Discover Hidden Insights: The Power of Internal Investigation Questionnaires
By Sierra Munroe
Sierra is a senior at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, majoring in Global Security and Intelligence Studies. She is an intern at Verensics for this Summer, and hopes to continue pursuing security after graduation.
While most people know us for our pre-hiring questionnaires, we wanted to quickly discuss our internal investigation questionnaires! Our investigative questionnaires are designed to be administered to current employees, and serve to shed light on critical (sometimes sensitive) information that can be useful to human resources, legal, asset protection or any other investigative function within the organization. They can also bring to light any incidents or issues those employees may not feel comfortable bringing forth otherwise.
You can use our internal investigation questionnaires for a number of use cases, whether your organization has a track record of a certain issue, you suspect an issue is happening right now, or you want to prevent issues from happening in the future. Even if you feel your company currently has no major cultural or behavioral issues, our questionnaires can provide your leadership team with a diverse range of information that will serve to help you and your team make strategic and informed decisions.
Our investigative questionnaires can be highly specialized, with 25 total categories for managers to choose from. Of the total categories, we recommend selecting the five to seven areas you want to focus on, and emphasizing one or two. The flexibility of this questionnaire gives leaders a unique opportunity to gather insights directly from their employees, allowing employees to communicate in a safe and efficient way where they feel leadership needs to focus more attention.
Due to the sheer number of categories these questionnaires allow managers to choose, these also allow you to get more specific in your search. Some behavior categories from the pre-hiring questionnaire and internal investigation questionnaire are similar because they are relevant for both use cases. Though it is crucial to understand someone’s values in this area before you hire them, it can also be equally valuable to understand it throughout their time with your company. This way you can ensure that your company’s culture affects your employees in positive ways in line with your values, and check in to see if any changes are negatively affecting your employees. The internal investigation questionnaire also offers unique behavioral categories that the pre-employment questionnaire does not, such as improper relationships and debit/credit fraud.
One of the more sensitive topics for employees to report on pertains to “Improper relationships”. Many employees do not feel comfortable reaching out to their superiors when they believe something inappropriate may be happening at work. Often, employees will notice inappropriate/improper relationships, but don’t want to take the risk of someone else getting in trouble. This is the perfect scenario where our internal investigation questionnaire can provide a solution. Utilizing the questionnaire allows employees a safe outlet for them to disclose any information they know, without the perceived repercussions of their peers finding out and retaliating. Additionally, because all employees take the questionnaire, this reduces the friction that an employee (who wants to report something) needs to overcome. They do not have to seek out the procedures, find a hotline, or take additional time out of their day to report, as the path forward is right at their fingertips. This also allows employees to disclose information about other taboo topics they may be aware of, such as: illegal drugs, inappropriate alcohol usage, theft, bullying, and many more.
After the employees take the questionnaire, the investigator can delve into the findings. For example, if an employee provides inconsistent answers, our analytics make you aware. An inconsistency can be someone answering two similar questions in different ways, indicating one or both of their responses may not be credible. This type of information enables you to have a more informed and productive follow-up conversation with the employee. You can also document the outcome of that conversation right in the online platform.
Another unique feature of our internal investigation questionnaire is that only the investigator who requested the service and only those people they specifically assign see the results. This feature offers further security on the safeguarding of your employees’ information.
If you are curious to learn more about how our investigative questionnaires can completely change how your teams approach their internal investigations, please be sure to check out our website, and be sure to follow along on LinkedIn! The FAQ answers some more niche questions that tend to pop up, but if you cannot find what you’re looking for throughout our website, you can contact us at the information listed on the bottom of our home page!
