If you own a small to medium size business, and you have employees working for you, then you might want to consider hiring a Private Investigator to conduct a few, simple, covert techniques to try and spot the problem employees, if for no other reason, then to put a stop to the fiscal bleeding from your business.
This doesn't always mean that you will have to fire anyone, but perhaps just some re-training for some, or all of your staff, or maybe some overdue updating and stricter implementation of the business' employee guidelines and practices.
The losses in your business may not be from something as obvious as "tapping the till". It could be poor customer relations, driving you customers away and creating a negative "buzz" on the street, or worse yet, on some internet site such as Yelp. It may be the lack of necessary math skills, or even laziness or lack of thoroughness in completing all of the necessary transaction methods leading to an unbalanced cash drawer at the end of a shift.
In food businesses, it is often an issue of younger employees offering free or discounted food to their friends and families, or sometimes it's the wasteful preparation techniques in the kitchen or behind the counter: Giving too many napkins, free soft drink refills, etc.
By hiring a Private Investigator to go into your establishment as a "regular" customer on a periodic schedule, you can assess some if the issues, and address them accordingly, based upon the PI's report.
This type of investigation is often referred to as a "Mystery Shopper".
Feel free to contact Theia Investigations if you feel that this type of service might prove valuable to your business.
The following article was published in the Wall Street Journal by Sarah E. Needleman
If your small business can't afford external auditors, security cameras or other resources for spotting employee fraud, consider doing some detective work of your own. The effort could save your firm from a significant financial loss or worse—failure.
After all, a single heist could be fatal for a small business, says Richard Hollinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Florida. Small firms typically don't have the financial resources to fall back on that large organizations have, he explains.
Employee fraud can take place right under a business owner's nose. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, an anti-fraud trade group in Austin, Texas, such activities occur on average for as long as two years before the victim organization catches on.
Here are three best ways to tell if an employee is likely to be seeking a five-finger discount:
The phone keeps ringing. Some corrupt workers will instruct friends to repeatedly call a business and ask if the owner is on site until the answer is no, says Mark R. Doyle, chief executive of Jack L. Hayes International Inc., a provider of workplace crime-prevention services in Wesley Chapel, Fla. Once they hear those "magic" words, the friend knows it's safe to come by and swipe merchandise under the rogue employee's watch, he explains.
The math doesn't add up. Two years ago, ReShonda Young noticed a subordinate at her father's transportation company, Alpha Express LLC, had turned in a weekly time sheet with more hours than he could've possibly worked. That prompted Ms. Young, a manager at the Waterloo, Iowa, company, to investigate further and she discovered that the employee had been stretching his hours for months, initially to a less-noticeable extent. "I guess it got to be a little easy," she says. Now all supervisors must review and sign workers' time cards before they can be processed, says Ms. Young.
Money problems surface. Financial pressures are a key motivator of occupational fraud, the ACFE reports. For this reason, business owners should take note of any excessive complaining by a worker about money burdens. And if such a person's lifestyle suddenly improves dramatically, this could signal he or she has their hand in the company's cookie jar.
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