security devices

Employee Theft

The annual amount stolen from businesses by their employees is astounding. According to some reports the average amount of stolen goods by employees is around $175,000 and more than half of those crimes are committed by males. Small businesses are the hardest hit by these crimes, as profits trickled and they are left looking at losses they cannot afford to have.

Employee theft rarely reported by small business owners, poll suggests

More than half of small business owners in the country have experienced theft performed by one of their own workers. However, whether out of compassion for the wrongdoer or feeling the misconduct not being serious enough to alert the proper authorities, few wind up reporting the crime, according to a newly released survey.

Jay Kennedy, a recent MBA graduate from the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Linder College of Business, queried approximately 315 small business owners in Ohio’s third-largest city, asking entrepreneurs if they’d ever had someone working for them that stole money. Nearly 66% of respondents said that they had. However, when asked if they reported the crime, only 16% said that this was something they did to settle the matter.

“It’s important to look at this topic because such theft represents a loss to the tax base and would also seem to put such businesses at risk, and so, put our overall economy at risk,” said Kennedy. “After all, small businesses with 100 or fewer employees comprise 97% of all businesses in the United States.”

Approximately one-third of all bankruptcies that occur among small businesses stem from employee theft, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the report noted.

Understanding Why Employees Steal … And How to Stop It

Employee theft is a particularly big problem for small businesses.

Many small businesses have a serious problem on their hands: employees with sticky fingers.

A recent study by University of Cincinnati doctoral student Jay Kennedy revealed that 64 percent of small businesses have lost items to employee theft. Overall, the stolen goods ranged from cash to products sold by the business to tools and equipment.

Business News Daily recently reported on Kennedy’s findings, which highlighted that most employee thefts go unreported to police. Here, we follow up with Kennedy in an email interview to learn more about employee theft and why small businesses are susceptible to it.

Why do you think employee theft is so prevalent in small businesses?

I think it is a matter of opportunity. Small businesses have fewer employees, and these employees may have a wide range of responsibilities within the business. With this responsibility comes knowledge of oversight mechanisms in place at the business, as well as knowledge of suitable targets for theft. An employee who becomes motivated to engage in theft has access, knowledge of guardianship mechanisms and knowledge of the target that allow them to be more successful in their crimes than non-employee offenders would be.

Employee Theft: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Report It

Most small business owners don’t get the police involved when they catch an employee stealing from them, new research finds.

While 64 percent of small businesses have experienced employee theft, only 16 percent of those reported the incident to police, the study found.

“It’s important to look at this topic because such theft represents a loss to the tax base and would also seem to put such businesses at risk, and so, put our overall economy at risk,” said study author Jay Kennedy, a University of Cincinnati criminal justice doctoral student.

Kennedy found four main reasons why employers are hesitant to get the authorities involved.

No real victims: The business owner does not see the victimization as serious enough to warrant his or her time and trouble beyond firing the employee.
Attorney advises against it: The business owner seeks counsel from a third party, usually his or her attorney, who often advises that the employer’s costs in time and effort for a successful prosecution outweigh any likely benefits to the employer. For instance, one company went through all the time and steps for a successful prosecution of an employee who stole $200,000. “The employee was convicted, put on probation and ordered to make restitution at the rate of $50 per month,” Kennedy said. “In essence, the small business will never recoup the stolen funds.”

Anti-Shoplifting Devices

Shoplifting affects everyone. Shoplifters affect the retail store or small business store they enter, the individual consumer and employee of the store. Increase in prices is something stores do to outset the revenue they are losing due to shoplifting. Stores around the world invest heavily in security systems, security personnel and anti-theft devices to deter shoplifters from entering their stores and costing them revenue losses that ultimately affect everyone.

How Anti-shoplifting Devices Work

Let’s imagine for the moment that you own a large department store, and you are having a big problem with shoplifting. (You’re not alone — retail stores lost $26 billion last year to shoplifting!) What are you going to do? You cannot let it continue, because every month your accounting system tells you that you are losing thousands of dollars to theft. It forces you to raise your prices, and that means you have to charge more than the store next door. That can make it very hard to compete, especially if the store next door is successfully discouraging shoplifting.

As a retailer focusing on the problem of what’s known in the industry as loss prevention, you basically have three methods at your disposal to slow the shoplifters down: (1) You can watch everyone in the store like a hawk and make sure they don’t steal anything. You can do that using security guards and/or video surveillance systems; (2) You can make things hard to remove from the store by bolting them down, attaching cables, putting things in display cases and behind the counter; (3) You can use a system that attaches special tags onto everything so that an alarm goes off whenever a shoplifter tries to walk out with an item. In this article, we’ll look at each of these options in more detail.

Virginia’s Quik-E Foods Cuts Losses with March Networks Retail Video Surveillance Solution

a global provider of intelligent IP video solutions, today announced that customer Quik-E Foods of Lynchburg, Virginia is upgrading to its next-generation retail solution for enhanced security and loss prevention. The March Networks solution integrates high-quality video, audio and transaction data to combat point-of-sale (POS) fraud and other threats to the business. The powerful solution has already helped Quik-E Foods improve operations and resolve serious incidents across its chain of 12 convenience stores and five automated car washes.
“We caught a cashier who was pausing transactions and then pocketing the money once customers left the store. The scam was adding up to more than $6,000 in losses,” explained Quik-E Foods Vice President Todd Burgess. “With the deep POS integration and search tools in our March Networks solution, those transactions showed up as voids, and we also had the video evidence to verify what was happening. There wasn’t a need to search for hours and hours. It was instant.”

Milestone Systems Expands Device Support with More than 3,000 Supported Devices

Milestone Systems, the open platform company in IP video management software (VMS), has released Device Pack 7.2 for partners and customers using Milestone XProtect® security solutions. Device Pack 7.2 has deep driver support for more than 3,000 devices, which means that Milestone has added more than 2,000 supported devices since 2011. This speedy development has only been possible due to Milestone’s dedicated efforts to drive the uptake of open platform technology in the physical security industry.

The Milestone Device Packs include optimized drivers that enable all the relevant capabilities of a camera or other hardware device to be managed fully by the XProtect software. Milestone works closely with the device manufacturers in the Manufacturer Alliance Program (MAP) to achieve the optimal interaction between their devices and the XProtect VMS . This ensures the highest quality for a video surveillance solution – very important for total system operability, efficiency and stability.