Employee Theft – How to Handle it

As an employer, you want to foster an environment of trust, collaboration and respect. Workplaces that empower and trust employees to make decisions with reduced hierarchy have proven to be extraordinarily successful and also receive positive employee reviews. However sometimes, this positive environment is breached by a single individual who chooses to break the trust by stealing.

Employee theft is an extremely sensitive subject for a few key reasons:

• Emotions run high…on both sides of the spectrum. As the employer, you will likely experience feelings of frustration, anger and disrespect. The employees will often be extremely defensive, emotional and angry as well.
• The repercussions of stealing are life-long. If you steal, are caught and are prosecuted and found guilty, even the smallest amount will permanently be on your record. This means no more passing background checks – whether it is to rent a home or get a job. In more serious cases of theft, steep fines and possibly even jail time are potential punishments.

• Reputation. Both the company’s reputation and the employee’s reputations are compromised. If the employee stole from a client, not only does it reflect poorly on them, but as an employer your reputation is also on the line.

So, how do you mitigate employee theft?

• Know your employees. The first step to ensuring you have trustworthy employees is to run a background check. Not only must you run the background check but you absolutely cannot ignore what the background check tells you. Once they are hired, develop a professional relationship with them – connect, be aware of any circumstances that might affect their work and help them address those things.

• Open lines of communication. Employees should feel that they are able to safely let you know if something fishy is going on. Develop an anonymous tip line or another way to privately and discretely alert management of improper behavior.

• Run quarterly audits. A lot of theft in the workplace is buried in invoices – over-ordering, over-charging, etc. Audit your financials, your work orders, etc. on a quarterly or bi-annual basis to ensure that there is nothing going on.

If you do come into a situation where you believe an employee is stealing, do not act on it without obtaining some sort of outside council. Seeking a third party, such as Employer Solutions Plus who can provide you with guidance is important. We are here to answer any questions you may have!