Strategies to prevent employee theft

Strategies to prevent employee theft

Before starting with anything, identifying the things and proper plannings always leads to success. If the plannings are going your way then there will be little room of worrying about anything,  but if no then issues can be countless including the employee theft which is very common and hence need to take care about such things as it can simply benefit or ruin the business.

Because of this threat, not only the business owners suffers but it also impact all over the company’s environment including the honest and hard working staff members could lose their jobs. To avoid this, necessary and smarter steps should be taken. No doubt how good is the employee and his workings, the business owners should provide the measures or security just for their self satisfaction that nothing is going wrong as owner cant keep the watch on each and every employee individually. Thus for this reason only, there are various tips followed by almost all types of companies, no matter how small or big the company is!

Tips for Preventing Employee theft.

Let’s have a closer look on the below points :

1)Creating friendly environment : 

Positivity is the key to achieve the desired result as soon as possible following all the standards and policies of the company. It is important for every employee to follow the rules and regulations of the company to maintain the image as well as it will help developing environment more friendly. Positive work not only encourages you but also goes well with all the team members working over there. Thus this will help increasing communication between team members and management reducing the internal fraud and theft as free environments allow employees to speak anything they feel.

2)  Internal controls :

It will help ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of operations, compliance with laws and regulations, safeguarding of assets, and accurate financial reporting.

3) Access controls :

Not all the information should be disclosed to every employee. Access should only be given to authorized users.

4) Separation of Duties : 

Different companies works on different platforms and accordingly the work is allocated to employees working in that company. But it is also true that every employee don’t work on same platform and given the task based on their knowledge and interest. To avoid the confusion of tasks,  the duties are separated to handle all the critical task such as banking, payroll and billing. Hence it is mandatory that after completion of work, all the details regarding the work done should be forwarded via email to the senior manager for verification. Same duties can be offered to more than one employee having the similar interest. Senior managers provide the same duties to more than single employee and all the details in turn acknowledged to seniors. The audit logs cannot be altered by anyone including administrators. So if an employee covers up their theft by changing or deleting records within the accounts system the audit logs will show all events with the ability to remove the chances of theft.

4) Job Rotation : 

It is somewhat irritating and difficult for the employees as they have to deal with new platforms and projects. But it is believed that it will only benefit the employees in many ways as they getting the ways to learn about the new things, new projects, involvement with the new people etc.. It will help employees to know each other very well as doing the same work everyday can frustrate employee as well. Thus working on new tasks, new projects will always increase the confidence level of an employee keeping him satisfied with his work as well as it will reduce the risk of fraud, theft and sabotage etc. The longer an employee works within the same role, the more likely they will identify holes in the process to hide illegal activity.

5) Document the Tasks for a Process :

It is always a good practice to keep the documentation of the processes with the proper steps within a defined role, it will benefit you in following ways :

1) A training manual for any new employees taking on the role.
2) A great resource for auditors reviewing the employee.

6) Educate your employees : 

To have a successful growth of the company it is important to train your employees about all the policies and procedures related to fraud, crimes and threat. Proper training will always help avoiding this type of issues.