How Businesses Can be Better Prepared for Internal Investigations

Most businesses like to imagine an internal investigation as one of those things that happens somewhere else, to some other company, under much messier leadership. Like, you’re the one doing the best practices for your business, so yeah, why would anything ever happen to you? Sure, nice thought, of course.

But all sorts of businesses can end up needing one, and it doesn’t always mean some huge scandal, either. Sometimes it’s a complaint from an employee. Sometimes it’s a possible policy breach. Sometimes it’s a finance issue, a data issue, or just something that looks off enough that somebody needs to figure out what actually happened.

Hopefully, you get the point here, but that’s exactly why being prepared matters so much. And no, it’s not because a business needs to act paranoid (but it doesn’t hurt to do that to a small degree, though), but because these situations get expensive, stressful, and messy very quickly when nobody knows where anything is.

Digital Records are Always a Part of the Investigation

There’s a pretty good reason to start right here. So, a lot of internal investigations end up living inside email inboxes, chat threads, shared drives, cloud folders, and documents people forgot even existed. You get the idea here. Anyways, that’s just how business works now. So, if you think about it for a sec, very little stays neatly contained in one place, which means the answer to a problem usually isn’t sitting in one tidy file with a helpful label on it.

Now, obviously, you’re going to get caught off guard with how unorganized and scattered it all is. Like most businesses know they need to look into something, but the second they start trying to pull records together, everything slows down. Like files are scattered, access is patchy, people are searching manually, and half the time somebody says there “should be” an email somewhere, with the info they need. Oh, and those might be delayed by now.

But do you get the point there?

Don’t Wait Until Panic Hits

Well, with any emergency, you’re just better off being prepared far, far in advance in the off chance anything were to ever happen to you. So there’s that to keep in mind here. So, a lot of businesses don’t actually have an investigation process; they just have a vague belief that somebody will sort it out if the time comes. That’s not really a process, so you really shouldn’t be thinking like that.

Just Think Ahead

Now, instead here, even a simple plan helps. Who gets involved first, who preserves records, who handles communication, and who’s responsible for keeping the whole thing moving all need to be clear ahead of time. Otherwise, everything turns reactive, and reactive usually means slower decisions, more confusion, and more room for mistakes.

Do you even have the right tool for this? Do you have the right tools to prevent a giant panic? For example, you could look into eDiscovery software, implement large volumes of data in advance (like emails, files, messages, ect) into the software. So, in the case there is an investigation, BAM, everything is right there.

Tighten Up Before there’s a Problem

Basically, investigations get harder if nothing is organized; your business looks bad if nothing is organized, same goes for management, leadership, well, everyone. Which is why you need to prepare and focus on improving this ASAP.

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Adam Regan: Deputy Editor

Features and account management. 7 years media experience. Previously covered features for online and print editions.

Email Adam@MarkMeets.com