How to Prevent Internal Theft at Your Business

No employ­er wants to believe their work­ers can steal from the busi­ness. But the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that inter­nal theft is wide­spread. 75% of employ­ees admit to steal­ing from their employ­ers at least once, accord­ing to one shock­ing sta­tis­tic.

With­in retail, inter­nal theft costs Cana­di­an busi­ness­es more than $1 bil­lion every year, accord­ing to CBC.

With loss­es like these, busi­ness­es need to be proac­tive about imple­ment­ing process­es and sys­tems that reduce the risk of inter­nal theft. This blog post out­lines four strate­gies to help pre­vent these crimes from occur­ring at your busi­ness.

1) Install high-quality security cameras

Secu­ri­ty cam­eras are a pow­er­ful deter­rent, mak­ing employ­ees think twice before com­mit­ting a crime. The pres­ence of cam­eras alone helps to pre­vent inter­nal theft. But if a crime is com­mit­ted, you’ll have video evi­dence to take action.

The key to installing secu­ri­ty cam­eras is plac­ing them in enough areas that there are no “blind spots” at your busi­ness. In retail envi­ron­ments, for exam­ple, you’ll want to install the cam­eras wher­ev­er you have mer­chan­dise, whether it’s the main floor or the back office and inven­to­ry rooms. Be sure also to cap­ture delivery/receiving areas, which are com­mon areas for inter­nal theft.

2) Use background checks during the hiring process

When hir­ing new employ­ees, includ­ing back­ground checks as part of the appli­ca­tion process. Back­ground checks can alert you to pre­vi­ous crim­i­nal activ­i­ty that you wouldn’t oth­er­wise know about. While not all pri­or offences will be grounds for dis­miss­ing a can­di­date, a pat­tern of theft is a major red flag. Con­duct­ing back­ground checks is a quick and inex­pen­sive way to ensure you’re hir­ing the best can­di­dates.

3) Implement stronger cash-drawer procedures

Cash reg­is­ters are a famil­iar spot for inter­nal theft in retail envi­ron­ments, espe­cial­ly if the busi­ness has no secu­ri­ty cam­eras. How­ev­er, you can reduce the risk of theft by imple­ment­ing stricter pro­ce­dures for how employ­ees han­dle their cash draw­ers.

One effec­tive mea­sure is con­duct­ing cash counts at ran­dom times. Have super­vi­sors ran­dom­ly con­duct a cash count dur­ing the work­day to check for dis­crep­an­cies. This pro­ce­dure will help to deter employ­ees from “pil­fer­ing the till” in the first place. Addi­tion­al­ly, each employ­ee should have a ded­i­cat­ed draw­er, enabling you to spot any pat­terns of dis­crep­an­cies over time.

4) Monitor inventory & physical assets

This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for retail, but it applies to near­ly any type of busi­ness. If you don’t have an accu­rate record of your busi­ness’s prod­ucts and assets, how will you know if some­thing has gone miss­ing?

Your employ­ees will know if your inven­to­ry prac­tices are lack­ing. They will see if it’s pos­si­ble to take some­thing with­out get­ting caught. By imple­ment­ing stricter inven­to­ry mon­i­tor­ing, you’ll deter inter­nal theft and have greater insight into what’s hap­pen­ing to your prod­ucts if some­thing goes miss­ing.

Is your business secure?

Find out if your busi­ness is at greater risk of inter­nal theft and oth­er secu­ri­ty threats. Request a no-oblig­a­tion secu­ri­ty con­sul­ta­tion from PROTECTION PLUS.