Is discount abuse really causing losses in Atlanta Georgia?

The answer is “Yes”.  Employee discount abuse does actually cause a loss to the company.  When I refer to discount abuse I am talking about an associate letting friends and family members use their employee discount.  Many companies give their employees a discount as a perk of working for the company.  As we all know employees like to share this little perk with others.  This is a type of internal theft, also known as employee theft, and must be dealt with.  This means conducting an employee theft investigation.

It is easy to ignore this type of activity, but an employee theft investigation must still take place.  For one reason there is a policy violation.  Most all companies who give a discount have a clear policy about who is suppose to receive the discount.  This is also an ethical concern.  If an employee will clearly break a policy for personal gain by giving a discount away then what’s to say they won’t engage in other types of more serious employee theft.  You are either honest or you’re not.  Ethics does not have shades of grey.

The second thing the associate is guilty of is internal theft.  The company is losing profits by the employee’s friends and family members not paying full price.  The more a customer pays for the product the more the company makes.  These unauthorized discounts (aka employee theft) are thus cutting into the profits.  Again, even though it may be small amounts over the course of time you will find you are losing significant dollars.  Consider if you have a 10% discount and each employee gives that away to 3 friends and family members.  If you have just 10 employees that is still 30 people getting 10% off hundreds to thousands of dollars of merchandise a year.  Now we are talking real profit loss.

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