Whew! You made it through the holidays and hopefully, you were successful in deterring shoplifters and survived the fraudulent return attempts but does that mean you can rest on your laurels? Unfortunately, the answer is “No”. Criminals do not take a break because you do. As a matter of fact, you could find that this is a prime time for criminal activity to increase. Why would that be? It is during these next few weeks and months that traditionally retail owners and managers begin to tighten up payroll. They release their seasonal employees and reduce the hours budgeted to the various work centers. This leads to several theft concerns:
- If given too much advance notice that the end of their employment is imminent there are workers that may get angry and justify stealing because of a perceived injustice. This person may think they worked hard enough to earn a permanent spot on the team or assumed they would be retained based on what they thought they were told when hired. Some managers feel a bit guilty for having to let seasonal employees go and feel an obligation to give a significant amount of advance notice so the person can look for new work. The best way to avoid this situation is to give a seasonal employee a date they will work up to and no later than during the interview process. By doing so the employer can give a reminder a week out that the last day is approaching. This gives the worker time to start looking for other employment and does not give too much lead-up time for them to start stealing if they may be so inclined.
- As sales decline after the holiday season, managers and owners have to make budget decisions on payroll expenditures. It is not reasonable to spend the same amount of money on sales floor coverage with reduced customer counts. Where you had three or four cashiers during the last few months to ensure customers were served quickly you may now have only one cashier. The staff members that were getting 32 hours a week may be down to 25 hours a week. If the employee is dependent on that income to make ends meet and their hours are cut they may decide that stealing is a way to make up for what they have lost.
- When seasonal employees are released and hours reduced to cut back on payroll expenses, sales floor coverage starts to wane. This means there are fewer people to provide customer service that is one of the critical components in theft deterrence. Shoplifters know when there are fewer employees present and find it easier to avoid those few workers that are on the floor. Remember that one of the three things needed to shoplift is the opportunity and with less chance at discovery, more opportunities to steal present themselves.
- There are operational functions that may suffer due to a reduction of payroll hours. Specifically, merchandise protection strategies including electronic article surveillance tagging of merchandise may not be as thorough. As an example, if a freight pusher is responsible for tagging products with retail anti-theft devices but they are struggling just to get freight stocked on the floor in the allotted period tagging could be a secondary issue. The focus may be on filling the floor in order to sell rather than protecting it to prevent theft.
Criminals are not going to take a vacation after the holidays. They will look for stores that lower their defenses and then take advantage of them. Be on guard as you come out of the busy season and things seem to slow down. Be wise in how you reduce seasonal employee staff and do what you can to encourage the people you are keeping. Make plans to identify and address potential problems that may arise from those decisions. Strategic planning and follow-up can minimize the chances thieves will try to target your store.
Big corporations across the globe worry about cybersecurity attacks and the repercussions those attacks have on the corporation’s bottom line. These cybersecurity attacks to their servers and information databases can be costly and can bring with them costly lawsuits as well. But, according to many analysts, employee theft and shoplifting are the more concerning issues affecting the retail industry. They alone account for more than two-thirds of their shrinkage and that figure seems to be rising every year. During the holiday season, those issues become more problematic and costly, and the retail industry looks for ways to prevent the great loses they will certainly suffer during this jolly time.
For many big retailers and the small mom and pop shop, the holidays are something to be excited about.
Could it be that Santa Claus is not always a jolly, giving man? Oh yeah. Take a 
The end of the holiday gift buying season ushers in the inevitable holiday gift return season. Clothes that don’t fit, ugly holiday sweaters no one really wanted, toys that were too old for a young child or too young for the older child all lead to returns, exchanges, and refunds. For those who have been in retail for any length of time, we know that many of these items will be returned without tags or a receipt and not even a gift receipt. It also means people will try to return merchandise to your store that was never even purchased there, despite what the customer in front of you says. This means it is prime time for those who engage in return fraud. There are so many people making returns that trying to separate legitimate refunds and exchanges from the fraudulent ones is difficult. There are steps you can take to minimize the number of fraudulent returns you accept.
December is the month when retailers are focused on driving those end of the year sales. We push as much merchandise as possible out of the stockrooms to fill the floors. Empty salesfloor spaces should be “no-no’s” during this time of the year. We re-merchandise our fixtures to get gift ideas in front of our customers. We also take steps to increase impulse buys by filling check lanes with snacks, batteries, magazines, gift cards, etc. Managers should also be looking at last year sales information to plan schedules around peak times of the day in order to avoid long lines at the registers. While all of this is important it is just as important to start planning for your end of the year wrap up.
A New Year is just around the corner and once again resolutions are going to be made and many of those will fall by the wayside. Why does that happen? Are goals too big to achieve? Sometimes we all start off with good intentions and we just get caught up in our normal routines and we can’t seem to focus on what it was we wanted to get done. There may be a manager out there who resolves that this is the year they will meet quarterly with each employee and discuss performance. They might do well the first quarter but then as the demands of the job take up more and more time something gives and it was the meetings. I recall one of my resolutions was to be more organized at work. I had a filing system, it was called my desktop and I knew where everything was at. I would make my resolution, create a filing system and you guessed it by the end of January I was back to my old habits. My intentions were good I just wouldn’t stay focused on it and made excuses.
As a manager of a retail shop, the layout of the store is probably out of your hands and there is nothing to do about it.