Are your staff pilfering from the till, lifting goods from your shelves or offering 'very special' deals to friends and family? Are warehouse staff helping themselves to your goods?

CCTV systems, store security and tagging are all used to prevent staff theft, but staff theft is very insidious and very hard to pin-point. Let’s face it, employees are in the perfect position to steal from your business; they are aware of the weaknesses in your systems and they know who the supervisors and security personnel are.

To make matters worse, in a retail environment staff typically steal more than customers; much more - around ten times as much.

Some surprising facts

• A majority of employee theft goes undetected by management.
• Nearly one third of all business failures have been linked to employee theft.
• Most thefts committed by employees go unreported - Australian Institute of Criminology.
• Nearly every business experiences some degree of employee theft.
• In Australia theft by staff is estimated at $500 million per annum - National Retail Crime Prevention Council
• Employees committed almost 80 per cent of fraud - results from 2 year study of fraud by KPMG
• A majority of honest employees look the other way regarding employee theft and fail to report it.
• Dishonest employees steal to the degree the system allows and don't stop until they are caught.

Internal theft in the workplace can include: -

• Outright theft of goods and/or money.
• Under-charging accomplices.
• Changing delivery dockets.
• Under-ringing or not ringing up purchases at the cash register.
• Altering the shrinkage records.
• Using company time and/or facilities for personal matters.
• Increasing creditors' invoices and keeping the difference.
• Falsifying “voids” or “refunds”.
• Fraudulent refunding.

How JFA Brisbane can help

Covert (hidden) video surveillance is an extremely effective means of detecting unlawful activity and will identify internal theft and other unlawful workplace activities where conventional methods of detection are ineffective. It also provides a visual record of what actually transpired and can pinpoint the exact source of your losses. In the event of an actual theft, the recordings (which are time and date stamped) can provide critical evidence for an investigation or unfair dismissal claim.

JFA Brisbane can tailor a number of state-of-the-art surveillance equipment packages to cost-effectively address your business concerns.

JFA Brisbane is also able to provide your business with fully licensed in-store undercover staff to monitor not only staff theft issues, but also provide your business with additional information on: -

• Staff morale.
• Unsafe work practices.
• Sexual harassment issues.
• Improper junior management practices.
• Inappropriate staff absenteeism.

Some useful tips on reducing staff theft