Tag: employee theft

Employee theft is a major problem for many employers in the United States, coming in at number two on the list of leading causes of inventory shrinkage (behind shoplifting/ORC), according to the 2018 National Retail Security Survey.

A common question that comes up in training seminars is: "How the heck do we get that written statement?"

Contemporary loss prevention professionals still maintain responsibility for retail security. But they also must handle employee theft issues, data protection, safety and risk management, inventory audits, legal compliance, and matters related to organized retail crime and fraud.

With each topic that you introduce, there might be a little bit of resistance. What do we need to do to decrease resistance? Build more credibility, show understanding, and eventually lead to another assumptive question.

The participatory approach is specifically used when there’s circumstantial evidence or that there’s a possibility that your subject might have an excuse, an explanation, so some type of alibi that may or may not be true.

It's not uncommon for investigators to see the end goal of an investigation as the interview with the accused subject or involved subject.

The Wicklander-Zulawski (WZ) method is a non-confrontational interview that allows the interviewer to build credibility through a brief introductory statement—and then show understanding through rationalizing.

The NRSS indicates that shoplifting accounted for 35.7 percent of the reported shrink in 2017, which is down from 39.3 percent in 2016.

To the extent possible, it’s good to keep high-value assets and critical material separate from employees, but that’s not always practical.

Throughout my career, I've investigated numerous significant increases in shortage on a multi-store level. In each case, the cause was traced to the distribution process.