Employee Theft Investigations: Patience & Persistence!!

Conducting employee theft investigations can be a very tedious process especially for small to mid box retailers that do not have in-store loss prevention personnel. Most small to mid box retailers have field loss prevention employees that cover multiple locations and might office out of one store but they do not spend a lot of time in any one location. It then falls upon field loss prevention and operations management to utilize sales performance, inventory reports and store audits to uncover any type of internal theft that may be occurring.

Employee theft is hands down the highest source of loss in retail. In most small box retailers their high end product is not “live” on the sales-floor which pushes the internal theft percentage to an even high ratio. In these stores there is usually no more than five to eight employees on staff, if you have one employee stealing then roughly 1/5th of your store’s work force is committing employee theft. That is a scary revelation that should give any business owner the sense of urgency to have the best tools and people available to conduct employee theft investigations.

In smaller locations it is tempting to conduct an investigation that merely focuses on one or maybe two employees as a result of a report that may indicate they are the guilty party. When dealing with employee theft in this type of setting it is important to conduct an employee theft investigation with patience and persistence. The investigation must involve every employee in the store as well as every type of theft. There might be one or two people committing product theft however another employee might be conducting refund fraud and yet another may be conducting employee discount fraud. If you only address one of the issues the other theft will stop for a while and then continue unfettered once the employee theft investigation has ended. It is also imperative to note and address all performance issues, not just the internal theft. Poor performance can lead to theft.

It can be hard to watch theft occur while conducting a thorough employee theft investigation but when you are finished all performance and theft issues will be dealt with thus giving you a clean store to rebuild.

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