How to Minimize Employee Theft

Employee theft can cause major problems to a business that you’ve worked hard for. Among the apparent reasons why this happens to a business owner is that they trust their staff too much. Sometimes, they fail to see the obvious. And when it happens, they’d be left in shock saying, “I can’t believe my trusted employee would do that to me!”

Although establishing and showing trust to your employee can result in a long-lasting relationship, it may also breed opportunity. To prevent or (at least) reduce employee theft, here are some security tips you should follow.​
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Documenting the Process of a Task

If you document how a task or role should be done, you’d be able to reap the following benefits:

• A training manual that will serve as a guideline for new employees that will fill a role.
• An excellent resource for employee performance evaluation and audit.

The Principle of Least Privilege

The principle of least privilege should be in place to make sure that employees won’t be assigned privileges they don’t need to complete their job. They should only be privileges that they need to do their task.

Rotating Jobs

Rotating jobs allow employees to be exposed to other tasks within the business. While it may be difficult to do in a small business where there is only limited staff or tasks, but it can offer benefits including:

• It reduces the risk of theft, sabotage, fraud, and other criminal activities. Bear in mind that the longer the employee works in the same role, the more likely they can identify holes in the process for which they can hide their wrongdoings.
  
• Having someone to take over a task if the key person (for the said task) isn’t able to work for emergency and personal reasons.

Privilege Drifting

Privilege drifting is when an employee accumulates privileges throughout their employment because of changing roles. Bear in mind that when a change of role happens, employees should be audited so they won’t have access to privileges they don’t need anymore to perform a task.

Separate Duties and Responsibilities

If you can’t do it by yourself, critical tasks involving money should be performed by more than one employee. For instance, all payments to suppliers or clients should have two signatories. There must be a summary of accounts (including audit events) that is emailed automatically to the senior manager. Audit events should record the modifications, deletions, and additions made by the system and the users. Audit logs aren’t allowed to be changed or edited by anyone, including administrators. Thus, when an employee covers up theft within the accounts, the audit logs will be able to provide evidence.

Separating duties and responsibilities of employees will eliminate the chance of an employee to gain complete control of a critical process.

Mandatory Holidays

Have you ever had a staff that refuses to go on a vacation or allow another staff to take over their job even for a short time? While that may seem like a hardworking and dedicated employee to you, it should raise alarm bells. Many incidents of theft happen in business is when an employee is in complete control of their tasks, and they refuse to take holidays.

Forcing your employees to take holidays annually will not only allow you to audit their work done but allow another staff to learn the task as well.

While firing an employee after a theft may seem easy as it sounds, hiring a new staff can be expensive and time-consuming. That is why it would be wise if you’d take steps to prevent such incidents. But since not everything can be prevented, it only makes sense that you protect your business with insurance.

Business insurance doesn’t only protect you from damages, but it protects you from theft and losses as well. Here at Wellcovered Insurance, we offer business insurance products that you can tailor according to the nature of your business. Get a free business quote from us now and talk to one of our agents. Call us at (386) 218-4951 or visit us at our office today.