The Last Word: Customer Solutions Profit Ideas

This time of year is always difficult for me. ‘Tis the season’ as they say, and I always know that it’s here when our surveying visits (structured research that observes customer-employee interactions) for our restaurant and retail clients reveal spikes in obvious employee stealing.

Recently, I personally witnessed theft in five out of six establishments I visited. I know that workplace theft increases this time of year; employee theft statistics usually translate to 10 – 20% of the locations we survey showing obvious signs of theft, but during the fourth quarter it jumps to an amazing 50% of locations we survey showing these blatant signs.

The industries hardest hit are restaurants and retailers where temporary help is added to support increased customer flow during the 4th quarter. But, what this means is temporary employees who have no loyalty to the organization, who don’t know the procedures, and who are unknown to management. This adds up to a significant increase in risk. They virtually fly under the radar and often rationalize theft – defined by everything from gifting of products or services to friends to blatant theft of products or money – in a variety of convoluted ways to justify their behavior.

So, given that we all know this problem exists, what can be done to control employee theft and inventory shrinkage all year long to better manage throughout the year and mitigate the notorious 4th quarter problems? Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three easy things you can do to help moderate the losses:

1. Watch for jumps in pour, food and inventory costs to increase beyond expected levels (beyond cost projections for increased sales seasons) or during certain times of day.

2. Conduct frequent cash register reconciliations to see if there are discrepancies during shifts, or consistently when certain employees are working.

3. Do a better assessment of temporary help (from gut checks to better training).

Those are a few of the ideas that come top of mind to me; I would welcome additional ideas from readers. Also, don’t assume the good and tenured employees will help you – peer pressure and fear often will keep them from bringing the problem to management. And, turning a blind eye to this will only encourage borderline employees from also picking up this nasty habit; pretty soon you have major losses piling up – most of which you can control.

Of course, I know a lot about this really difficult and emotionally-laced problem because I have years of experience in helping our clients control their losses due to employee theft. I sometimes wish I didn’t uncover so much of this – it is really heartbreaking. But not as heartbreaking as the loses our clients were experiencing and the emotional toll they paid upon learning that it was caused by folks they gave jobs to!

If you are looking for more insight into this area, I also have a couple of articles about employee theft on our main website, including Six Signs That Employees Are Stealing. I was recently interviewed on the topic and we are putting that short interview up on our podcast in a day or so if you’d care to give it a listen.