Don't Let Inside Jobs Derail Your Business Efforts

No business owner likes to consider employee theft. Your team are, after all, the rocks of your enterprise. Your business wouldn’t get anywhere without trusting relationships here. You’d certainly struggle if you questioned employees at every turn. In no time, they’d be applying for other positions and turning away. No one can work well under suspicion, after all.

Sadly, the fact remains that around 43% of annual business loss is due to employee theft. To make matters worse, 75% of employees admit to having stolen from their employer. Those are steep statistics indeed.

Does this mean you need to question staff at every corner? Of course not. But, it does mean you might want to look into surveillance equipment and security measures the moment you bring others on board. You may even want to implement a bag check policy from the very off. While this can seem like the wrong way to start working relationships, everyone should understand. Besides, failure to take action like this could see you making the following mistakes.

Falsely accusing team members

If you suspect that a member of your team is stealing, it can be incredibly distressing. This is a relationship you’ve taken time over, after all, and you may feel deceived. It may be that someone has tipped you off, or that an employee is acting suspiciously. Either way, you may see red and accuse them off the bat. The trouble is that, often, accusations like these end up having no backing. The person who pointed you in that direction may have been mistaken or had malicious intent. That suspicious behavior might be because of issues at home. As simple as that, you could end up destroying a delicate employee relationship. By installing security measures instead, you make sure you only ever accuse those who you 100% know to be stealing.

Not having a legal leg to stand on

Let’s say that you know for a fact someone is stealing. Their behavior is obvious, and their accounts never add up. You’ve even heard them having a few dodgy phone calls. Yet, you’ve never caught them red-handed. You don’t even have incriminating footage because you didn’t think security measures were necessary. Before you know it, you may find yourself in a legal catch-22. You won’t be able to sack the employee without proof, nor will you be able to sue them without verifiable evidence. Instead, you’ll have to sit back and let them rob you blind. All because you were hesitant to protect your business from the inside.

Failing to notice theft altogether

It’s also possible that you’ll fail to notice inside theft altogether. This may seem extreme, but your employees probably control your accounts. As such, they could mess with the numbers, and you would never know any different. If this went on for a while, you could lose a great deal of money this way. Yet, there would never be any risk of that if you just put proper monitoring processes in place.