Employee theft can and will happen to every small business at some point in time. The question of how you handle it, and what you can do about it relies on the protections you have in place before an incident occurs. Without these protections in place setting precedence, you might find your hands are tied in regards to the specific incident currently in front of you
The best place to start is in having anti theft verbiage in your employee handbook. That of course, means you need to have an employee handbook in place to standardize all of your business policies. If you do not have a handbook, you need to develop and implement one as soon as possible.
Within your handbook you need to be clear and broad all at the same time. A sentence stating that employee theft of any kind will under no circumstances be tolerated. Theft is defined as possessing or removing any company asset or another employee’s possessions without prior authorization from management.
You can further elaborate on the different types of company assets, or you can leave it open to all assets from pens and paper to merchandise and cash. Next you may want to include that the company will prosecute all cases of employee theft.
After having a written record of the company’s intentions, the policy should be verbally covered in employee on boarding and training. This way there is no confusion as to what the expectation is. Some businesses even have the employees sign a paper (to be retained in their employee file) that they are aware of this policy.
By clarifying up front, most employees will take heed to this warning. For those that do not, it is much easier to prosecute the employees for their theft, or misappropriation of company assets, when there is proof that the employee was aware of the consequences ahead of time.
