs today has escalated in the past decade. This can be attributed several factors, including the growing numbers of nonprofit organizations that threaten corporations. Ruskin’s report includes narratives of big businesses such as Walmart, Kraft, Dow Chemical, Bank of America, McDonald’s, and several more adopting illegal techniques to gather intelligence about nonprofit organizations.

How is Corporate Espionage Executed?

In the past, companies would hire private detectives to collect competitive intelligence. Many of these investigators would adhere to a strict moral and ethical code that was quickly tossed out as corporations continued to grow. Now, businesses are creating their own personal team of investigators. The past employers of these staff members include government intelligence agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the FBI, and many other law enforcement agencies. In order to gather information, the techniques employed by these ex-agents include:

  • Physical Surveillance
  • Creating False Identities
  • Theft of Confidential Information
  • Exposing False Documents
  • Wiretaps and Hacking
  • D-lines (digging through trash)
  • Breaking and Entering

Ruskin’s report contained witness accounts of these unethical practices taking place, as well as several emails sent between the agents themselves. One witness reported having to dress in all black as her boyfriend, an investigator, stole documents during a D-line against Greenpeace. Corporations also hired ex-police officers and had them use their badges as a way to infiltrate these institutions. Some investigators even created a false identity and became a member of a nonprofit organization, giving them access to company records. Financial statements, social security numbers, and physical items like laptops were all stolen from organizations by these corporate spies.

Why Target Nonprofits?

According to Ruskin, “many different types of nonprofits have been targeted with espionage, including environmental, anti-war, public interest, consumer, food safety, pesticide reform, nursing-home reform, gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control groups.” As these organizations gain more power, big businesses begin to feel threatened. Nonprofit organizations seek to protect consumers from corporations. A company that is conducting unethical practices can risk losing billions of dollars as well as their reputation if consumers find out. When a nonprofit attempts to expose such practices, hiring a team of investigators can cost less than a potential leak. Ruskin’s report included several examples of these corporations acting out against threats. During the 1990s, Greenpeace rain a campaign concerning the addition of chlorine in plastic and paper production. Greenpeace criticized Dow Chemical for their use of chlorine, who in turn hired investigators to infiltrate Greenpeace’s headquarters by any means necessary. According to Ruskin, companies not only searched for information, but made it up as well. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange sought to expose a scandal within Bank of America. In order to combat this attack, Bank of America hired investigators who attempted to end WikiLeaks. Their proposed tactics included creating fake documents that would be submitted to WikiLeaks, then exposing these documents for being false one they were published. By doing so, WikiLeaks would lose its credibility with the public.

What is Being Done to Stop Corporate Espionage?

Because corporate espionage has only recently become an issue, most corporations aren’t prosecuted. Most businesses are very careful to cover their tracks, making instances of undercover operations hard to pinpoint. Companies will hire outside investigators, who in turn will hire separate contractors. When an organization attempts to prosecute a corporation for espionage, the case will often get dropped because they cannot take the full blame. The report also mentioned that corporations hired ex-employees from intelligence agencies because other law enforcement officials would be less likely to prosecute them. Sometimes, these agencies are the ones that are ones conducting unethical investigations. According to Ruskin, Congress must enact policies that will protect these organizations. He believes that until official measures are taken, corporate espionage will continue to occur without repercussions.