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How do executives of companies prevent employee theft when they cannot be at location watching themselves?
Most obvious way is to pass along responsibility to subordinates, like regional manager, store manager, assistant managers, to shift managers. But they too are employees. What if they are in on the theft? How do you protect against this?
Third party security companies usually prevent theft by outsiders. But then to check employees they will have to be allowed inspect employees before they clocking out. Is that common in some larger big box chains like Home Depot, or supermarkets like Publix? Do most employees not find that to be overly intrusive?
What about if you are a smaller business without Wall Street/big bank backing? Not single store, but say a handful which will make difficult for executives to visit each location and be on top of everything. What options do they have? They are not big enough to really hire third party security.
“Executives” can’t prevent theft, which is why they should get down on the ground level and do the work themselves. Lord knows they have nothing else to do with their time, other than harass workers.
many companies count on employees doing the right thing and see something say something .
when i was branch manager for a large electrical wholesaler my warehouse people caught a coworker selling cable out the back door and pocketing the money .
they met after hours without that coworker and voted to turn him in …
so they told me and i sent the info up the chain …..
You can't prevent it, you just try to hire good people, watch for inventory discrepancies, check sales reports, purchases, bank accounts, etc. And have cameras.
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I had a small business for 16 years and it was only my last employee prior to the recession of 2008 that I found stealing. It was not a traditional theft, but she was using my equipment and materials to make her own products to sell on the weekend at a Farmer's Market. She also took orders, made and sold products without using the invoice system, offering free delivery if they paid cash. I only found out when she was on vacation for two weeks and I got a call from one of her "customers."
“Executives” can’t prevent theft, which is why they should get down on the ground level and do the work themselves. Lord knows they have nothing else to do with their time, other than harass workers.
Ideally yes, but currently we have a lot of businesses where the the top brass is largely disconnected from the actual day to day operations. What are the methods they try to utilize to prevent employee theft whether successful or not is what I am really asking about. If it gives them the illusions or minimizes the threat as best as possible in the eyes of shareholders is all that matters.
Why do you think managers make so much more money than the hourlies they manage? They're paid to keep the facility going and prevent the rank-and-file from robbing the place blind or behaving in a way that results in legal exposure. It's particularly devastating when a manager is the thief, and they can often take more and get away with it longer because of their access and the level of trust they're given. The job of executives is to provide compensation JUST good enough so that their managers tow the company line.
“Executives” can’t prevent theft, which is why they should get down on the ground level and do the work themselves. Lord knows they have nothing else to do with their time, other than harass workers.
How do executives of companies prevent employee theft when they cannot be at location watching themselves?
Most obvious way is to pass along responsibility to subordinates, like regional manager, store manager, assistant managers, to shift managers. But they too are employees. What if they are in on the theft? How do you protect against this?
Third party security companies usually prevent theft by outsiders. But then to check employees they will have to be allowed inspect employees before they clocking out. Is that common in some larger big box chains like Home Depot, or supermarkets like Publix? Do most employees not find that to be overly intrusive?
What about if you are a smaller business without Wall Street/big bank backing? Not single store, but say a handful which will make difficult for executives to visit each location and be on top of everything. What options do they have? They are not big enough to really hire third party security.
What are you on about now?
Employers have four thousand ways from Sunday of monitoring or whatever employee theft. OTOH thieves are simply going to do what they are going to do. Nothing is 100%
There are systems in place including surveillance, software/accounting/audits that look for patterns and rest of it; but again nothing is 100%
Retailers have long known huge part of "shortages" are internal. Everything from sticky fingered employee who helps him or her self now and than to associates of Tony Soprano that make entire shipments vanish. Where to you think phrase "fell off a truck" came from?
Above being said as Patsy found out in that famous Sopranos episode thanks to powerful and sophisticated computer systems shortages, theft or whatever are more easily spotted and often nipped in bud before things get out of hand. If a certain store, location, bank branch or whatever consistently has issues with things not being as they should there will be changes pronto.
Usually there may be some sort of audit or audits which give upper management cover to do what they have to do; fire or otherwise replace local managers or just shut the place down all together due to "not meeting expectations..."
In many (but not all) cases when you hear today of stores being shoplifted (ok, looted) on daily basis workers and or store management is in on game. That is palms are being greased to look the other way, provide information regarding shipments, etc...
Walked pass a Duane Reade store while back, worker came out of store (end of his shift) and went straight to trash bags that had been piled outside. He finds one bag in particular and pulls out eff tons of diapers, baby wipes, household products, personal care items, etc... Throws them into a huge duffel bag produced for purpose, then walks away. Am going to assume that was not a one off event, but something he has done before.
That was my first thought as well. I don't even really understand the OP's premise.
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