The Last Word: Customer Solutions Profit Ideas

Many economists and sociologists have been quoted to say that as economic pressures increase, when unemployment rises and costs increase, employees can take their frustrations out on their employer.

This can translate into absenteeism, employee theft of money or goods, substance abuse that translates to the workplace, safety violations, giving product or services away to friends (yet another variation on outright employee theft), and even on-the-job violence.

Unfortunately, this is particularly challenging for customer facing employees who are often among the lowest paid employees AND have abundant opportunity to take advantage in environments where there is inadequate checks and balances in place.

It is therefore important that employers do the following:

1. Make policies on these issues clear during hiring and training.
2. Monitor the day-to-day operation – you can’t assume the local manager is aware of all that is going on.
3. Provide incentives and rewards for peer-provided information. Fellow employees often don’t like to be associated with those taking advantage of the organization or being judged based on a problem employee’s performance.
4. Collect data (shopper, licensed agent transactions, video and/or voice recorded) to support employee reprimands, and as identification of serious issues.
5. Use information collected from employee monitoring to improve policies, training and hiring procedures.

Be an understanding manager – and most importantly be aware. Issues like employee theft that go unchecked tend to spread as other employees see the lax environment as tacit approval of that behavior.

Recognize when increased employee frustrations are happening within your organization. Arm yourself with the information you need to determine where the issues are.

Then get help determining how to deal with the issues you identify. Act decisively and directly. Your other employees and customers will appreciate it.