Discipline Breeds Morale

Companies have spent countless hours developing and executing policies and procedures for their stores. Protocol for every possible situation has been written down time and time again in countless employee handbooks. The thought is that discipline breeds morale.

When there is a tangible standard on how all employees are to conduct themselves and their business, it is easier to enforce those policies. When someone steps out of line, the rest of the work force knows there will be consequences for those actions. They also know that the terms of those consequences will be equal regardless of who violated a policy.

Years ago I worked for a company whose policies and procedures were lacking. Most operating procedures were made up as we went along, often reactionary to an issue that had happened. One such incident was a shortage in a cash register.

This employee theft investigation started when a random drawer audit was completed on a rarely used register till. I received a call stating we were almost $200 dollars short. When I started to ask questions, I realized that we had set ourselves up for failure.

The till was in a remote corner of the store. Even though the register was rarely used, we had been keeping a cash bank of $200 dollars in it. No one ever thought to pull the money out. No one every thought to do a daily drawer audit. Clearly it was an employee theft situation. The problem was tracking down who had figured out our lack of controls.

We didn’t even know where in the last three months to begin our employee theft investigation. It had been that long since the register had last been used for a cash transaction. Needless to say, the money was gone for good.  This was a case where the employee theft got the best of us.

If we had clear procedures in place, the drawer would never have been unaccounted for. Even if someone did get the cash, we could have had a better chance of tracking them through a shorter window of time.

For more information on employee theft , employee theft investigation or internal contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia