Black Friday is coming November 25th. This particular day is known as the most profitable day for retailers on the calendar. Is employee theft prevention at the top of your mind when focusing on turning red ledgers black? Are you doing everything to protect your growing profits when sales success is being compressed into such a short time frame?
Employee theft prevention and shoplifting
Have you hired and completed background checks with your seasonal help?
What loss prevention measures do you have in place for daily and seasonally busy days like Black Friday?
Your location may be bulking it’s employee roster with seasonal workers. The increasingly busy holiday season often requires hiring seasonal workers paid minimum wage to support the increased sales traffic. These temporary workers generally have little to no loyalty to your businesses profitability and success. Employees stressed by the customer rush, could at times become careless and vulnerable to the temptation of stealing. Skimming a few dollars at the cash register, taking an extra long lunch, outright theft of a product or a combination classifies each of these as employee theft.
According to the National Retail Foundation, retail outlets lost approximately $44 billion in 2014. Just over one-third or 34.5% is attributed to employee theft, 6.8% vendor fraud, followed by 38% from shoplifting, the remaining 20.7% is attributed to administrative errors and unknown factors. No single industry is immune to loss from employees, vendors, consumer shoplifters or fraudsters. In light of these statistics, it’s important to have a plan in place to accurately track where losses are occurring.
In conclusion, employee theft isn’t always about money or products. Time stealing is another theft managers need to be aware of that may not appear to be that large of an issue until looking at the math.
Here’s an employee example:
Employee arrives five minutes late
Leaves five minutes early
Takes an extended lunch
A non-monitored employee without a time clock solution has the potential to accumulate three paid days off a year. Multiply that by each one of your current employees and that can be a devastating result to your bottom line. We are not saying that every employee would take advantage of this type of situation. As a business owner or manager, it’s comforting to know that there are systems in place to monitor for this type of employee theft.
While seasonal employees are a valuable asset to every business during the holiday season, make sure you have a plan in place to monitor your daily operations.