Look for patterns, rather than a single good or bad act.Ģ.Be consistent and run the same process on each applicant.Conduct interviews first and get to know someone first to avoid unnecessary discrimination. He suggests that while you do use background checks, don’t use “the box.” That means, don’t ask someone if they have a criminal background on their paper application just to weed people out.Belicove from Forbes has some good tips : Running a background check is a fairly standard process that will help you weed out any clear bad eggs up front. Run background checks on all new employees. It can even, as an episode of the crime show “Snapped” that still haunts me brutally demonstrated, be a dangerous situation for the person who confronts the thief. Once an employee is actually stealing, it can be a tricky situation to handle. The first thing to know is that it’s best to simply prevent these situations from happening. Some, as in my case, may not even realize that they’re actually stealing from the store. Some, like those who participate in “sweethearting,” may believe that they’re just helping out a friend with their employment perks. But not all employees steal for these reasons either. Perhaps it’s because they are in a bad way financially and really need help. Perhaps it’s because they think they deserve a raise that they haven’t gotten. Perhaps they’re stealing for revenge on the store for some reason. There are likely as many reasons as there are thieves but often, it’s a disgruntled employee. Employees who know that you won’t care about a discrepancy of a few dollars in the cash drawer may take advantage of you by slowly skimming quite a large amount of cash over time. SkimmingĮmployees have been skimming off the top of the cash drawer for years. I had, at minimum, hundreds of opportunities a year to keep a customer’s SSN and credit card information with me. At the store I worked at, for instance, we used to not only take credit cards over the phone but even social security numbers if we wanted to open a credit card for someone. Retail employees have ample opportunities to steal customers’ identities. This final method of internal theft may not be directed against the store, but is within the same grouping of activities and could cost your store its reputation. It can also be when a cashier falsely gives their store discount to their friends or family members. “Sweethearting” is when a cashier will opt to not ring up goods that a friend or family member wishes to take from the store. At the Sak flagship store on Fifth Avenue, a clerk was able to ring up $130,000 dollars in false returns a few years ago. They may also give a customer purchasing a gift card a blank gift card while keeping the loaded one. There are various methods to pull off this scam, but typically, employees will issue fake refunds to gift cards they will keep. Gift card theft is very popular these days, largely because it’s difficult to detect. Employees may also hide small items on their person or in their bags. One classic method for stealing products is to hide something in the trash when they take it out, which they will retrieve from the dumpster later. There are numerous ways an employee can actively steal from a retailer these days, but here are few main ones:Įmployees might steal products from you, whether to keep for themselves or to sell somewhere on the internet. I myself contributed to loss at my retail job when, early on in my employment, I believed that a “BOGO” meant the item of great value was discounted. I would also like to add that many of your well-meaning employees may accidentally contribute to your losses by making errors during inventory count or misunderstanding policies or discounts and giving them at the wrong time. Of course, it should be emphasized that it is only a small minority of your employees who will actively steal from you. When thinking about threats to your retail store, shoplifting is probably number one, right? The idea of someone swiping hundreds of dollars of products into a giant bag and walking out with them is horrifying, isn’t it? Well, unfortunately, there’s a threat that might be even higher on your list: your employees.Ī global study of retail theft found that employees who steal from retailers average $1890 in theft, while the average shoplifter will only take about $438.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |