How To Prevent Employee Theft All Year Long

Employee Theft During The Holidays

The holidays are stressful times for everyone, employees included.  Despite our best attempts at making sure that everyone gets the proper treatment and compensation for the work that they are doing, employee theft is often more prominent during the holiday season.  If you’re looking for some tips on how to prevent employee theft during the holidays as well as throughout the year, here are some options to consider.

Reconcile your accounts monthly

Changing your company’s policy in terms of reconciling your accounts on a monthly basis (instead of quarterly or even annually) will help you spot theft much faster and you’ll be able to monitor the progress, and it may even give you the person who did it, too.  This is the first step to helping you know when there’s a problem as soon as it happens and then allowing you to deal with it properly.

Split up the financial jobs among employees

Another way to make sure that you aren’t missing money is to split up the jobs requiring financial aspects among employees, and even rotate it around on a regular basis.  This gives them less chance to steal from your company, and the fact that it is going to change hands at some point may also make them think twice about taking money from your company because it may get traced back to them sooner rather than later.

Be active in your workplace

If employees know that you are actively on site and you are checking out the accounts, employee behavior and keeping a close eye on things, they’ll know that theft is going to be harder to accomplish.  Showing them that you are keeping track of everything actively makes them less likely to try to steal from you.  Vigilance is key, and it’s good to do just on general principle, too.

Prosecute those that you find stealing from you

If you do happen to discover and prove that someone is stealing from you, prosecute them according to company policy.  Sure it’s easy to explain it away as “they must have had a reason”, or other thoughts, but if you just sweep it under the rug and explain it away, you’re broadcasting to the rest of the employees that they can all get away with theft, too.  This is the last thing you want.  So, ignore the part of you that wants to be the “nice cop”, and focus on saving your company’s finances. Employee theft, especially at the holidays, will end up hurting you and your company in both the short- and long-term, so make sure that you take it seriously.  You may not want to prosecute for a little financial slip up during the holiday season, but you need to if you want to be productive, professional and successful in the future.  The holiday season is a hard time for most of us, but employee theft makes it harder on everyone. Contact Palma Financial Consulting to assist with any accounting litigation or employee fraud detection and protection at (281) 668-9168.