Alpha Spider Wrap

Local Police and Their Communities

July 15, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

shopliftingdollarsign The amount of calls reported by Walmart stores to the local police are staggering. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Walmart stores in Tampa report an outstanding 16,800 calls in only one year and in only 4 counties. That’s 2 calls per hour, every hour, 24 hours a day. That’s your taxes working for Walmart. While the lack of police surveillance of other neighborhoods can affect those communities, Walmart monopolization of the police force should be analyze, and stopped for good.

For more about this and other stories, follow the links below.

Retail Loss Prevention and Law Enforcement – Can They Work Together?

Law enforcement and LP should work together on retail theft prevention.

For years, there have been those that have questioned whether retail loss prevention and law enforcement can effectively work in partnership with one another. For example retail loss prevention professionals have often felt frustrated that law enforcement wasn’t concerned about helping them with their business. In reality, detectives may have been focusing on other pressing crimes, such as a rash of burglaries, sexual assaults, or other crimes against people.

Consider the aftermath of a “grab and run” incident. From a law enforcement perspective, the number of people who had access to a particular area when a loss occurs may be very high, with little or no available means to identify who the perpetrators might be. Some believe that law enforcement has the ability to further clarify and zoom in on video already recorded to extract a better image.

Walmart

Thousands of police calls.

You paid the bill.

Police come to shoo away panhandlers, referee parking disputes and check on foul-mouthed teenagers.

They are called to arrest the man who drinks a 98-cent iced tea without paying and capture the customer who joyrides on a motorized shopping cart.

The calls eat up hours of officers’ time. They all start at one place:

Walmart.

Law enforcement logged nearly 16,800 calls in one year to Walmarts in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties, according to a Tampa Bay Timesanalysis. That’s two calls an hour, every hour, every day.

Local Walmarts, on average, generated four times as many calls as nearby Targets, the Times found. Many individual supercenters attracted more calls than the much larger WestShore Plaza mall.

When it comes to calling the cops, Walmart is such an outlier compared with its competitors that experts criticized the corporate giant for shifting too much of its security burden onto taxpayers. Several local law enforcement officers also emphasized that all the hours spent at Walmart cut into how often they can patrol other neighborhoods and prevent other crimes.

N.C. law enforcement, retailers to combat organized retail crime.

CORCA is aimed at bringing together local law enforcement agencies and the N.C. Retail Merchants Association to better communication retail theft that is more complex than shoplifting.

At Thursday’s press conference, the alliance leaders stressed the difference between organized retail crime and shoplifting. Organized retail crime usually involves complex schemes and is organized to convert illegally obtained merchandise or cash into financial gain by theft or fraud.

“These are criminals,” Steve Walker, the asset protection director at Walgreens, said. “They are not shoplifters.”

Raleigh Police Department Detective Scott Womack added that often these thefts are connected to drug abuse, street crime and even terrorism.

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What Shoplifting Costs The Taxpayer

July 7, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

The financial damage shoplifting does to the retail industry is measured in billions of dollars every year. For the tax payer, the financial burden that they have to endure due to the constant calls made by retailers to the police due to shoplifting is equally damaging. Walmart is one of the retailers with the most call to the police due to shoplifting incidents, and it is unlikely things will get any better.

For more about this and other topics, follow the links below.

Macy’s barred from detaining, fining New York shoplifting suspects

An injunction was granted this week barring Macy’s stores in New York from detaining and fining suspected shoplifters in response to a class action lawsuit, according to court records from the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

The lawsuit filed by Cinthia Orellana and later joined by Samya Moftah claims the loss prevention units in some Macy’s stores in New York operate “like a typical jail, equipped with holding cells.”

The women claim they were detained, coerced into signing confessions and forced to pay to be released, all before law enforcement involvement, according to court documents.

Officials for Macy’s, headquartered in Cincinnati, have told multiple media outlets that its loss prevention practices have changed since the women’s alleged incidents.

Judge Manuel Mendez stated that New York law allows a business to detain suspected shoplifters for the purposes of investigation and questioning and allows businesses to fine shoplifters five times of the cost of the merchandise up to $500.

However, Mendez suggested Macy’s was pairing the laws unfairly.

Cop Quietly Pays For Family’s Essentials After Shoplifting Bust

A kindhearted cop in Redmond, Washington, came to the rescue of a family after the mother and father were allegedly caught trying to shoplift essential items for their children.

The Redmond Police Department officer stepped in after managers at a Target store decided not to press charges against the couple, reports local station KING.

He quietly took the diapers and clothing, which the parents were accused of trying to steal for their two kids, aged 8 years and 4 months, back to the checkout.

After paying for the items from his own pocket, he handed them back to the family and informed them where they could go to obtain more help.

News of his act of kindness emerged after an eagle-eyed police supervisor spotted the details in a shoplifting report. The department posted an excerpt from the account on Twitter.

“Sometimes our officers don’t tell us everything,” the post stated. “An attentive supervisor spied this in a recent shoplifting report.” It is now going viral.

Crimes at Jacksonville’s big box stores last year cost taxpayers $75K

Most calls at Walmart deal with shoplifting.

ACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Police officers in Jacksonville spent 3,533 hours — the equivalent of 147 days – responding to petty crimes at Walmart stores in Jacksonville last year, I-TEAM research found.

Officers spent another 667 hours working shoplifting and other minor calls at Target stores in the city.

An analysis of data from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office found 5,298 police calls to the 15 Walmart stores in Jacksonville in 2015 – five times the number of calls to the eight Target stores in the city.

The Walmart on Normandy Boulevard had the most calls: 864. Shoplifting made up half of those calls, followed by thefts, then disputes.

The Walmart store at 103rd Street came in second and had 668 police calls for service last year, with the a similar breakdown of offenses.

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Shoplifting; A Social Problem With No Clear Answers

June 30, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Research for many years now, have found that the best way to prevent shoplifting is through customer service. If people are greeted by the store personnel as they enter the store, they are less likely to shoplift. The retail industry’s billions of dollars lost every year due to shoplifting and employee theft, are a social problem that they have no answer to, and regardless of how much they invest in technology, the problem seems to be getting worse not better.

For more about this topic follow the links below.

Bamboozled: The job that could get you arrested

Mystery shopping gigs are real, but they’re also a common job title you’ll see when a scammer is looking for a victim.

And now, fraudsters are giving this job scam a new twist. One that could land you in jail.

But first, the real thing.

Retailers will hire “mystery shoppers” to visit their businesses — unbeknownst to the employees — for an objective look at the shopping experience. The mystery shopper will be instructed to look at specific things about a business, and then go back to the company to report his or her experiences.

Mystery shoppers are typically paid a fee for their time, and they’re also reimbursed for items that are purchased during a store visit. These amounts are often pre-approved by the company that hires the shopper.

The fakes work differently.

Crimes at Jacksonville’s big box stores last year cost taxpayers $75K

Most calls at Walmart deal with shoplifting.

Officers spent another 667 hours working shoplifting and other minor calls at Target stores in the city.

The Walmart on Normandy Boulevard had the most calls: 864. Shoplifting made up half of those calls, followed by thefts, then disputes.

Police Cars Parked Along Admiral Wilson Boulevard In Effort To Prevent Crime

CAMDEN, N.J. (CBS) — For weeks, marked police cars have been stationed at businesses along Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden.

Two police cars have been parked around the clock at gas stations along Admiral Wilson Boulevard. Generally, there are no officers in the cars. Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson says it’s designed to deter crime from robberies to shoplifting to graffiti.

“It’s a reminder to those that may be up to no good — whatever it may be on that spectrum of illegal activity — that we’re nearby, and that we’re watching at all times,” he said.

Thomson says the cars are part of a wider bid to work withbusiness owners to address blight and dilapidated properties in neighborhoods.

“We were seeing an increase in the amount of graffiti, trash, broken-down cars, boards falling off of abandoned buildings,” the chief said. “And considering the fact that 80,000 cars a day travel along that route — I don’t want that to negatively define our city.”

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You Are Losing More Money Than You Realize

June 30, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Yep, you probably are! The shoplifter that walked out the door with your $45 item cost you MORE actual money than $45!

Many Retailers do not understand the actual impact of theft. For example:

You experience a $45 loss (shoplifting, employee theft, vendor fraud…). Is that $45 the total impact on the bottom line? Nope, you actually lost $2,250.00 in real money.

For your organization to simply recover or break even on a $45 loss, you would have to sell an additional $2,250.00 to break even! ($45.00 divided by .02% profit margin). This is on top of your normal sales.

WOW, how many more items are you going to have to order, receive, count, mark, prepare paperwork for, stock, and finally sell just to produce these extra sales? Theft/Shrinkage really cannot be recovered from because you should have had those sales to begin with.

Add to that the loss of sales because the stolen item was not available for sale to a legitimate customer.

You then begin to understand why one third of U.S. business failures are blamed on theft.

The obvious solution is to prevent the theft (we can help with that), errors and abuse that cause loss in the first place.

Loss vs. Sales

So if we assume for a moment that your company has a 2% bottom line net profit margin. Two percent is considered an overall retail normal margin. Yours may be higher/lower. The net profit is your final profit after all expenses such as payroll, payment to vendors, rent, taxes, utilities….

The chart below shows the sales required to replace losses due to theft:

AMOUNT OF LOSS 2% PROFIT MARGIN SALES

NEEDED TO REPLACE LOSSES

$100 $ 5,000

$500 $ 25,000

$ 2,500 $ 125,000

$ 5,000 $ 250,000

$ 7,500 $ 375,000

$10,000 $ 500,000

$12,500 $ 625,000

$15,000 $ 750,000

$17,500 $ 875,000

$20,000 $1,000,000

Inventory shrinkage cancels millions of dollars in sales. That means all of your hard work for an entire year can be wiped out by a single loss. Loss Prevention Systems can fix your shoplifting problems!

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HOW SHOPLIFTERS CAN DECREASE THE VALUE OF YOUR BRAND

June 30, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

I’m sure you’ve already read how shoplifters cost you money. It’s probably hard to digest the dire financial implications that shoplifters have on all of our businesses. Without adequate controls in place, you are putting your business and your financial well-being at risk, and honestly, you just can’t do that. That’s why we have to have a camera system and why EAS systems are a necessity and not just a “nice to have” technology. That’s exactly why we have to invest in exception reporting tools to help us identify criminal activity and why we preach the value of exceptional customer service in our stores.

Value. Your customers shop with you because you provide them with value. They could shop at 12 other stores and some of them might even be more competitively priced than you, but there’s something that draws them into your store. That’s the value of your brand. Retailers have a following just like any band, performer or Hollywood movie start. Believe it or not, you have fans, some of which will refuse to shop anywhere else. Ever stop to think what it is about your store that causes this? There could be several reasons, really. In my personal experience (I have a few stores that I exclusively shop at for different needs). All have a few things in common.

In stock position is number one on my list. If I am going shopping, I normally know exactly what I want. I don’t spend a lot of time browsing and normally don’t need a whole lot of help from a store employee. I simply expect that the item I want be available for me to grab and go. Having available inventory for your customer is key component to your success.

If you’re constantly targeted by shoplifters and dishonest employees, those in demand items may not always be available for your legitimate customers. How many times have you walked a customer out the door because you didn’t have the thing they were looking for, even though you do stock that particular item? More times than you care to admit, I’m sure. So not only did you lose the item to theft, you’ve lost the sale to the customer as well. If that happens enough times to enough customers, you’ll be known as the retailer that “never has what I need in stock”.

Customer engagement is another factor I consider. I don’t often ask for help, but when I do. I expect an employee to be readily accessible, close by, knowledgeable and friendly. I also want to know that the employee is aware that I am in their area and available to help should I need it. This makes me feel that my business is wanted and appreciated.

Shoplifters will target stores that they know they can operate in with impunity. Those are the stores where employees ignore customers (you know the stores I’m talking about here). If a thief knows you are not paying attention, they will rob you blind and then come back for seconds. Customer service is one of the best methods to deter a criminal.

As a retailer, you have to offer value to your customers. You definitely can’t do that if your employees don’t engage your shopper, you don’t have the item in stock and your prices are out in left field compared with your competitor. Setting yourself apart from the competition is what drives business into your store and will keep you in business. As retailers and small business owners, remember that your brand carries value. Whether it’s a positive or negative value rest solely on your shoulders and has a direct effect on how your approach shrink and external theft.

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EXACTLY HOW DO YOU LOSE MONEY TO CREDIT CARD FRAUD

June 30, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

You have (or I hope you have) read the last article on preventing check fraud. It’s a great way to protect your business from a different avenue of fraud. Another, much more popular and prevalent scheme is credit card fraud. The United States lags far behind the other major countries in the fight against credit card fraud. We’ve only just begun adopting chip and pin technology and it will be several more years before we see magnetic strips become a relic of the past. So exactly how can you identify and prevent a fraudulent change from happening in your store and how exactly do you lose money on these transactions?

Credit card fraud is the one of the biggest, single fraud scheme affect my stores. While the criminals evolve their tactics quite often, there are some general rules you can follow to identify possible fraudulent transactions.

Large Dollar Gift Card Purchases| Normally, a legitimate customer will not purchase 3 $500 in back-to-back transactions with 8 different credit cards. This is a red flag and should involve management immediately.
Multiple Transactions with Multiple Credit Cards| This is another red flag that could help you identify criminal activity. The average American owns about 3 credit cards. If you have an individual using 5-8 credit cards to make several big ticket purchases, then you’re probably dealing with some fraud.
The Credit Card Lacks the Eagle Hologram|Holograms are hard to fake (although I’ve seen some really good ones). Often, the counterfeiters will skip over this step, so I always look for the eagle.
Typos| Since a lot of counterfeit cards come from manufacturers overseas, every now and then, you can spot a typo on the bank’s name, or even the credit card company (I’ve personally seen “MasterCard” about a dozen times.)
Verify ID on all purchases over $X. Now this one is tricky. About 3 years ago, this was an easy, sure fire way to spot a fraudster, as the ID and the card name would not match. Over the past 18 months, we have seen these groups become highly sophisticated in this area. They will now very often, imprint the actual name of the criminal on the card. They also imprint the card with an account number that is not the account number that is embedded in the magnetic strip, which makes identifying the card as fake at the point of sale almost impossible.

So now you have a few best practices to use in your fight against credit card theft, but you may still be asking yourself, “Why should I care? Then bank covers the loss to the customer anyway.” While that statement is absolutely true, the banks will then issue a “charge-back” to the retailer that accepted the fraudulent purchase. This means you can be out thousands upon thousands of dollars if you’re not proactive in your approach to identify and prevent fraudulent credit card purchases in your store.

Essentially, what that means is the criminal impacts two people; the customer that is a victim of identity theft and the retailer that must then cover the cost of the transaction. For a large corporation, it may not be a big deal to dole out tens of thousands of dollars per month in chargebacks, but to a small business owner, even a few hundred could make the difference between being in the red, or black.

My best advice to you is that you follow the guidelines above and update your POS systems to accept the new chip and pin technology. Hopefully, in the coming years as the old tech is phased out and the more secure chip technology takes over, brick and mortar credit card fraud will be a distant memory. (Online fraud, however will take center stage… but I’ll save that for next time.)

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Improved Inventory Results With Alpha Spider Wrap

June 29, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Alpha Spider Wrap-5 WC blog 131

Retail Anti-Theft Devices-4

Prevent Shoplifting-3

Improved Inventory Results With Alpha Spider Wrap

As a former store Loss Prevention Manager I found inventory time could be a little nerve wracking because I never knew what surprises the inventory results would hold. I usually felt fairly confident we would have good shrink results but my concern was seeing what our top shortage departments would be. Were the major items that we were losing due to theft or operational issues? What would those items be? Sometimes there would be items that were almost guaranteed to be on the Top 10 shortage department lists, such as cosmetics and DVDs. Occasionally something would show up that made me scratch my head trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do to prevent shoplifting of the item and prevent a recurrence the next year. One such item that made the list one year was vacuum cleaners. The fix for us came when we started using Alpha Spider Wrap to protect our high end vacuums.

Alpha Spider Wrap uses aircraft grade steel cable housed in a cinching device to protect merchandise. The wires can be loosened to fit around a boxed item and then tightened to create a snug fit and keep it from being slipped off. These retail anti-theft devices come in different sizes so even though we used the larger wraps for our vacuums, we had smaller wraps available for other merchandise in the store. Alpha Spider Wraps are available in several models with different features. They are all radio frequency sensitive to work with store electronic article surveillance systems. Some are tamper proof so they will sound an alarm if someone attempts to cut a wire to remove the device. There are also wraps available in a 3 alarm design that will self-alarm if someone were to get a protected item out the doors, past electronic article surveillance antennas.

In the case of our vacuum cleaner issue, we knew there had been some attempts to roll out vacuums past the cash registers, but we did not know how many thefts had taken place over the year. To prevent shoplifting we had placed our closed circuit television cameras on the aisle where the vacuums were merchandised. We had also attempted to use retail anti-theft devices such as EAS tags and tamper-proof security tape on the boxes. Finally, I tried to staff my front end security team members at times we suspected shoplifters were trying to conduct roll-outs. Obviously the results spoke for themselves and it was apparent we had not done enough to curb the thieves. They were cleaning house (pun intended) and I needed a new tactic, especially when I learned from Loss Prevention Managers in other stores that they were experiencing the same problem.

Our company had recently started purchasing Alpha Spider Wrap and sending them to stores. I had our merchandise protection specialist and our security team members start securing the vacuums with these new retail anti-theft devices. At this point we were also tracking sales and on-hand counts of our high end vacuums and as we wrapped merchandise we started to notice that the in-stocks were improving. Major improvements were seen in the decrease of empty shelf spaces and much to the chagrin of my Loss Prevention peers; I was hearing they were still experiencing significant losses. It seemed the steps we were taking were shifting shoplifter activity to other stores and away from us. By the next inventory we saw a drastic decline in the shortage dollars for this department, due in large part to the use of these wraps.

Retail anti-theft devices such as Alpha Spider Wrap can prevent shoplifting in your store, lik it did on ours. Why wait for inventory results before protecting your products? Be proactive now and watch your profits grow.

Need information on Alpha Spider Wrap? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 3 Alarm, Alpha Spider Wrap, Prevent Shoplifting, Spider Wrap

Shoplifting Prevention

June 21, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

When dealing with a shoplifter, your employees are at risk of violence. Knowing the company’s policies on how to approach and deal with a shoplifter must be known by every employee in your company. A loss prevention training seminar that will help your employees or your loss prevention team deal with such situations is imperative for your business. Safety is always the most important issue when dealing with a shoplifter, and your employees should know this fact. A law suit that can cost your business millions of dollars is not something you can afford to have. Call us, we will walk you though our programs and find the one that meets your need.

For more about shoplifting news, follow the links below.

$20 million lawsuit filed against Arundel Mills security

The family of a suspected shoplifter who drowned in 2014 near Arundel Mills mall has filed a $20 million lawsuit against the shopping center’s security staff for allegedly chasing him to his death.

The family of Tavon Talley filed the lawsuit against Valor Security Services and Mydatt Services in Baltimore City Circuit Court in February. A judge has denied a motion by the defendants to transfer the case to Anne Arundel Circuit Court and allowed the dispute to move forward to trial.

As of Friday, a trial date had yet to be scheduled, according to online court records.

Reached by phone Friday afternoon, Thomas P. Bernier, the Baltimore attorney representing Valor Security and Mydatt Services, declined to comment citing the ongoing litigation.

A spokesman for Mydatt Services, Valor Security’s parent company, did not immediately return a call for comment.

According to the complaint, on July 7, 2014, Talley was at the Zumiez store, which sells skate and snowboarding equipment, when a manager came to suspect the 26-year-old of shoplifting.

Connecticut’s Facial Recognition Bill: A Model for States?

State legislators step back from a bill that would limit such technology and instead take a reasonable approach — that should serve as a model for state legislators considering regulation for other emerging technologies.

Earlier this year, the Connecticut General Assembly was considering a bill that would prohibit the use of facial recognition technology for commercial applications unless companies got prior consent from consumers to gather that information — a move that would have severely curtailed the deployment of the technology. Fortunately, state lawmakers listened to reason and revised the bill so that it now simply requires retailers to display signs indicating that their establishments use facial recognition. This type of reasonable approach to regulating new technology should serve as a model for state legislators considering regulation for other emerging technologies.

Facial recognition is a form of automated image recognition that uses computer algorithms to uniquely identify an individual in a database based on a photo. Concerned with the growing accuracy of the technology, some privacy advocates have argued that facial recognition is a threat to privacy and public anonymity and have recommended the government impose restrictions on both public– andprivate-sector uses of it.

Police: Long Island Macy’s Loss Prevention Employee Steals $69,000 In Perfume

MANHASSET, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — Police said a trusted security guard in charge of theft prevention at a Long Island Macy’s used his position to steal.

As CBS2’s Jennifer McLogan reported, Juan Adriano Infante, 21 allegedly got away with $69,000 worth of Chanel perfume.

The Morrow family, who are loyal customers at Macy’s of Manhasset, were disappointed to learn of the heist of products from Chanel – their favorite fragrance.

“He was security and he was stealing?” Ms. Morrow said.

Police and prosecutors said Infante, the loss prevention associate for Macy’s, entered the stockroom where the high-end perfume is kept in storage. Police alleged that Infante carried box after box out of a side exit – making off with 1,000 expensive bottles of perfume.

It happened after he mysteriously disabled the alarm, police said.

“He would actually call the fire alarm company; have them disengage the fire alarm. At that point, he would walk out of the store – the side exit; put these fragrances in his car,” said Nassau County police Detective Lt. Richard Lebrun.

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Is Technology The Answer To Shoplifting And Employee Theft?

June 15, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

What is the solution to shoplifting and employee theft? Are harsher punishment by law the solution to this devastating social problem? Technology aimed to help retail stores prevent this problem do not seem to be helping yet. As the technology advances, so does the professional shoplifter. Meanwhile the losses due to shoplifting and employee theft are becoming retailers greatest problems to date.

For more about this and other stories, follow the links below.

Shoplifting: Retail’s $45 Billion Problem

Retailers are struggling to keep tabs on shoplifters who are increasingly becoming their top source of loss, averaging $377 per incidence, up $60 from the year before.

At 39 percent, shoplifting was found to be the biggest contributor among factors that led to overall inventory shrinkage in 2015 causing a $45.2 billion loss across the United States, according to NRF’s 2016 National Retail Security survey. The new numbers reflect a $1.2 billion increase in losses from 2014.

The inventory shrink averaged 1.38 percent of retail sales and saw 47 percent of retailers reporting losses in 2015.

“With a constantly evolving retail landscape, loss prevention becomes more complex every day,” said NRF Vice President of Loss Prevention Bob Moraca. “LP professionals have been working diligently to find advancements in technology aimed at deterring crime in our industry, sometimes even before it happens – but as our techniques get more sophisticated, so too do the criminals.”

Another factor adding to inventory shrinkage was a rise in robberies that exclusively targeted jewelry stores. The average loss reported by robbed stores increased from $2,465 per incidence in 2014 to $8,180.17 last year.

RETAIL INVENTORY SHRINKAGE INCREASED TO $45.2 BILLION IN 2015

The 2016 National Retail Security Survey, conducted in collaboration by the National Retail Federation and the University of Florida, reveals that retailers’ inventory shrink averaged 1.38 percent of retail sales, or $45.2 billion in 2015, up by $1.2 billion from 2014.

According to the report, 47 percent of retailers surveyed reported increases in overall inventory shrink in 2015, with shoplifting accounting for the greatest cause with an average loss of $377 per incident (39 percent), up nearly $60 from 2014.

Robberies continue to be a growing expense for retailers, costing an average of $8,180.17, up from $2,465. The rise in robberies in 2015 was driven by an increase in jewelry stores reporting extremely high average losses.

Gieves & Hawkes Installs RFID to Prevent Shrinkage, Track Inventory

The U.K. men’s wear retailer is using a solution from Catalyst to invisibly secure the doorway at its two newest stores, and to make sure its products are always in stock.

Apr 05, 2016—

To improve inventory visibility and prevent loss, men’s clothing retailerGieves & Hawkes has deployed a radio frequency identification system at its store in Birmingham, England. The solution tracks goods as they are received and stored in the back room or store front, then prevents unpurchased merchandise from being taken out the front door by sounding an alert, as well as storing data regarding which item is being removed. The company is expanding its RFID deployment to its newest store, located in of Hackney, an East London borough. The technology is provided by RFID solutions companyCatalyst. Both Gieves & Hawkes and Catalyst are owned by Li & Fung.

Gieves & Hawkes is a high-end men’s custom and ready-to-wear clothing retailer based in London, with more than 200 stores in China alone, as well as eight stores in the United Kingdom. The company was founded in 1771, making it one of the world’s oldest tailors. Britain’s royal family and royal military have worn its custom suits and clothing for several centuries. (Gieves & Hawkes did not respond to requests for comment.)

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Strong Hiring Practices can Deter Employee Dishonesty

June 13, 2016 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Employee theft is a common and costly problem in retail. Some businesses’ are reporting that, for the first time, internal pilferage has now surpassed external. There are many ways to control and manage internal theft. But, one of the most effective ways is often overlooked. Stop it before it starts.

Many companies have the misconception that “management” starts after someone is hired. But, good management practices start before the employee is ever hired. They start when the candidate is sitting in her first interview.

Companies who’re committed to integrity understand that from the moment the potential hire encounters the company (i.e., website, employment application, recruiter, Human Resources) he should know that the company values honesty. Values it and is activity looking for employees who do too.

When a business makes it a priority and emphasizes it as a condition of employment, dishonest people will start to be weeded out. Some will self select — they’ll become uninterested in the job and move on to a less stringent company. Or if they think they can cheat the system, make it difficult for them to get through the hiring process.

One way to get people to fall by the wayside is to have an up-to-date written drug free workplace policy, which includes rigorous pre-hire testing. The applicant must sign it and follow through with the testing. Many will sit in the interview, say they agree with the policy and never go for the testing. Or, of course, fail it.

Another way to screen for honesty is to let people know up-front, clearly and in bold letters that the company has a firm policy of checking references, education and work history. It may also check on credit and criminal history, depending on the job requirements.

People are blatant about their dishonesty, they count on nobody checking — make sure they know your company does. They’ll walk away and not even attempt to apply for the job or will be caught in their deception when their information is checked.

Be very careful about using social media in hiring practices. It shouldn’t be used as a shortcut. It’s not a substitute for due diligence and good procedures. If an interviewer doesn’t hire a woman because they found out through Facebook she was pregnant, the company is in violation of the law.

The laws concerning the applicants’ “right to privacy” and potential employers’ “right to know” are just starting to be written. Many legal experts are encouraging businesses to err on the side of caution and use only legally established hiring methods. Don’t let your company become the test case to make new law.

Nicole Abbott is a professional writer who’s had over 200 articles published. She’s a business consultant and former psycho-therapist with over 20 years of experience in mental health, business and addiction. She’s a coach, lecturer, trainer and facilitator. She has conducted over 200 workshops, trainings, presentations, seminars and college classes.

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