In a Year of the Great Resignation, Corporations Need to Prepare for the Great Investigation

Addressing these new and escalating risks is equally as business-critical as improving recruitment and retention practices to attract and keep employees, because when an employee leaves, the departure often (intentionally and inadvertently) triggers a series of possible problems relating to intellectual property (IP) loss, sensitive data protection and other legal and regulatory issues. This is not a new corporate challenge, but now in the wake of millions of Americans leaving their jobs (including a reported 4.4 million who voluntarily left their jobs in September alone), the potential fallout may be far greater than anyone could have anticipated.

Major crisis events, such as political uprisings or financial downturns, are typically followed by an increase in fraud in the business sector and heightened risk to corporate IP and other sensitive information. Anecdotally, this seems to be proving out again in the recent and ongoing fallout from the pandemic. Even before this Great Resignation movement, corporations across the globe were reporting increases in suspicious activity, data leakage, IP theft and other data risks stemming from departing employees and remote workers. For example, in FTI Consulting's recent Resilience Barometer survey, 81% of executives at large corporations across the G20 agreed there is growing concern that financial systems are being exploited and more than 80% said they expect their organization will encounter an investigation, relating to fraud or other legal and regulatory issues, in the coming year. More than one-quarter surveyed have experienced a loss of IP in the last year.