Employee Theft – What Is The Primary Cause? – Atlanta Georgia

We know from long experience in the loss prevention field that there are many reasons that employees steal.  Greed, want, need are all reasons. We as employers can do little to effect the reasons except to do the best we can to screen out potential problems such as candidates with poor criminal histories; candidates that have a poor credit history who may be handling our money and drug abusers top the list

But what are the CAUSES of employee theft ? In the 2010 Global Fraud Study by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners the leading primary internal control weakness is…”Lack of Internal Controls”. In organizations with less than 100 employees it amounts to 47% (over 100 employees equals 33.7%). There is not even a close second.

Keep in mind that the cause is something that we as business leaders have complete control over. Yet business appear to do little or clearly not enough to protect the fragile margins we have. I believe that there are two reasons for this.

Number one is that it seems in many cases there is a lack of strong leadership. The kind of leadership that people understand and respect. An understanding by employees at all levels that strong controls that the company has in place will not under any circumstances be violated and that such violation is not open to interpretation. The violation of these procedures will be met with strict and immediate punishment at all levels. This draws a line in the sand.

Number two is that even when that line in the sand is drawn we find it to hard or we are too busy to maintain it. Because of this that line in the sand is quickly washed away by the waves. We then find ourselves a year later scratching our heads trying to make sense of why another serious employee theft or series of employee theft incidents have occurred.

Want to bring employee theft under control once and for all? Make your line in the sand a granite wall with no compromise that the waves will not affect.

For more information about employee theft ,  employee theft investigation , internal theft or corporate fraud investigator contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia