Survey Says: One Out of 28 Employees Caught Stealing
Loss Prevention (LP) pros, Jack L. Hayes International, released its 19th annual Retail Theft Survey today and the results are, well, shocking.
The survey canvassed 23 large retail companies with over 14,000 stores that reported over $537 billion in total annual sales in 2006. These retailers admitted to apprehending 66,507 employees for theft last year, an increase of 6.57% over the year before. The survey also noted that LP pros recovered $56.6 million, thanks to these apprehensions.
However, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, 75 percent of all employee thefts were never noticed. If that figure is correct, there’s another $169.8 million of stolen merchandise just walking out the back door. And according to the Jack L. Hayes site, “On a per case average, dishonest employees steal approximately 6.6 times the amount stolen by shoplifters ($851.44 vs $128.71).”
This seriousness of the threat to retail’s bottom line is reflected in this quote from Mark R. Doyle, President of Jack L. Hayes International
“This is only the second time in the past 9 years where both the apprehensions and recovery dollars from shoplifters and dishonest employees has increased. Shoplifting apprehensions and recovery dollars were up an amazing 11.2% and 13.9% respectively. And while employee theft apprehensions were up just under 7%, the recovery dollars were up over 16%. The seriousness of retail theft is a much greater problem than many people realize. The theft losses experienced by retailers are driving consumer prices higher, hurting our economy, and even forcing some retailers to close stores or go out of business.”
What’s a retailer to do?
Here’s some suggested reading:
