21 Tips To Cap Staff Temptation – Part 2
3. Create water-tight security systems. It is the employer’s responsibility to create systems that isolate and assign accountability so that the weak are not tempted and the guilty can be readily identified. To do less is to unfairly tempt people who, in other circumstances would act within the rules; and to create uncertainty in your own mind about who is innocent and who is guilty.
Part of the collateral damage of not doing so is that good staff will generally not hang around if they are not trusted – so you lose them because of a lack of system and the misdeeds of a bad apple. That leaves you employing just . . . ?
Our security specialists tell us that people who are likely to steal tend to deliberately choose employers whom they assess to be soft targets.
Scary thought, huh?
4. Run your systems regularly. Make all staff aware of your security systems. Make it clear that there are the systems they know about, and the behind the scenes cross checks, reconciliation systems and auditing processes that will pick up any irregularity immediately.
Having done so, you had better administer those systems, carry out those reconciliations and cross checks, and regularly query any discrepancies. The mere fact that you routinely ask for explanations of anything that is not a 100% fit with the systems confirms to all parties that you are doing your job and that the systems are in play.
This last step is no different to your passing a police patrol car on the highway – a passive reinforcement that driving within the limit and abiding by the law is a good thing to be doing right now, and at all other times, even when you don’t see the officer.
5. Pay good wages. Pay peanuts and you’re inviting hungry monkeys to rifle your peanut jar!
If you employ good staff but are not making sufficient profits to pay them above the market, you have to ask yourself whether you are doing your own job well enough (ask us how a Business Improvement Specialist can make the difference!)
People have an innate sense of fairness and, if you are not paying them what they feel they are worth, they may be tempted to “top it up” from within the business. Much better if you take the initiative in this area than to tacitly invite them to do so.
Besides, staff know when they are stealing and lose respect for themselves in doing so – but they also lose respect for you. How can you expect to command a good result in those circumstances?
6. Involve and educate your staff. Be prepared to discuss everything, from profit to wages and everything in between, with your staff.
Invite their input. Make them part of a solution; that way, they can’t be part of the problem! If they sense that you value their input they will be more likely to align with you, and less likely to seek to “balance the books” or seek a “top up” outside of the system.
As part of your staff education, ensure that all staff understand just what expenses have to be met from the seemingly huge inflow of cash from sales. Many less sophisticated staff members think you get to take it all home, forgetting the mountain of bills that you owe suppliers for stock, staff for wages and superannuation, and other providers for the products and services that run the business. If staff realise how delicate and thin profits are, they will feel a greater sense of balance between their pay packet and your slice of the takings.
