Why do employees steal from their workplace?
It is something businesses have to face up to: the inside job. Stealing from the workplace cost British retailers more than £1.5bn in the 12 months to June, according to the fifth European Retail Theft Barometer, published this week. Only Iceland had a higher proportion of stock lost through staff theft. Although the report found only a small number of staff to be responsible, there are concerns that employee theft and fraud is more widespread than it might appear. “Most people who steal from work – whether time theft, fraud, embezzlement or theft of goods or products – are not doing so because they are professional thieves or dishonest people,” says Terry Shulman, author of Biting The Hand That Feeds: The Employee Theft Epidemic. “They slip into it a little at a time, mostly out of a combination of disgruntlement and compulsion.” Shulman says most employees who steal from work are honest in other areas. “But for most there is a sense of entitlement and they don’t think they are hurtin
