Resolve Employee Investigations Faster and with Little Business Disruption

Remember the days of having multiple suspects in a cash loss or inventory shortage investigation with no CCTV or other evidence to lead you to a primary suspect?

Recollect the long days of conducting inventory shrinkage surveys, cash shortage audits, and holding conversations with every employee in the department that had access who may have intentionally caused the high cash shortage or inventory shrinkage? 

Remember how disruptive this was to operations, sales, and the morale of the employees?  

If you were lucky, you would use the Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) or the Behavioral Interview processes with several employees and still come up empty handed. 

As security and loss prevention professionals, we many times left the location with no more information than we started with and did not solve the cash loss or shrinkage problem — what we did leave behind included disgruntled employees, leaders, and (in many cases) human resource partners.

What if I offered to you a way to discretely narrow your suspect pool, confidentially, privately without business disruption of going to the location to jump through all the hoops that are traditionally used?  What if I told you that this process takes significantly less time, uses scientific algorithms to detect deception, and that this process has already been successfully used in government, law enforcement and many private and publicly held organizations?  And what’s more, this process has been thoroughly tested and deemed highly reliable and valid? 

Now what if this process (for the moment, I will call it an electronic narrowing interview process) can be given to scores if not hundreds of employees at the same time via a link in email for employees to the answer questions?  That this electronic narrowing interview process follows a path based on how the employee selects and what answers are picked, along with the time it takes to answer the question?

Many of you well-experienced interviewers/investigators know where I am going with this.  The process moves the interview in the direction to find if the employee is involved in any wrongdoing, has knowledge of others that are committing crimes or serious policy violations, and finally if the employee is likely involved in similar crimes or wrong doings, based on what answers to the questions are selected or by self-admissions of minor offences during the electronic narrowing interview process.

Let me give you a case example.  You have a distribution center with high inventory shrinkage.  This distribution center employs over 100 workers.  Due to the size of the warehouse, volume of product, and processing that occurs in the facility, CCTV, access control, and the other traditionally physical security technology proved ineffective in solving the shrinkage mystery.  To make the situation more difficult, the facility has truck drivers, product handlers, shippers, receivers, and laborers all working in and around the facility 24/7.  How do you solve the shrinkage issue?  How much time, labor, and cost will you need to invest to resolve this case?

Historically, you might send in a troupe of inventory specialists with investigators, do auditing, and surveillances and maybe by conduct some inventory shrinkage survey interviews or even employ the use of verbal or written narrowing interview processes.  Think about the hours you will need to commit to this investigation.  How productive would this be?  Or should I say how counterproductive will it be?

Get the picture now?   In a recent investigation that I am aware of, the process I described above solved the case in record time, with low cost, little business disruption, and without offending leadership, while leaving the vast majority of the employees with a favorable opinion of the process.  When was the last time investigators left a location leaving the employees feeling appreciated?  Not too often, I would suggest.  What’s more is that this process narrowed the suspect pool from around 80 to just a handful, allowing the investigators to do what they do best while removing the human error element traditionally caused by the antiquated process used in similar investigations. In the case that I am referring to, the investigators did in fact solve the case by conducting a just a few suspect interviews, resulting in a quick resolution.

Have I caught your interest yet?  Let me add a couple more suggestions.  Having worked in retail, warehousing, distribution, credit card, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and other industries in the security and investigations leadership capacity, I am excited to inform you that this electronic investigative process is highly effective in every industry, organization, or institution as it works on the premise of human response to questions and other factors surrounding investigative process no matter the industry!

Okay, I have kept you waiting long enough.  Verensics is the company and the tagline is “Verify Then Trust.”   As a former investigator, polygraph examiner, interviewer, and interrogator, I thought I was good.  Then I found Verensics.  Their product opened my eyes to a whole new world of investigating employee criminal activity and serious policy violations.  The Verensics process works extremely well on cases of bribery, dishonesty, workplace violence, information theft, sexual harassment, sabotage & vandalism, unethical supplier & vendor relationships to employees, fraud, illegal drug and alcohol issues, and bullying to name a few.

Many of you are already very successful in your roles or you would not be there.  Just think how much more effective in solving internal issues you and your teams can become by solving problems quicker with less disruption and cost.  Need I say more?

How about reaching out to my friends at Verensics to have them provide you a no obligation demonstration of this superior product.  Just tell them I sent you and you too will receive a professional demonstration of this system that will absolutely amaze you.  And if you do decide to use their product, please share with me your success story.  I am sure it will be similar to my experience.