It’s no big secret that I can’t stand a thief; I did make a career out of catching them. Shoplifters really get under my skin, but employee theft really fires me up. You put people to work, give them opportunity to grow and instead of putting in the long hours, hard work and dedication needed to move forward, they steal from you. They betray your trust, slap you in the face and take money out of your pocket and food off your family’s table. Will you ever stop employee theft completely? Probably not. You can, however, minimize the risk.
If you employ people, there’s a good chance one of them will eventually steal from you. Through my Loss Prevention career, the excuse I’ve heard the most from dishonest employees was that they did it because it was “easy”. So why are we, business owners and managers making it so easy for our employees to steal from us? The first problem I see constantly is that, over time, complacency sets in. The next is a failure to follow established controls and finally, my personal favorite, is a lack of oversight.
A key to being a good manager is to not be over-bearing. I’ve learned a long time ago to “trust, but verify”. What that means is that you trust that your employees are doing what they are supposed to do when you’re not around, but you verify, and not simply assume they are. For example, you tell your warehouse team that the back door should never be open without a manager present. This is a basic control measure to prevent product from walking out of the back door. You obviously can’t be in your warehouse all hours of the day and night, so you have to verify. CCTV makes this easy. Managers often fall victim to complacency. If the warehouse crew knows that that the manager never checks to see if the doors are open, or that manager never addresses the violation, an environment for a dishonest associate to thrive is created.
Failing to adhere to established controls is yet another way we, as managers, often let our employees steal from us. (It also goes hand-in-hand with complacency.) I’ll give you a great example. I worked for a company that had a carry-out policy with respect to large, bulk items. If an employee was assisting a customer with a large item, the employee had to have the door greeter sign off on the receipt before it was carried outside. This was of course to discourage employee theft. I remember walking near the front doors as an employee rolled out a TV set. The door greeter asked to sign the receipt, and the employee said, “I’ll sign it outside”. There was a manager at the door as well. Both the greeter and the manager did not react to this. I immediately went back to the cameras and discovered this employee had just stolen this TV. A subsequent investigation showed he had rolled out thousands of dollars in this same manner. If the store would’ve followed their established controls and not fell into complacency, this employee would never had the opportunity to steal.
Manager. The word manage is actually in the name! The working world needs managers because most people need oversight. Some may need more than others, and you’ll find that some people need very little. You have to adapt your style of management to suit each of your employees. Managers that sit in the office all day long and are never give a sales floor presence are more likely to be the manager that employees feel comfortable stealing around. This isn’t to say that the manager is “in on it,” but the dishonest employee knows their chance of being caught is greatly reduced when “that manager” is working. Presence on the floor and constant follow up are traits of a good retail manager. Knowing that at any moment you can round the corner to see what the team is working on will keep those dishonest employees on their toes. Chances are, they won’t risk being caught, or better yet, they won’t ever see an opportunity to steal from you!
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