Patience and Persistence – Employee Theft Investigations

Performing employee theft investigations is often a very tedious process, especially for small to mid-box retailers who do not retain in-store loss prevention personnel. Most small to mid-box retailers hire field loss prevention employees to cover multiple locations and these employees frequently work out of one store without spending much time in any one location.

This is challenging at best and non-productive at worst, because it then falls upon field loss prevention and operations management to utilize sales performance, inventory reports and store audits to uncover any internal theft which may be occurring.

The highest source of loss in retail is employee theft. For most small box retailers, their high-end product is not “live” on the sales-floor; pushing internal theft to an even higher ratio percentage. There are usually no more than five to eight employees on staff in these stores; however, if only one employee is stealing, roughly 20% of the store’s work force is guilty of employee theft.

This is an alarming revelation that should give every business owner a sense of urgency to acquire the best tools and people available to perform employee theft investigations.

It is tempting in smaller locations to conduct an investigation that merely focuses on one or two employees because of information indicating their guilt.  It requires extreme patience and persistence to conduct an effective employee theft investigation when dealing with employee theft in this type of setting.

The successful investigation must involve every employee in the store as well as every type of theft. One or two people may be committing product theft while another employee might be involved with refund fraud and yet another may be supervising employee discount fraud.

If the employer addresses only one of multiple issues during an employee theft investigation, one facet of theft may stop for a while and then continue unfettered. It is also imperative that performance issues be addressed at the same time as internal theft issues are confronted. Remember – poor performance often leads to theft.

It can be challenging to observe theft occurring while conducting a thorough employee theft investigation; however when 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 and internal theft please contact us or call 1.770.426.0547.