Monday, February 04, 2008 Echaves: Sticky fingers By Lelani P. Echaves Thinking Aloud
A CLINICAL instructor was reporting for her teaching duties. As she got out of her taxi, one hand carrying teaching materials while the other, her handbag, a motorcyclist went up a small embankment, and drove straight at her. Stunned, she dropped her things. The man on the motorcycle lifted her handbag and calmly drove away. All this at about 10 am.
Anti-crime authorities are quick to point that when the economy is low, crimes on person and property, such as theft, expectedly high. What if incidents of theft are in the workplace? Human resources practitioners will then see these not as reasons for making incident reports, but also as symptoms of job dissatisfaction, along with other symptoms as absenteeism, tardiness, and accidents in the workplace.
Losses from theft are part of “shrinkage,” a jargon in the retail market.
Among the most hit is the United Kingdom whose shrinkage caused by staff stealing from their employers had risen from 28 % to 29 % last year. A survey by an office supplies company even showed that up to £ 1.2 billion worth of property get spirited away by employees into their homes.
Criminologist Martin Gill, also a professor at Leicester University, explains workplace theft as an expression of employees’ gripe against the employer, especially when they feel marginalized.
Expectedly, employers have started installing security cameras, and employees are avoiding risks of sticky fingeredness from associates. About one-fourth of the employees remove their jewelry before shift work, or leave their credit and debit cards at home.
Mill reports that the most commonly pilfered are purses, wallets, mobile phones, handbags, designer goods, perfumes, CD’s, jewelry, videos, disposable razors and vitamins. They’re known to have good second-hand market value and thus, can be turned into cash quickly.
Some other common instances are additional orders of food charged to corporate credit cards, using office phones for long-distance personal calls, padding up the sales receipts for expenses on transportation and accommodation, bringing home a ream or two of bond paper for children’s school needs, and even regular undertime despite daily time cards supposedly reflecting an 8:00 am to 5:00 pm presence in the work station.
The latter instance reminds me of one company where the security guards inquired if the owners knew that some employees did clock in and out punctually, but actually left the company premises four to five times within the day. Understandably, their staff complained over the very visible favoritism, meaning… glossing over the working hours of some, and yet being granular about the rest.
To create a culture of honesty and transparency, employers should set a clear policy on what is acceptable behavior, and what is not. Moreover, implementation of such policy must be consistent, as human resources practitioners stress. A company cannot justify a policy against pilferage, for instance, if that policy is being breached by the organization’s officials.
