Crime doesn’t always pay. In Concord, NH, police recently arrested a group of four women who stole more than $1000 worth of merchandise at a local Walmart. This is just the tip of the iceberg—with the cost of retail crime up 27 percent over the last year, how do companies keep losses down and items on store shelves?
Preventing employee theft used to only involve stopping a worker from walking out with your goods or helping himself to the money in the cash register. Take, for example, a recent incident at the Home Depot in Watertown, Mass., as reported in the Watertown Patch.
Home Depot security officers, who suspected an employee of stealing, caught him allegedly grabbing a $100 bill from the register and putting it in his apron. After he was arrested, the suspect admitted to taking approximately $5,000 in cash over five or six weeks.
While this type of theft still clearly occurs, times have changed, and employees have turned to more sophisticated ways to steal everything from merchandise to data from their employers.
Here are a few old school and cutting-edge ways to prevent your employees from stealing from your business;
