Did you know that 70% of all employees will steal from their employee at least once?
Did you know that 75% of all shrinkage is caused by your employees and staff members?
Did you know that staff theft can account for up to 3% of your gross sales?
Did you know that 6% of all your retail transactions are most likely fraudulent in some way?
These are scary numbers, and of course the people you employ may not do this to you; but with 7 in 10 people employed stealing from the business, it is very likely that you will have at least one thief working for you and your business.
Theft, fraud and under-ringing are serious and substantial problems for any bar, restaurant, club or hotel. But if you don’t know it’s happening, how can you do anything about it. Of course no business owner wants to think that they can’t trust those that are working for them, but in many businesses this is the case.
There are numerous ways that employees will steal from a pub, bar, restaurant, club, hotel or cafe. The most obvious way is to under ring an order; for example a customer orders 5 drinks, the member of staff only puts through 4 drinks in the till but charges the customer for 5 drinks and pockets the money for the 5th drink. Other times employees may serve friends and charge for fewer drinks to give their friends a ‘cheap round’.
As your employees see others stealing from you and see how easy it can be, this will begin a culture of theft in your business and without regular and thorough stocktakes you’ll be left pulling your hair out as to why you are short in tills, or your stock doesn’t match what your ePos system says you should have.
It is important to note that not all losses to your profit are malicious; this may be down to wastage, poor service, incorrect billing or damage for example.
By bringing in a professional stocktaker as an ‘outsider’ your employees will know you are serious about business and regular stocktakes will soon show where your stock differences are and the reasons for these stock differences. However, a professional stocktaker will also be also to see if the losses are theft or if staff need additional training on wastage, service and using the till system.