If you are currently operating a business with less than 100 employees, lack of internal controls will be the biggest internal control weakness allowing employees to steal. According to the 2010 Global Fraud Study published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, “Lack of Internal Controls” is the leading cause for employee theft at a rate of 47 percent. If you are operating a business with more than 100 employees, your chances are slightly improved and lack of internal controls is the cause of employee theft at a decreased percentage – 33.7 percent. Regardless of the size of your business, not having internal processes and procedures in place or adhering and/or enforcing them is the leading contributor to employee theft.
As a business leader you have total control over the internal procedures you have put in place and the processes that you follow day in and day out. We see our margins decreasing yet we elect to do little about enforcing our existing control or improving our internal controls. Shame on us!
But what are some of the reasons why businesses do not put sufficient emphasis on internal controls? We have good intentions by implementation processes and procedures to protect our businesses but if we don’t enforce them sufficiently, we are making idle threats and employees may not take us seriously. By drawing a line in the sand and making a stand on employee theft issues, we send a clear message to our associates indicating that employee theft or lesser violations will not be tolerated under any circumstances.
Other times we may get so busy with running our businesses which makes it hard for us to enforce our own procedures. Unfortunately those are the times that we may be faced with another serious employee theft investigation or a series of employee theft instances. Want to bring employee theft under control once and for all? Make your line in the sand a granite wall with no compromise that the waves will not affect.
We know from long experience in the loss prevention field that there are many reasons that employees steal. Some of those reasons involve greed, want or a need of some kind. We as employers can do little to effect the reasons except to do the best we can to screen out potential problems such as candidates with poor criminal histories; candidates that have a poor credit history who may be handling our money and drug abusers top the list.
For more information about employee theft contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia
